Just before this 4th of July Holiday, we hit the road again looking for liquidators and retail stores that resell liquidation products. This time our travels took us to a little town in southern Oregon called Cave Junction. Go ahead and Google Cave Junction because I’m sure most of you didn’t even know this town existed. It’s one of those blink twice, and you’ve missed it kind of towns. Quaint, but little to do.
Salvage Food Grocery Store
Our first stop was a store called Outreach Foods(Outreach also operates a location in nearby Grants Pass, Oregon). If you are thinking about purchasing and reselling salvage food, be sure to check out and Like their Facebook page to observe how they market and promote the store.
This small chain store purchases salvage groceries and resells at a steep discounted price to the community. The store we visited was neatly setup with several aisles containing canned goods, boxed items, coffee, beverages, and just about any other item you or I can find within a traditional grocery store. Most of the items I looked at were past their freshness date, or quickly nearing it. Can goods and dry boxed items that are near or past-dated are safe to eat.
Although most of the items were past their “freshness” date, customers were filing up shopping carts on the day we were there. Business looked good for this small discount retailer! Oh, and by the way, my wife even bought a few snacks for our road trip home!
Our visit to Outreach Foods was very interesting in terms of reviewing the Salvage food business. We were able to inspect merchandise, check pricing strategies, and store layout. Because Outreach operates in a small one street town, the addition of convenience items (milk and dairy) seemed to bring a lot of people in through the doors. Once in, how can anyone resist buying cereal for $1.00 per box?
Have you been kicking around the idea of opening our own salvage food store? Everybody needs food to live, and most of us are looking for ways to save at the grocery store. It’s a win-win situation for both the reseller and the grocery customer, in my opinion.
Salvage groceries are sold primarily by the truckload. Each truckload contains about 22-24 pallets of stacked banana boxes filled with grocery items. Twenty-four banana boxes fit on one pallet, and are often liquidated at about $10-$14 per box. We wrote a guide to help you get your salvage food business off the ground, check it out here.
