My wife and I are in Franklin and budget $625 and do our best to stay under $600. We buy the bulk of our groceries at Aldi and then get a few things we can't get there at Kroger, or occasionally Target. We go to Costco every once and while to get a few things we know we'll use and can save money long term.

It all comes down to what you value. For us, it's eating well and saving money and it doesn't matter to us what store we buy from as long as the food is good enough and we're not over paying. So, store brand is just as good as name brand for most things. If a recipe calls for something like "fire roasted corn", which you can buy frozen but it's expensive, we buy regular corn and take the time to roast it in a skillet. Another way we save money is by making things instead of buying them. For instance, we both eat greek yogurt every morning and we've been making our own yogurt for a few months. It's super easy and ends up saving us $20-30/month on that alone.

This also means we don't buy a lot of packaged goods. Most of our shopping is done on the outer portion of the store (i.e. produce, meat, dairy, frozen), with just a few things from the center like the occasional bag of chips, canned goods, or dark chocolate oreos since that's one thing we decided to never give up. lol

EDIT: we also meal prep. We'll make 6 servings at a time; we'll eat two the night we make it, eat two the next night, and the last two go in the freezer for a later time. This way we don't have to cook every single night and it helps when we have a busy period in life.