Review: Nutricircle, discounted protein deals

Nutricircle is the new name for Food Circle Supermarket, and since I’ve been an occasional customer, I wanted to try out the new website.

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Mystery shopping the newly rebranded @Nutricircle and grumbling about shifting prices on the Tiktok shop. @Andrew Girdwood can’t resist buying protein bars.

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In just a few days, I got my past best before Grenade protein bars and nearly beyond best Barebells protein milkshakes. That’s as speedy as the Tiktok shop without the random prices.

The premise is brilliant. We should not waste food. Brands often have more products than people buy. Brands must also be cautious about discounting too heavily or too frequently, or people will stop paying full price. So, Nutricircle buys up food that’s nearing its best before, discounts it, and sells it directly to people like you and me.

We don’t know what products Nutricircle will offer, but we know we’ll have to eat quickly, and it’ll be significantly cheaper than from a mainstream supermarket.

Therefore, Nutrircircle needs to be quick. I was pleased to see that they had processed my order that very day. My package went to the delivery company the next day and was with me the day after.

I mention the Tiktok shop because a wave of brands has cleverly discounted their products close to the best before there. My problem is when some rosy-faced influencer tells me “W- brand” protein bars are available in boxes of 12 for only £7, only for the “W- brand” to increase the box to £12.99 a few hours later. There’s no such bait-and-switch with Nutricircle.

Why did Food Circle Supermarket change?

In an email to customers, Nutricircle explains why they changed their name.

We’re thrilled to share that we’ve rebranded from Food Circle Supermarket to Nutricircle, reflecting our evolving mission to bring you the best in nutrition at prices you won’t believe. This exciting transformation is all about our renewed commitment to offering your favourite health-conscious products, all while embracing our “circle of nutrition” philosophy. Nutricircle is here to be your go-to for healthier living and responsible choices.

Here’s my take without the marketing jargon cut out.

Food like bread, milk, eggs, fruit, vegetables, etc., is difficult to do on the Nutricircle model as it goes off quickly. Protein bars, supplements, and similar processed products do not. 

I think Brits are a bit cautious that buying a box of apples that don’t look great at a discount is a false economy that might lead to ill health. Saving £20 on a box of pristine chocolate-flavoured protein bars looks like a deal.

Nutricircle sells protein-enriched food for gym bunnies. It’s ultra-processed, but the macros check out, and the best before is a much milder suggestion than many other food products.

I think the rebrand reflects the products that people bought from Food Circle, the products that Nutricircle can source from suppliers and profit from.

Nutricircle website

Thankfully, Nutricircle is an unremarkable e-commerce website. If you’ve bought something online before, I’m sure you’ll be able to navigate this one. It’s Shopify-powered, so you probably have already placed dozens of orders on sites running the same code base.

Nicely, and supporting my hypothesis that Nurtricircle customers are all about protein, the main navigation lets you find high protein.

You can also navigate by product brand and product type.  You can also select by diet, and I see an option for “palm oil free”, which is a lovely green touch. Palm oil is rarely harvested in a friendly way. There’s also a “nut-free (including traces)” section, which means nut-free but may contain traces, and the intro text rightly reminds potential buyers to check individual projects. I’m not sure how helpful the section is for people who need to be careful, but I see the ecommerce advantage of having it, and I suspect it’s a bit legally brave. However, if more shops consider food allergy as highly as Nutricircle seems to be, then the world would be a better place.

The home page is a best-seller section and “flying right now”, which might help people decide. It might also be a bit of “fear of missing out” to create some demand but given Nutricircle really is a bit of a race against time I think it’s fair.

Overall

I was impressed. The food I’ve got was tasty, and it’s no challenge to eat it all before it goes off. Why would I pay full price elsewhere?

The packaging wasn’t remarkable, but it was good enough. I might be a bit cautious about ordering metal cans such as the energy drinks they stock, but I’d given Nutricircle the benefit of the doubt.

I’ll use Nutricircle again, but I’ll have to use willpower not to use it too often because it makes most money-saving sense to bulk buy and I don’t have the willpower to do anything other than feast the whole lot down.

Oh, one last thing – Girdy still maintains his protein bar database to calculate which brands have the best macro ratios. Let us know if you know of other protein bar options.