If you’re human, you know that grocery prices have been rising for a while now. While cooking at home remains a more economical option than having every meal delivered to your home, that doesn’t mean it’s not challenging to eat on a budget. This is driving folks to seek out financing for their grocery bills, which is concerning (and a bad idea), and to develop some extreme strategies for stretching their food dollars (and their food).
One strategy that’s gaining some traction: grocery shopping at a dollar store like Dollar General or Dollar Tree. This isn’t as crazy an idea as you might think: For some folks, a dollar store is the only place they can buy food at all, and many dollar stores offer all the ingredients you need to cook a healthy dinner, including fruits and vegetables (sometimes fresh—but frozen and canned veggies are still veggies), proteins, beans, tuna packets, the incredibly useful chickpea (the aquafaba is a cheap substitute for pricey eggs), and oatmeal. The chains have also embraced their role as grocery stores and offer recipe resources and helpful guides to healthy diets.
Entering the chat: CookTok influencers who are offering guidance on how to shop for food at dollar stores and then turn that food into surprisingly delicious meals. If your grocery budget is feeling tight these days, check out these five TikTok accounts for all the dollar store cookery wisdom you could want.
Dollar Tree Dinners
Rebecca Chobat is having a moment as the resident dollar-store cooking guru. Her TikTok channel Dollar Tree Dinners is a steady diet (sorry) of shopping advice, recipes, and step-by-step videos that demonstrate how you can make a week’s worth of breakfast and lunch for just $15 or dinner for $5 or less. She also shows how to leverage the consistent $1.25 pricing at Dollar Tree to manage a week’s worth of grocery shopping for $35 or less. The best part about Chobat’s content is that her meals look absolutely delicious despite their frugal origins.
Clint Svatos
Svatos is a father of four living in California, and if you think feeding yourself on a budget is tough, try feeding six people including four growing kids. Svatos makes it look easy, however, documenting his grocery shopping at Dollar Tree (daughters usually raucously along for the ride) as he prepares family dinners for $10 or less. Svatos is more focused on stretching his grocery dollars than his chef skills or presentation, but his channel is a fun way to see some very, very cheap meals in action.
Abbey Sharp
Abbey Sharp is a dietician living in Canada who spends her time on TikTok educating folks about food and groceries. Her channel isn’t wholly dedicated to the dollar store cooking trend, but she regularly posts tips and hands-on shopping guides to help folks be healthy if their grocery budget is dollar store-sized, and she brings a more scientific approach to the question of eating healthy using ingredients purchased at places called things like Dollarama.
Jenna Eats Good
Jenna Lueke’s TikTok channel isn’t focused on dollar stores, but she offers a lot of specific advice on how to stretch grocery hauls with videos showing how she turns $50 or $60 worth of groceries into anywhere from 10 to 20 meals that cost $3 to $5 each. Her advice can be applied to your dollar store grocery shopping as well, and she ensures that her recipes are healthy and nutritious, making this an ideal follow for folks cooking for a family on a budget.
Thundermane328
Alanya Williams is a professional cook who posts TikToks demonstrating how he cooks healthy, delicious meals for less than $5 by shopping for his ingredients at dollar stores. A big part of Williams’ strategy is stretching the food you do make, and many of his videos stress that aspect of grocery shopping at dollar stores, which makes his recipes and meal plans even more budget-friendly. He also offers advice on what staple ingredients and spices to stock up on, saving money with bulk purchases that will fuel your cookery for months to come.
