What's Britain's favourite meal deal?
Why the egg protein pot has overtaken crisps
The high street remains an astonishingly expensive place to buy food and drink. The cost of a standard flat white coffee at most of the big cafe chains has now hit £3.90. Ouch. But there is an exception: The Meal Deal.
At Tesco, with a Clubcard, a lunchtime meal deal costs £3.60 (and well over 80 per cent of all Tesco transactions involve a Clubcard). At Sainsbury’s it is £3.75. A sandwich, a snack, a drink for less than a small cup of coffee.
No wonder Britain has gone meal deal crazy. Go onto Reddit, or TikTok, and the Meal Deal discourse is deep. Where can I save the most money? How do I beat the system? Is the meal deal worsening the UK’s obesity problem? Who on earth chooses coconut water?
I’ve investigated all of this for a Channel 5 documentary, airing this week, ‘Meal Deals: Which One is Best?’ And I’ve written a fuller piece in this weekend’s Sunday Times, here.
On the surface, a meal deal can save serious money. At Tesco if you choose the £3 hoisin duck wrap, £2.55 Kind protein bar and £2.75 Emmi Caffe latte drink you’re saving £4.70. At Sainsbury’s, there’s a premium £5 meal deal and you can get £10.85 worth of goods if you are mad enough to opt for a salmon poke bowl, a Huel chocolate drink and Grenade protein bar.
At Waitrose you can get £11.15 of food for £5 – the most you can save in the UK on a meal deal: a Glo hot salmon and rice salad, a Mockingbird raw greens smoothie and the Taiko katsu chicken bites.
Are the savings real? Not quite. In most cases the drinks and the snacks — the protein bars, the crisps, popcorn and fancy seaweed thins — are being sold at inflated prices to make it look like a bargain. Go to the back of the supermarket and buy a multipack of cola or popcorn and you’ll get the same product much cheaper.
Still, lunch for £3.60 or £3.75 still represents good value when a sandwich alone in Pret can cost £6.99.
The most interesting thing about the Meal Deal, however, is how it reflects our changing tastes. I’ve asked the three main providers to supply me with their most popular meal deal combos — as shown by their own sales data — which they’ve kindly done. Four things stick out:
People opt for the most expensive items to save the most money. Or what they believe will save them the most money.
Despite the likes of KFC and McDonald’s phasing out full-sugar fizzy drinks, the full-sugar coke remains astonishingly popular
Britain is in thrall to Big Protein. We’ve swapped a bag of crisps for eggs or strips of chicken.
Except when we want a bag of BBQ-flavoured hula hoops. How on earth did this particular bag trump Walker’s cheese & onion? I refer you to no.1
So here they are:
Tesco’s most popular £3.60 meal deal of 2024
Chicken Club Sandwich, £3.25
Egg Protein Pot, £1.30
Coca-Cola 500ml, £1.95
Tesco’s 2nd most popular £3.60 meal deal of 2024
Sausage Bacon & & Egg Triple sandwich, £3.25
Big Hoops Bbq Beef Grab Bag Crisps 45G, £1.10
Red Bull Energy Drink 473ml, £2.55
Sainsbury’s most popular £3.75 meal deal of 2025 so far
by Sainsbury’s Southern Fried Chicken Wrap, £3.25
Big Hula Hoops BBQ flavour, £1.15 or Free Range Egg Protein Pot (Sainsbury’s says it’s neck & neck), £1.30
Coca Cola 500ml, £1.95
Waitrose’s most popular £5 meal deal of 2025 so far
Waitrose Steak & Caramelised Onion Chutney Sandwich, £4,75
Snack: Taiko Chicken Katsu Bites, £2.95
Mockingbird Greens Smoothie, 250ml, £3.05
This is the content I’m absolutely here for
I’m a fan of the Greggs one. No snack, but you get a bigger roll, with chicken tikka. And I’m a sucker for their raspberry lemonade. Greggs rolls are underrated IMO.