Why I Now Shop at 3 Supermarkets Every Week (Confessions of a Tired Mum)

Look. I know how this sounds. "Three supermarkets a week" is the kind of thing my mother would say while shaking her head and reorganising my fridge.

But hear me out, because I'm saving roughly $160 a month doing this, and the whole thing takes me less time than it used to. The catch is that I'm not actually visiting three supermarkets. I'm just shopping smart across three.

The realisation

For years I was a one-store loyalist. We're a FairPrice family, my mum would say, like it was a religion. Then one Tuesday I happened to stop at Sheng Siong on the way home and noticed chicken thigh was almost 30% cheaper than where I usually bought it. I thought, fluke. Next week I checked again. Not a fluke.

That little nudge sent me down a rabbit hole I didn't ask for. I started photographing receipts. (Yes. Sorry. I know.) After about a month of this very embarrassing hobby, the pattern was clear: I was overpaying on probably 40% of my regular items because I never bothered to look elsewhere.

The "three stores" system, demystified

This is not three trips. It is one mental model.

Store A — your weekly run. The one closest to home. You go there once a week for the bulk of your list. For me that's FairPrice because there's literally one downstairs.

Store B — your monthly swing. A different chain you visit once or twice a month, on a Saturday errand or after a doctor's appointment, for the items it's consistently cheaper on. For me it's Sheng Siong, mainly for meat and leafy greens, which I freeze.

Store C — your "promo only" store. A store you only visit when something specific is on a strong promo. For me that's Cold Storage when the imported cheese is half price (this happens more than you'd think) or RedMart when they're doing a delivery promo.

That's it. Most weeks I only physically enter one store. The "three" part is in the planning, not the legwork.

How I actually plan it

I used to do this with a notebook and a slightly unhinged WhatsApp message to myself. Now I just dump my shopping list into Tokku.

The flow:

1. Open the AI assistant. Paste my list, or just describe what I'm cooking — "pasta night, two stir-fries, a curry, breakfast for the week."
2. Tokku splits the list across the cheapest store for each item, factoring in real-time prices.
3. I look at the split and ask: is the swing trip worth it this week? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
4. If not, I just buy everything at Store A and accept I'll lose a few dollars. No guilt.

The whole thing takes 90 seconds. I am not exaggerating for blog purposes. I timed it. I am that person.

What you actually save (with feelings included)

For my family of four, splitting between FairPrice and Sheng Siong saves about $35–45 a week. That's around $2,000 a year. We're not buying yachts with this — we're paying for a year of family swimming class with a bit left over for kueh.

The bigger thing, honestly, is the mental relief. I stopped feeling like I was being quietly fleeced. The supermarket is a place you go now, not a place that goes to you, if that makes sense.

If you're skeptical, just try it for two weeks. Use Tokku for the planning. Track what you actually spent. If you don't see a difference, go back to your one-store life with my blessing. But I think you'll see it.

Start with the FairPrice vs Sheng Siong vs Cold Storage breakdown, pair it with the Tokku AI 90-second workflow, and check household essentials prices before your monthly swing.

→ Build your first split list with Tokku AI