Buying in bulk through supermarkets

>>about your bulk food distributor- do you have one source that will get you what you need, or do you need a different person for each product or store type? do you go through the local stores, or do you just go over their heads? the stores here don’t seem too eager to help someone not shop by them- even if i offer to pay them for their help… but if that’s what you do, then i will keep plugging away here.<<

I just finished making my bulk order today, so now’s a good time to answer this!  Buying in bulk is a great way to save money since generally the price per unit will be lower if you’re buying a large amount (not always, though, so remember to check the unit price to be sure it’s worth your time).  I’ve gotten more adventuresome over time, so here’s a bit of my progression and what’s worked for me; maybe one of the ideas will work for you.

To start with, I asked my local health food store if they had bulk amounts.  They did, and routinely offered a ten percent discount if you buy it in bulk.  That’s nice, but wasn’t very impressive.  But I stuck with that for years since I wasn’t buying the large amounts I buy now.

I  used to shop once a week, so buying in bulk wasn’t very important to me (actually, I felt it was a liability at the time since I didn’t want to find room to store that amount of food – but my priorities have changed since then).  But 3.5 years ago when I started to grind my own wheat for health reasons, I wanted to find another source since the local health food store was selling regular white winter wheat for over a dollar a pound (after the discount) and it was more expensive in that case to grind my own wheat than to buy whole wheat flour.

Then I started looking to buy directly from the wholesalers that the health food stores were buying from.  I asked the local health food store who their supplier was and did some online searching for other bulk food distributors.  Most bulk suppliers won’t sell directly to individuals, but some will.  I found one three hours away that sold to stores and individuals and started buying from them.

I didn’t go often at all – I didn’t need many items, and got enough of those to last me at about 3 months so I wouldn’t have to make the trip too frequently.  At that time a 50 lb bag of wheat was only $12, less than a quarter of what I would have paid in the health food store, even after my bulk discount, so it was a big savings (three bags I bought at a time were $36 vs. $150), particularly since I was driving the veggie van then and gas costs weren’t a concern.

But driving three hours away took a lot of time and energy, particularly since the farmer I got my raw milk from was two hours in another direction.  It was a very, very long day when I did that shopping.  Then I noticed that some of the stores I shopped in had bulk sections where many different foods were repackaged from the individual large bags into small individually priced bags by the store.  Some even had 50 lb sacks of oats on the bottom shelves.

I started buying from these stores in the smaller bags, even though it was a little more expensive than buying from the wholesaler since I saved myself a lot of driving.  And I also started getting the 50 lb sacks of oatmeal.

Then it occurred to me to speak to the manager of the bulk section in one of the supermarkets.  I try to look for win-win ways to work with people, and this was an example of this.  I wouldn’t ask a store to help me shop somewhere else, because there’s no advantage to them.  You have to think about how your request will benefit both sides. A store is in business to make money and isn’t likely to do you favors if there’s no profit for them.

My question to her was if I could order bulk amounts through the store, so the store was my middleman and I paid the store for my order.  She had never been asked this before, but pretty quickly agreed.

Why would they do this?  The store makes money since they tack on 20 percent to the price they pay when selling it to me.  There’s very little work involved for them – they just add my order onto theirs when calling it in to their distributor (actually the same source I was buying direct from), and put my stuff to the side in a separate shopping cart for me when it comes in.

I come in later the same day the order arrives, so it’s not sitting around in their way.  This is very nice for me since they’re willing to order anything for me that their distributor offers, even if they don’t get it for the store.  And the price I end up paying is comparable to what I was paying when buying directly from the wholesaler (the wholesaler sells at a lower price to the stores than to a private customer so they had room to mark it up and I still paid basically the same thing).  Very convenient, and good for everyone.

If you have an Amish or Mennonite population within a couple of hours of you, it will be worth your while to explore their stores.  These stores are used to selling in large quantities to large families and are unlikely to blink twice at your request.

I’ve spoken to several stores and all of them were willing to order bulk amounts/case lots for me – the difference is how much of a discount they’ll give (some, like Trader Joes, don’t offer a discount at all).  I would expect that if you present your request as I did, that most store managers in other parts of the country would be willing to work with you.

Good luck!

Avivah

6 thoughts on “Buying in bulk through supermarkets

  1. I so enjoy reading your blog! I don’t think you know of the impact that you have!

    I would like to can chicken soup. Is there any way to do it w/out a pressure canner?

    TIA

  2. Welcome, NRose! Sorry, there’s no safe way to can chicken soup without a pressure canner – that’s the only way to get the heat high enough to kill botulism spores.

  3. In buying bulk, do you worry about bug infestation and how do you store everything?

    I just started buying some of our foods through our local natural food bulk buying club (monthly) and have stashed the 17 lbs of oats (for example) in our big freezer (I think we will eat through them with our smaller family in about a month). But as the time for our baby gets closer I will want to make room for the food I hope to make to tide us over through the newborn stage. So I don’t want to stick large amounts of uncooked food there if I can help it. I have a pantry area in my laundry room in the basement but the shelves can’t handle too much weight. I also have a garage with lots of cabinets (I guess the weather is cool enough I can store some stuff out there).

    I got some food from a friend who was going back to Israel and as an additional gift, I seemed to pick up some flying and squirmy buggy friends, which of course infested some of our food. I have been cleaning and haven’t seen further signs, but I don’t need additional mouths to feed. 😀

  4. With the price of gas being what it is, is it really worth making a 2-3 hour trip to shop really worth it? I know I just did for grape juice (2.99 for the big bottles) and some other foods I needed for the holidays (and took a new friend and she basically paid for the gas part of the trip), but I wouldn’t have made the trip if the sales weren’t great and I really needed/wanted the foods (and I got take out too).

    I have an Amish area about 2.5 hours away but that takes a day away from regular life (school, hanging out, etc) and everyone’s tushies get tired from being in the car for that long (even with our audio books and torah tapes).

  5. Speaking of Amish, we spent a month in SW Wisconsin in he heart of the largest old order community in that state/region. We so enjoyed watching them milk raw CY milk for us a few times a week. We also went to the Amish Growers Auction a couple of times each week to buy produce. It was a 10 minute drive from where we were staying. That was amazing and an experience we will never forget. The farmers bring their harvest of the week and it goes up for auction by a real auctioneer. Here are some of our best purchases (all organic): 40 cabbages for $4, 1 bushel of corn (65 ears) for $5, onions for $.50/ bushel. If I had access to something like this where I live, I would be buying and canning and drying from morning ’til night! 🙂 Plus it was a great cultural/educational experience for the kids. Now that I’m back home I can barely manage to shop at the grocery store because the prices seem so outrageous compared to our summer bounty.

  6. Shoshana – I went to a produce auction in the beginning of spring, but unfortunately got there at the end so by the time I finished registering, the auction was over.:( They told me the time I got there was usually just right for non commercial buyers, but because it was the spring season, there was a lot less to buy than usual so it finished early. I still have hopes to go back and snag some deals – those you mentioned are pretty phenomenal!

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