Crumpled, dated, out of line? At the rescue store, it’s business

In a world where a jar of peanut butter costs $1 more than it did last year and the price of a liter of conventional milk is as high as $1.59 in some cities, paying $1.49 for a box giant crunchy rice flakes might seem like a good idea, even if it’s August and the cereal is dyed red and green for Christmas.

At the rescue store, business is business.

With US supermarket prices 13.1% higher than a year ago, according to the July Consumer Price Index, a new group of shoppers has discovered the joys and pitfalls of shopping at food rescue stores. , where a dented box is never an issue, the dates on the packaging are mere suggestions and questionable marketing attempts slip out of sight (Chocolate Cupcake flavored coffee capsules with cream?).

The stores, which run what major food retailers call “unsaleable,” operate in a gray zone between low-income food banks and big discount chains like German importer Aldi or Dollar General, which has grown to more than 18 thousand stores.

With names like Sharp Shopper, Dented Can and Stretch-a-Buck, food rescue stores have been a lifeline for families on tight budgets and the naturally thrifty. Adventurous shoppers looking for bargains use them to hunt for culinary treasures. Now the weary of inflation are joining them.

Maggie Kilpatrick, a blogger and cooking teacher in St. Paul, Minnesota, who has celiac disease, visited a food rescue store for the first time in June after the cost of his favorite gluten-free products soared. Someone in a “gluten-free” Facebook group mentioned a rescue store over 30 kilometers away.

“I was shocked,” she said. “There were lots of gluten-free, organic, high-quality stuff you never thought you’d find in this little store in Fridley, Minnesota.”

A two-pack of baguettes from a brand she loves typically sells for around $6.99. She got three for $5. Vegan butter was $1.99, about $5 less than what she’d pay at Whole Foods Market.

“I understand why people get addicted to it,” she said.

Many of these stores are small and some don’t use checkout price scanners or accept credit cards, so having an overview of sales across the US is a problem. An analysis of 405,101 receipts submitted by consumers to the Fetch rewards app showed that the number of households who shopped at redemption stores in the first half of this year was more than 8% higher than the year before.

The manager of Dickies, a small North Carolina chain, said sales were up 36% from last summer. Other store managers reported double-digit increases. “I’ve seen a lot of people come in who’ve never been here before,” said Nicholas Duke, 27, manager of what until recently was called Price Is Right in this tourist region in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The owners recently renamed the store Uplifting Deals. It’s part of a rebranding plan they hope will attract new buyers, including people who might previously turn up their noses at places that sell tubes of frozen ground beef for $2 a pound, yellowed lemons and a medley of canned tomatoes. a glass of celebrity chef sauce for $0.99.

“We’re trying to improve the image and show people what a real shopping experience can be,” said Duke.

In another twist, reclaimed food stores are attracting environmentally conscious consumers determined to do what they can to reduce the $161 billion worth of food that the Department of Agriculture estimates ends up in landfills every year.

That’s why Lynne Ziobro started the Buy Salvage Food website two years ago. She maintains a national map of reclaimed food stores and offers guidance on ways to reduce waste.

“Most of the people who visit my site are looking for ways to save money on groceries, and I hope I can make them aware of food waste while they’re there,” she said.
The idea came after she became frustrated helping a friend find a retailer to sell her flavored nuts, which Amazon was pulling from the platform as the expiration date approached. Visits to her website, Ziobro said, have more than tripled since last year and now hover around 11,000 a month.

A handful of waste-conscious start-ups have embraced the online rescue store concept, sending out deals on meat and dairy, out-of-stocks and farmer food that could be thrown away.

“I think the food waste warrior mentality goes hand in hand with value seekers,” said Abhi Ramesh, who founded home delivery company Misfits Market in 2018. The company is growing rapidly and has shipped more than 14 million orders since it started.

As any smart rescue shopper knows, dates on food packaging usually don’t mean much. Whether it’s “sell by”, “use before” or “expire by”, they are intended to help stores and manufacturers control inventory and let consumers know when a product is at its highest quality.

The United States government does not require or regulate dates on any foods other than infant formula. Most states have rules about food expiration dates, but they vary widely.

Last year, Congress began considering a uniform national rule that would use just two phrases: “Best if used until” to indicate quality and “use until” to indicate when a food might become unsafe. Refed, an organization that researches food waste, said a universal standard would end the confusion that drives people to spend $29 billion on safe, edible food each year.

“There’s nothing wrong with salvaged food or something that’s outdated,” said Sarah Kaplan, 29, who runs her family’s four food stores in Asheville. “I was raised with this all my life and I didn’t die.”

Veterans of ransom shopping suggest that newcomers get to know the store and staff, who can point out the real bargains.

Trust yourself and not labels, they say. Find out which days merchandise is delivered to the store and arrive early to get the best selection. And make sure you choose a good store. They range from chains whose stores could be in wealthy neighborhoods to grocery stores with cluttered shelves and squashed vegetables.

“I’ve told many of my friends and co-workers, ‘You have to be willing to check the things that aren’t looking good to find out what is,'” said Molly Nicholie, executive director of the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project, based in Asheville.

While she appreciates the savings, Nicholie likes to look. During her most recent foray, she found a pound of European-style butter wrapped in foil for $2.50. The shipping crate, which contained 16 kilos, was opened and one packaging torn, so the distributor sold the entire crate to a rescued food broker.

Food brokers can be small — a few ambitious people with a truck and a few connections in a distribution warehouse for restaurants. Others are sophisticated operations that work directly with food giants like Hormel or Mondelez.

Producers have to offload large amounts of extra inventory because they have reformulated a product or modified the packaging. Sometimes sales forecasts have changed. Manufacturers sell to stores or brokers who agree to keep food out of regular retail so that pricing strategy and brand image are not undermined.

Some rescue store owners have direct relationships with supermarket chains that need to get rid of food that they have been unable to sell at a discount or that is approaching its expiration date. Some owners buy bread directly from the person who runs a local delivery route.

It’s an unpredictable system whose currency is reputation, connections and rush. And it has its share of bad actors.

“I’ve known people who erase dates from mayonnaise,” said David Fox, president of Java Holdings, a food and merchandise liquidator in Los Angeles. He started 31 years ago working for a company that sold dented cans of vegetables from canners in Northern California that were hit by the 1989 earthquake.

Today his company has 11 employees, multiple distribution centers, and the ability to repack and label surplus goods to hide national brand names. When the pandemic brought travel to a halt, leaving cruise lines and airlines with tons of frozen meals and vats of orange juice, he found buyers. When PepsiCo retired the Aunt Jemima brand in 2021 because of its racist overtones, it liquidated 50 truckloads of molasses and pancake batter.

“I’m hooked,” he said. “My best friend calls it a casino.”

Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves