With the cost-of-living crisis hitting hard, with bills and shop prices rocketing and incomes remaining relatively static, it has become necessary to look at household budgets to see where savings could be made.
My partner and I are very fond of a takeaway, especially as sometimes I get a migraine and find it difficult to cook when I get one. So, I started to investigate the cost of a takeaway versus that of cooking at home. And specifically, how much money we could save by having one less takeaway a week.
I started by looking into the cost of Chinese takeaways vs fakeaways and now I’m going to look at burgers (see bottom of this page for generic benefits of fakeaways).
Making one small change can sometimes be more effective than trying to be over ambitious and then failing to achieve a change. So, my mission for this month will be to have one less takeaway burger meal and cook at home instead with the help of a food diary to monitor my eating.
A typical burger takeaway comes in at £31.82 with the home made version coming in at £7.39 with a saving of about 75%, partly because when you order in you tend to order more than you actually need thanks to the emails bombarding you with irresistable special offers (from now on I’m going to try to delete emails from Just Eat, Uber Eats and Deliveroo instead of opening them).
Cost of burger takeaway vs home-cooked burger meal
Burger Takeaway (July 2025 prices)
Medium Burger Meal £7.59 (burger and fries)
Add milkshake £0.80
Medium Burger Meal £7.59 (burger and fries)
Add milkshake £0.80
2 apple pies £4.78
Salad £1.09
6 chicken nuggets £5.19
Delivery £0.99
Service charge £2.99
Total £31.82
DIY burger meal
2 Beef burgers £3.75
2 Burger buns £0.55
4 Lettuce leaves £0.20
1 large tomato £0.17
6gm Mayonnaise £0.04
6gm Ketchup £0.04
5gm Olive spread £0.10
500gm French fries £1.78
2 servings orange juice £0.76
Total £7.39
So if it’s so expensive, why do we have so much takeaway and how can we motivate ourselves to have less?
Let’s look at how takeaways really compare to fakeaways:
1. Speed – when you’re tired and hungry a takeaway seems the quickest option but delivery times can often be an hour in which time you could easily cook a similar meal.
2. Effort – picking up the phone and placing an order is a lot easier than the effort of not only cooking but doing the shopping beforehand for the necessary ingredients. Yes this is true to a certain extent but a little bit of planning solves the problem. Stock up on the essentials like rice, and to get started use jars of ready made sauce and frozen pre-prepared veg. You can buy fresh meat and freeze it if you might not be able to get to the shop the day you want to cook. And then there’s the washing up when you cook at home, but think of the planet and all the takeaway packaging you’re saving.
3. Nutrition – you never get an ingredient list on a takeaway but you can guarantee there’s lots of salt, sugar and saturated fats.
4. Satisfaction – there is definitely feel-good aspect to creating your own meals.
Top tips
1. Shopping – this is where it all starts. If you have do a weekly internet shop, review your list to see what changes you can make to help your diet. Think about taking off the crisps, chocolate etc because once they are in the house you are definitely going to eat them. If you have a craving you will have to go out and get them and that might be enough to resist the craving. Think about adding some more vegetables to your list – either fresh, frozen or tinned. Buy ready made sauces, pre-prepared frozen vegetables, tins of chickpeas etc to get started. As you get more confident you can add your own spices and other ingredients.
If you do a top-up shop instore, look out for bargains and then figure out what to do with them.
2. Batch cooking is brilliant as you can make double portions for the same effort and then you have an extra meal in the freezer. You just need tupperware containers or freezer bags and labels to write what it is and when it was made.
3. When you have got used to cooking supermarket burgers try making your own. And a vegetarian rainbow burger works out even cheaper and is fun to do with the kids.
4. Wash up as you go along so there’s only the plates to do at the end of the meal when you’re tired. But if you don’t get it all done before you go to bed, do it first thing in the morning and put everything away.
5. Every time you cook a fakeaway, make a note of the money you’ve saved to go towards the bills, a holiday, a new laptop, gym membership, more date nights or anything else on your bucket list.
My mission for last month was to add frozen peas or pineapple chunks to our homemade sweet and sour chicken and I have now established a new normal when I cook chinese or curry, I’m now in a better habit of adding fruit and veg to the meal.
Progress Report
We have been on this journey for about a year now. And I am pleased to say that we are gradually making changes to our eating habits. We now order one less takeaway a month and when I cook at home I now add vegetables like peas and carrots to a chicken curry. This is now our new normal which is a big achievement and feels good for our self-esteem. We have also joined a gym and the money we are saving on takeaways goes towards gym membership.
I also kept a food diary for a week and it made me realise how little water I drink. So that is something I am now focussing on. (Water is free and I know it will taste better if I eat less sugar…)
My next focus is going to be on washing up because if I can keep on top of the dishes I’m going to be inclined to cook more. A friend has suggested playing music in the kitchen and having a boogie at the sink. I’m going to try this and will let you know how I get on.
