You've heard of scratch-and-dent appliance sales. How about scratch-and-dent groceries?
The packaging may be a little bit mangled or the sell-by date a tad close or even expired (more on that later). Relax. The food is still perfectly good. And the savings can be considerable:
- Big sticks of beef jerky, 5 cents apiece.
- A torn (but still full) bag of Huggies diapers, $2.50.
- Grill Mates marinade mixes, 10 cents per package.
- Flavored couscous, 10 cents; Zatarain's rice mixes, 25 cents.
- Organic butternut squash soup, $1 for 32 ounces.
- Vienna Beef hot dogs (Chicago's favorite!), 89 cents per 12-ounce package.
You probably can't buy all your groceries this way, because many of these stores sell more snacks than staples. Shop strategically, though, and surplus/salvage grocers can make a big dent, so to speak, in your food bills.
How much damage is too much damage?
Some scratch-and-dent stores sell mostly dry goods, some a mix of dry and canned. Others add dairy products, produce, cleaning supplies and toiletries to the mix.In all stores, the stock varies from week or week or even from day to day, because of the unpredictable nature of salvage. Maybe a product gets discontinued or its label or package is changed. The manufacturer dumps all old inventory at fire-sale prices, but once it's gone, it's gone.
Sometimes a manufacturer has too much product and too few orders; these "overruns" are sold at a loss. Or maybe an item didn't sell well in a particular region; for example, that organic butternut squash soup might not do as well in South Dakota as in San Francisco.
Post-season sales yield unsold Easter candy or gingerbread-scented air fresheners. And, of course, there's the famous dented can -- i.e., food damaged in transit that cannot be sold in conventional supermarkets.
That last one is a major source for scratch-and-dent vendors. When a pallet of green beans or cornflakes falls off a forklift, the entire unit is likely to be sold off as damaged goods. Consumers can get some real deals, because some of the product wasn't damaged at all and the "dents" in some of the rest are cosmetic (a crumpled box corner, for instance).
"There's some companies whose seams don't hold as well," says Evangeline Anderson of Anderson's Country Market in Madison Heights, Va. The store sells a variety of salvage items along with organic, bulk and Amish foods.
Anderson is perfectly comfortable selling dented cans as well as consuming the contents. "One thing I try to emphasize to our customers is that we eat this all the time," Anderson says.
How much damage is too much damage? According to a U.S. Department of Agriculture fact sheet, beware of any can that is swollen, leaking, extensively rusted, has visible holes or punctures, or is crushed/dented badly enough "to prevent normal stacking or opening with a manual, wheel-type can opener."
Shelly Masterson occasionally shops at Bargains in Owensboro, Ky. Some of the canned goods "look like they had fallen off a truck," but some don't. Recently she bought four giant cans of Bush's baked beans for 50 cents apiece because "that's what I tend to bring to my family dinners."
Her boyfriend, Vince Gagliardi, is a big fan of the outlet store because he likes paying less for cereal, soft drinks and snack items. His best-ever deal was on the Grill Mates spice mixes; he bought 20 of them for a dime apiece.
Damaged cans don't bother Gagliardi. "Just use common sense," he says. "Pick out the good ones."
