8 Food Lion Tricks Virginians Use to Save Money
Your Food Lion runs more deals in a week than one cart can carry home.
Many of them never reach the front page of the weekly ad.
These are the Food Lion tricks Virginians use to save money.
Your Free MVP Card
Almost every deal at Food Lion in Virginia runs through the MVP card, Food Lion’s loyalty program.
Signing up costs nothing, and you can do it in the app, at the customer service counter, or online.
Food Lion ties the sale prices to that card.
The card lives on your phone in the Food Lion app, so you can leave the plastic keytag in a drawer.
Without it, the shelf tag that reads $2.99 with your MVP card rings at full price instead.
So the same bag of Food Lion coffee can cost two Virginians two different amounts at the same register on the same afternoon.
One shopper tapped the MVP card.
The other didn’t.
BOGO Without Buying Two
Food Lion’s buy one get one free (BOGO) deals work differently than similar deals at certain other grocery chains.
Each item rings up at half price on its own, so you don’t have to buy two to get the deal.
Need a single jar of Duke’s mayonnaise, made right up the road in Richmond, off a BOGO tag?
Take it at half price and leave the rest on the shelf.
Timing is the catch, since popular BOGO deals, such as on chicken and local produce, tend to sell out first.
Shop early in the week.
Shop & Earn Rewards
Food Lion layers a second savings program called Shop & Earn on top of the weekly ad, and you have to switch it on yourself.
Every month, Food Lion loads personalized offers to your MVP card based on what you already buy.
You tap to activate them in the app or on the website, and Food Lion pushed the program chainwide, so every store runs it.
Spend enough in a category, and Food Lion drops a reward onto your card.
Picture $3 back for spending $15 in the dairy aisle over the month.
Food Lion takes that $3 off your next trip automatically.
The offers reset every month.
Use them or lose them.
Coupons You Clip to Your Card
Food Lion’s digital coupons live in the same app as your MVP card, and they beat the paper coupons you once clipped at the kitchen table.
Load a coupon to your card, and Food Lion takes it off the total when the cashier scans your MVP card.
You clip with a tap.
The best of them are free-after-coupon deals, where an item rings down to zero once the coupon applies.
Food Lion doesn’t double coupons, so let that old habit go.
It does let you stack a digital coupon on a sale price, and that combination is where the steepest discounts show up.
Psst! How much do you know about Food Lion? Take our quiz and see if you can ace it.
Quiz
Food Lion Pop Quiz
Test yourself on Food Lion and the history of the grocery store. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
Food Lion didn’t open under that name. What was it originally called?
Store Brands With a Guarantee
Food Lion's own brands sit on the same shelves as the national names for a good bit less.
A box of Food Lion cereal often runs a dollar or more under the branded version beside it.
Reach for the Food Lion label, Nature's Promise, or Taste of Inspirations.
Food Lion also backs its produce, meat, and store brands with a money-back guarantee.
That pays you double for the trouble.
Try a Food Lion steak, dislike it, and you carry home twice what you paid.
Reduced for Quick Sale
Food Lion sometimes marks down food near its sell-by date instead of tossing it, and shoppers who spot the orange stickers eat well for less.
The reduced-for-quick-sale stickers show up on meat, bakery, and deli items, sometimes a day or two before the expiration date on the package.
The discount is often a third or more.
You don't need to clip a thing to receive this discount.
Just be aware that the good markdowns tend to sell out fast.
See it, grab it.
Sale Prices on Food Lion To Go
Food Lion To Go lets customers order online for pickup or delivery, and you keep the same deals either way.
Your MVP prices, the BOGO tags, and your clipped digital coupons all count at online checkout, the same as in the aisle.
Pickup runs $1.95 once your order tops $35, and a bit more below that.
Delivery costs a little more, and it can arrive on your porch the same day.
That beats a Food Lion run on a muggy Hampton Roads afternoon.
No cart required.
The Big Earn Events
A few times a year, Food Lion piles a bigger earning event on top of the monthly Shop & Earn offers, and the payout gets bigger.
Events like March Into Savings and the fall MVP push let Virginians earn a running total back for hitting spending goals over a few weeks.
In some years that total has reached $40.
That adds up fast.
You build the total week by week, and Food Lion knocks it off a later trip.
These events are worth marking on the calendar.
Each event runs a limited window, so your shot at the full amount ends when the event does.
Watch the app in late winter, and again when the leaves turn in the Blue Ridge.
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Food Lion's weekly ad shows Virginians maybe half of what Food Lion takes off their bill.
The rest lives in the app, at the service counter, and on a shelf tag shoppers over 60 have learned to spot.
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