Get salvaged food through Flashfood

Hi- On a Facebook group I belong to, the moderator posted a link for Flashfood. This is a website that partners with grocery stores to salvage food that is almost ready to expire. It is not available in every state. Meijer's is the only grocery store chain in Illinois that participates in this program. The closest Meijer's to me is 20 miles away, and so this is not an option to me, but I am sure there are some other people here who shop there. They take food that will expire in a day or two, and they offer it at it sounds like 50% off or more. This includes meat and produce, and I am not sure what else, and so with the meat anyway you would have to freeze some of it when you get it home. You download the app., and you order your food and pay for it using a credit or debit card. There is then a specific area of the store where you pick up your purchases. They are currently only in 12 states. They are also in most of Canada. They are even in Whitehorse in the Yukon. Here is a link to the website.

https://www.flashfood.com/#How-it-works

Hi,

Woodman's has several locations in their store, though at the Buffalo Grove store I visit:
- Close dated bakery and dry goods near the cart storage area.
- Produce - how about 10 pounds of bananas for 99 cents?
- Meat - How about bacon for 50 cents a pound, so I bought all ten pounds.
- Dairy - I once picked up 10 pounds of butter for 99 cents a pound.
- Freezer - Last time I picked up fish sticks.

Very rarely is the freshness date that very day, it is usually several days before. I always check it out.

Regards,
Cathy2

Lou's favorite - Mariano's in Northbrook on Dundee & Skokie Blvd now has an entire shelf section near the self checkout closest to the frozen section full of discounted oddities. There's also dedicated space in the meat section for short-dated items. There's a rack of discounted baked goods in back near the dairy coolers.

Dave148 wrote:Lou's favorite - Mariano's in Northbrook on Dundee & Skokie Blvd now has an entire shelf section near the self checkout closest to the frozen section full of discounted oddities. There's also dedicated space in the meat section for short-dated items. There's a rack of discounted baked goods in back near the dairy coolers.

Bannockburn has discounted baked goods by the dairy section, too. The oddities are near the north end's self check-out. Their marked down meat is north end of the fresh meat section. They have a marked down area in the produce department that seems always populated bananas and apples.

Regards,
Cathy

Most Marianos put the stale bakery somewhere slightly past the regular bakery on the normal route through the store. Meijer does the same thing. In the Gurnee Marianos, it's just past the service meat and seafood case. I suppose they give customers a chance to select fresh products before stooping to the cheap stuff.

The Kenosha Woodman's has few available markdowns, I suppose because it is always overrun with customers. The carts in front of the liquor store contain some very picked-over bakery items along with bunches of stuff that aren't specially special. But the other Woodmanses occasionally yield up amazing buys. Last fall at the rt 21 & Deerfield store, there was a huge pile of used plastic foldup produce bins at $1 each. Didn't appear to be anything wrong with them, must have been switching sizes or something. And frozen meat specials at > 50% off when there are any left.

One of the stranger markdowns is the 50 cent donut at night from Festival Foods in Kenosha. It's not advertised with a sign. You have to ask a certain manager for a sticker to put on the donut box before checking out.

tjr wrote:Most Marianos put the stale bakery somewhere slightly past the regular bakery on the normal route through the store.

Nothing I bought from their day-old rack has ever been stale. It certainly is not made the day-of, though it is still quite pleasant to eat.

Regards,
Cathy2

Cathy2 wrote:Nothing I bought from their day-old rack has ever been stale. It certainly is not made the day-of, though it is still quite pleasant to eat.

Sorry, I tend to use the term "Stale" instead of "Day Old", as in "Stale Bread Store" instead of "Bakery Outlet". We talked that way when I was a kid and it stuck.

Agreed, the Mariano's discount rack, along with Meijer's, Butera's and the $1 and $2 "We Made Too Much" Jewel stickers, yield up perfectly usable baked goods. Other than for our beloved extra long French, I usually head to the discount pile first or only.

To circle back to Flashfood, I found a few items available at local Meijer stores. The most common seemed to be yogurt with a few days left to go, and sausages and deli meat dated around March 1. It's unclear whether these items have exclusive Flashfood pricing or are clearance-stickered at the store. Based on the selection I saw, using Flashfood would only be worthwhile if the store were extremely close or on a planned trip anyway. Might be worth checking before a Meijer visit. I don't know how quickly the products are ready to pick up, though.

Flashfood is app-based only, an annoyance for those of us who prefer to use a big screen and a keyboard. It requires location permissions to work at all, a privacy and data-wasting concern.