[gen220]

It doesn’t need to heavily dominate! Especially in WFH days, where you eat breakfast and lunch at home.

If you eat three meals a day and have staple breakfasts and lunches (for us it’s oatmeal/muesli in the morning with fruits, sandwiches for lunch) and only ever order in for dinner, at least ⅔ of your meals each day automatically come from “groceries”. And home cooked dinners are usually the most expensive meal of the day (if they feature the typical dinner meats).

Trading off for takeout, many restaurants are overjoyed to give you two servings in the name of one, and that makes at least one meal for the next day! At least this is how it works for us.

Alcohol is a good point though! It can definitely make groceries look more expensive than they are.

[ryandrake]

This thread made me go check, since I obsessively track my expenses in Quicken. My grocery bill has been consistently 4-5X my restaurant spending for basically as far back as I have data (over 20 years). So at least this anecdote supports OP's anecdote!