Salvage Grocery Store

[Downstream]

Do you guys have these in your area?  We have one in the town that we moved to about a year ago.  It is a mostly grocery, but also general merch like toothpaste, shampoo, pet food etc.  never know what you might find.  The food stuff is a split between Non expired damaged box items and non damaged expired items.  Prices start at about 50% of what you would pay at Walmart/Costco and go down depending upon condition/age.  I heard about it after we moved here from a few locals who swear by it.  I buy all my breakfast cereal, coffee, toothpaste, snacks and other dry goods here with great results and save a ton.  Sometimes you walk in and they have things like a banana box full of individually wrapped cookies(2ea) for $10.  Most is name brand like oreos, chips ahoy, etc.  You probably get 150 pkgs in the box.  Quality of the food in general has been good with only a couple of instances where the cookies/taco shells were a little"aged".  but at the prices you can afford a few rejects.  I stay away from things like salad dressing, mayonnaise that seem to have more risk associated with being expired.  Mainly I focus on non expired damaged box items which have been 100% good.  I do buy expired coffee with pretty good luck, only one skunky bag in a year.  Pricing on coffee is usually $3-4 per bag that would run $9-12 in the store.  The crowd seems to be growing over the past year probably due to the transitory inflation and it is a pretty even mix of young/old/white collar/blue collar.  I would estimate people from almost every walk of life and income level.   Just curious if you guys have these in other areas of the country or is it more specific to this area. 

[Southside]

FWIW having built a grade A licensed creamery I learned that the food manufacturer is the one who determines the sell by date, there are no rules to follow. Want to sell more? Have a shorter shelf life date. So some of that food you are concerned with may be just fine. 

[thecfarm]

We had one about an hour from me.
Not much brand name food. 
Yes we use to buy from them when we went to the big city.

[ljohnsaw]

I have quite a number of Falling Prices and the parent company, BidRLs around.  Most of their stuff is damaged or outdated.  I get cereal from both as long as the BidRL bids are in line.  Falling Prices has ALL items priced at $6 on Tuesday, $4 or Wednesday, $2 on Thursday, $1 on Friday and $0.25 on Saturday.  Sometimes its a box of snack cookies (24 to 48 2-cookie packs), or a case of various chips (48 count) or stuff like Larabars (12-16 count).  Even at $6 its a bargain but I hold out for $2 or $1 day One time the manager made up an Amazon box with 14 family-sized boxes of BooBerry cereal for $6.  They had hundreds to get rid of!  I gave away a bunch to friends with kids.

For general grocery shopping, I go to Winco (an employee-owned business).  They don't take credit cards, just cash or debit which helps keep the prices down.  Their prices are a good 25 to 33% lower than other stores, Walmart included.