Does anyone have any experience buying from food salvage stores? I found one in our community and wonder if it's the best use of my grocery money. Most of the items look like they fell off a truck or a high shelf, taped shut or dented. Is this ok to feed my family? Where do they get this stuff? (Girl at store couldn't answer that question.) Some of it is just expired, within two months... Thank you!

-- Christi in KY (cmarshal@btown.k12.ky.us), October 05, 2001

Answers

Lots of these things did fall off a truck or high shelf sort of. Almost everything moves by truck, and when a truck is in a wreck something has to happen to the cargo. Insurance companies quite often buy the whole load rather than to settle a claim on part of it. They then resell what they can that is undamaged at a low price. What is more heavily damaged is often sold at auctions or brokered in odd lots. This is where a lot of the merchandise comes from. Often it is first quality, just banged up. It pays to look carefully to be sure that the product is not contaminated.

-- Ed Copp (OH) (edcopp@yahoo.come), October 05, 2001.

I have purchased closeout products from Pic N Save with great success. I always look for an expiration date. I never buy dented cans or damaged boxes. Last month I bought Italian beans, normally at the store for $1.89, for 49 cents good buy.

Look carefully though.

-- jennifer (schwabauer@aol.com), October 05, 2001.

We had a salvage store here for awhile and I bought from them You just have to be careful. Watch expiration dates, I didn't buy dented== could get it cheaper elsewhere. But I did get pasta, rice, etc. and some non-food items. If something didn't look right, I didn't use it. Better safe than sorry. But I think they only problem I ever had was that some chocolate was too old .

-- connie in nm (karrel&connie@msn.com), October 05, 2001.

Hi! I buy canned food...not dented, and dry beans and pasta. Its a good place to stock up cheaply on food storage items that you rotate and use alot. I won't buy frozen things or very damaged packages. Bought dog and cat food(dry) once and the animals wouldn't touch it. Mine arn't finicky either!! My kids used to call it the "used food" store.

-- Jenny (auntjenny6@aol.com), October 05, 2001.

Yes.. I do go to one each month..the things to also watch out for is the flour products..(weevils) and roaches! I have found that some of the cases brought in might have a few dented cans but also have perfectly nice ones.. We get to try alot of products that we normally could not afford or try otherwise too..

-- Lynn(MO) (mscratch1@semo.net), October 06, 2001.

What's wrong with dented cans? Wouldn't the food inside still be good even if the can is dented?

-- Soni (thomkilroy@hotmail.com), October 06, 2001.

When a can gets dented it's possible that a miniscule hole can open up, some bacteria get in and start multiplying--even anaeorobic bacteria, as the hole often seals itself via rust. You can get botulism from food in dented cans. This is what I've understood at any rate; maybe someone else can give other reasons why dented cans are dangerous.

-- Elizabeth in e tx (kimprice@peoplescom.net), October 06, 2001.

I have only been in two of these places and neither sold cans with more than a fairly minor dent or ding. I suspect there may be a couple of levels as to quality. On the low end may be the merchandise described. On the upper end may be only high-quality goods.

Some of the goods in these places come from manufacturer over-runs - they simply produced more than they could sell at retail, so discount wholesaled it out through a jobber. Some from merchandise pulled off of shelfs simply because the sales volume didn't justify continued stockage (and shelf-space is very, very competitive). The supplier simply sold it to a jobber rather than taking it back. Some comes from supermarkets which have been closed since they find it better to simply sell everything in the store to a jobber than have a going-out- of-business sale. (I don't remember seeing a supermarket going-out- of-business sale.)

There is no law against a supermarket selling items which are past their 'best if used by' date. It's simply a guide.

In supermarkets the mark-up is fairly low on most items. They depend on turnover. If you only make $.05 on a can of beans, you can do OK if you sell enough cans of beans. About half their income comes from basically charging suppliers for shelf space. A significant portion of the rest of their income comes from the meat department even though it takes up only about 10% of their space.

House brands may have come out of the same manufacturing run as national brands. Due to economies of scale on fixed expenses, the manufacture can target both the high-end and low-end markets by simply changing the label. There is a brewery near Cincinnati which produces about 30-different brands of beer (Heildemeyer?) by more or less just changing the cans in the production line.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), October 07, 2001.

Soni said: "What's wrong with dented cans? Wouldn't the food inside still be good even if the can is dented?"

Soni, those cans have been lined with something. It may be the simple tin-plating over steel, it may be a plastic lining over that, or it may even be a form of varnish. Whatever, a substantantial dent runs a risk of disrupting the coating, or at least stretching and thinning it, so that the food is in direct contact with whatever (say steel sheet) the plating was put there to stop the food from contacting. Small dents are pretty safe (although with any dented can you should always check the inside of the dent before you use the contents, and not use it if the inside of the dent shows corrosion). With big dents you run a much bigger chance of losing the purchase price because the inside of the dent has started corroding. It doesn't necessarily mean you can't use dented cans, but I wouldn't pay money for cans with big dents unless I'd been there when the acci-dent (groan) happened, and then I'd make sure I used them fast, and biggest dents first.

-- Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au), October 08, 2001.