"Salvage Stores" subject of newspaper article today..

we have a salvage shop at our local trash yard, but there is no food. i am not sure i would buy food from there if it was being sold there, but i have bought a few things at our salvage shop (some stuff have looked brand new!)and its always fun to get a bargain!

I am always wary of secondhand food. You don't know where it was stored or with what, and dented cans can actually have botulism in them, so you should never buy them (I don't know if that's true or not actually but we learned about it in school and to this day it sticks to me!) I will buy things like clothes or household items or kids stuff though...usually that stuff i will only buy secondhand, lol.

I'm not sure where you are but in Pennsylvania I know there are laws that are enforced by the Health Department locally that will not allow certain items to be sold and nothing can be sold after the marked sell date. That doesn't mean that sometimes things do slip by but for the most part you can be assured that it's all edible. I'm not sure I would buy food that is expired or opened/dented, etc. I've purchased other things from stores like Big Lots that are 2nds or odd lots from large businesses that are left over, etc. but never anything expired.

I did when in college, but won't do it now. Some of the food isn't safe and I just don't want to take any chances with my husbands, daughters, my daughter's boyfriends family or my health. I have no problem with buying non-food this way. Recently purchased fax paper and envelopes this way and paid a very low price; however, some of the envelopes were not usually with glue to fix them. It was cheaper to do the mending than buying a box of perfect envelopes.

I have never bought expired food and I dont really plan on it. If I were in need I wouldnt hesitate but for now we are getting by okay with our cuttent budget. We make what ever food we can from scratch and try to grow a lot in the gardens we have. I wouldnt want to waste my money on food that may or may not be bad. I would also be worried that I wouldnt know it was bad until the whold family was sick.

I shop in salvage stores about once a month. The ones near us have everything, basically everything that fell off the back of he truck, or that the store doesn't want ends up there. Ours has lawn and garden equipment, furniture, food, and everything in between. I usually wont buy food there, unless it is non-perishable. I am really good at coupon matching with grocery store sales, so I really don't pick up any food unless it is an incredible price. The last time I went they had a huge bin full of Angel Hair pasta(the really thin kind, and coincidentally, the kind I use). I believe the boxes were 20 cents each. I think I bought all but a few they had. I spent about $10 and got about 45-50 boxes of pasta. I obviously got enough pasta to be able to make all kinds of stuff for the next few months.(I make a few dishes for a potluck dinner that we have every week with our friends, so we aren't personally eating 50 lbs of pasta for the record. Otherwise I would be the size of the truck it fell off of). I've also bought all kinds of yard equipment there, not necessarily electric equipment, but lawn chairs, tables, cushions, rakes, brooms, etc. As you can tell, I love salvage stores, and go often. I don't always buy stuff, but if it's a great deal, sometimes it's too hard to pass up. (Although it's only a good deal if you need it, otherwise it just sits around).

I usually buy other stuff at salvage stores - I have an aunt who can always find interesting things for great prices. I'm not comfortable buying food past the sell by date - I guess I might if it was something like canned fruit or boxed pasta, so long as it wasn't too far past. After all, we keep that kind of thing in our cupboard for a long time, so who knows what is going on in our cupboard?

I think I used to shop at one when I was a teenager. The food was all pretty good. Mostly, it was surplus canned food or cans that were slightly dented. The expired food were usually just one or two days past the expiration date. We bought those when we were sure that we were either going to eat or freeze them right away. I don't think they sold expired meat or dairy, though, mostly bakery items. It was a pretty good deal, especially if you were struggling and didn't qualify for food programs. But, I think the store we went to closed or something as I haven't heard about it, lately. I don't have anything like that where I am living now.