Short dated food
Local green grocers and butchers are normally no good. They know when their produce is un-saleable and don’t sell it. Supermarkets are better because everything has a best before date even if the food is fine. The retail day ends ant 10PM even if the supermarket closes later. Items usually get reduced throughout the day until dramatic reductions two hours from closing or 10PM whichever is the sooner. I live on short dated food and see the same faces every day. The days following a public holidays, when people are living off the leftovers, are good. Inclement weather deters the others, so when the going gets tough the tough get going. Almost every day there are some baking potatoes and some sort of salad. If you have the time it is fine. The only products I pay full price for are: Sugar, milk, tea, coffee, cooking oil, vinegar and toiletries.
As a veteran of short dated food I can tell you what they are in my local supermarkets:
Baking potatoes
Parsnips
Prepared salads
Spring onions
Chopped vegetables
Cheeses
Coleslaw and other dips
Chestnuts
Cucumbers
Fish and shellfish
Various fruit
Herbs (that are usually well past their best)
Mushrooms
Meat and fish if you are lucky.
Your local supermarkets will obviously vary.
When you can regularly buy 4 baking potatoes reduced from £1 to 10 pence it is difficult to motivate yourself to grow them yourself.