If you are buying canned food and other shelf-stable grocery items for your prepper pantry, an article in this week’s Wall Street Journal should be of interest. Here’s an excerpt:
“In April, Amazon.com said it would hold the line on prices. The Journal’s analysis of prices from e-commerce data firm Traject Data found that while Amazon’s price rose on 1,200 of its cheapest household goods, competitor Walmart lowered prices on the same items by nearly 2%.
The divergent strategies show how major retailers are reshaping prices on popular products as uncertainty about tariffs drags on.”
Well, that’s one way to look at it. Another is that Amazon is using its prominence in the market and the loyalty inspired by its Prime program to take advantage of its customers by increasing prices on its inexpensive items by 5 percent since Inauguration Day.
On Target
The article reports Target has also increased the selling price of similar inexpensive items, although only by about half as much as Walmart. Interestingly, expensive items at all three outlets (Amazon, Walmart and Target) saw prices decrease, with Target lowering the prices by the most while Amazon lowered them the least.
While customers may think these price increases are because of tariffs, Amazon also raised the costs of goods made in the USA, such as Campbell’s soups. The article includes a picture of a can of New England Clam Chowder that jumped from $1.98 to $2.58. That’s a 30 percent jump, more than prices rose during Bidenflation.
The newspaper also says that between 30 and 42 percent of products “are most expensive on Amazon or the same price as Target and Walmart.” This says to me: don’t buy canned food and other prepper pantry items on Amazon.com without checking Walmart.com and Target.com for better prices. When you are buying larger quantities, saving 30 cents an item can quickly add up. Also shop at Sam’s Club, Costco, or their websites. (My research shows that Sam’s is less expensive than Costco, but Costco carries items you cannot find at Sam’s.) Your local grocery store is also a good option when doing price comparisons.
Finding Sales
One of the nice things about having a prepper pantry with deep stacks of the same product is that you have the leisure to wait to buy an item when it goes on sale. For example, if I have 60 cans of chicken on hand, my preparedness will barely be affected if I restock at 50 cans or 46. I have the flexibility to wait until a product I want goes on sale.
Above is a photo of a product I found on sale at my local salve grocery store. These pasta shells are 58 cents a pound, which is a remarkably low price. Similar pasta shells are 98 cents on Walmart.com. Buy a dozen, and you save $4.80. They had rigatoni for the same price. Sales like these are a great time to snatch up 20 pounds and store them in a 5-gallon pail lined with a Mylar bag. Throw in lots of oxygen absorbers, seal the bag, and you have a product that should still be good in ten or even 20 years. I searched my favorite online prepper food store, and a 20-pound pail of elbow macaroni cost $87.89. Making your own using the pasta that is on sale can save you $60.
Try Samples
Speaking of prepper pantry foods, I recently tried two kinds of meat in pouches from Hereford. The beef ribs with BBQ sauce was pretty good, and I would not hesitate to eat it again. The beef taco filling fell short of my expectations. It did not look appetizing, it did not smell good before it was heated, and it contained textured soy protein, which the beef ribs did not. I would eat it in a pinch, but I’d rather store a couple dozen of the beef ribs than the taco filling. Maybe calling it taco “filling” rather than meat or ground beef should have been a warning.
Just another example of why you should eat what you store, and store what you eat.
Video of the Day
Ever wondered what it might be like to live off of the food in those 30-day survival packages? (Which I don’t recommend. See here and here.) Well, there’s a video that goes into great detail about the first-hand experience of eating nothing but food prepared from those freeze-dried food pouches for a month. It gives all the pros and cons, and a rather surprising conclusion. To give credit where credit is due, I first saw this video over on Commander Zero’s site.
