Now they’ve moved all those storage foods to their own spot in the grocery aisles. Added a couple more items, too.
I’m standing there choosing this week’s purchases and making notes on what to get on future trips. While I’m scribbling, the section turns, once again, into Walmart’s own little social center. I’m not doing any talking this time. But so many people are standing there chatting with each other about freeze-dried and dehydrated foods as they load up their carts that I’m thinking Walmart should install a Starbucks right there to take advantage of all the friendly idling.
This time it begins with a husband and wife judiciously discussing and choosing items. Another woman carts up the aisle and soon the three of them are chatting about favorite ways of using their storage foods. While they’re going on about best tips for serving cheese powder and broccoli florets, another man does the “pardon me, pardon me” routine through the crowd, and he, too, pops a couple #10 cans into his cart and pauses for a few words before moving on. Me, I’m speechless.
This evening one of my friends will probably be making her storage-food Walmart run.
Hm. I get the impression this idea is working out pretty well. These foods might be appearing at a Walmart near you — even if your Walmart is farther from Mormon country than mine is.
I asked if they had anything like this in our Walmart. Nothing, but the woman in charge of that area of the store said she had lots of people asking. Got me wondering how many readers here shop at the Sonora Walmart?
Just a heads up for all who may be interested. Paladin Press is having a 75% Scruffy Sales and an 80% Inventory Reduction sale.
One of the books on sale is Claire’s “I am not a Number” book.
Also if you are a fan of the Loompanics articles, then the Loompanics Anthologies are on sales as well for 80% off.
Hey Claire! Shouldn’t this be a sign that you should have another book coming out?
go over to the sporting goods section (if your walmart sells guns) and see if they have reloading supplies. butte’s recently added rcbs reloading equipment and supplies, i.e. powder, brass, primers, bullets.
Now I am going to have to venture into Walmart and see what they have. (I am a dedicated online shopper except for groceries, and I don’t buy them at Walmart.)
I’ll report my findings. I hope I’m pleasantly surprised.
Inre reloading items. Available onlne(Midway USA, fsreloading, Natchez shooter’s supply to name a small bit of what’s out there)
As I was sitting at my pooter reading this the TV in the Background was tuned to National Geographics “Doomsday Bunkers”.
An commercial for Wise freeze dried foods came on! Buckets and pouches and all.
Never thought I’d see the day Nat. Geo would be doing shows on preppers — or the day “Mormon foods” would be advertised on national TV.
OOPS! I just checked the channel. It was Discovery Channel’s “Doomsday Bunkers”, NOT Natl Geo’s “Doomsday Preppers”
So many Prepper programs I get confused.
We just spent a few months RVing in the St George, Utah area, and the Walmart at the south end of town has a “prepper” aisle. One of the items they carried was the Gamma lid (http://thefoodstorageshopper.net/2010/03/09/product-review-gamma-lids/) for plastic buckets (fit 5 gal buckets). The price was $6.98, and saved the big bucks I had been paying for shipping from the best of the on-line sources I had found. If your “Wally World” has a “prepper” aisle but doesn’t carry them, try putting in a request.
If they won’t this is a good source, with the best combination of price and shipping (free if over $99 ordered):
http://www.pleasanthillgrain.com/gamma_seal_lids_gamma_lid_products.aspx
RegT — Though my local Walmart hasn’t yet “graduated” to Gamma-Seal lids, I agree they’re the greatest thing since sliced bread (and for those on a primal diet, much better than sliced bread) for storing — and using — food in big buckets. Thanks for the links.
FWIW, there are two Walmarts reasonably near me in South Carolina, and neither is (yet) carrying “prepper” goods.
Probably a West of the Mississippi thing, after all those East of the Mississippi are far too sensible for anything like prepping.
LOL, Jim B., you’re quite the cynic.
I’m finding all these updates interesting. Not at all surprised to hear about prepper Walmarts in Utah and the intermountain west. But I’d love to see the pattern. Is it spiraling out from Utah in all directions? Or testing first on the west coast? Or still entirely an individual store thing?
So far the only two reports from outside “Mormon country” have been from the Pacific Northwest.
I’ll know it’s getting serious when you “sensible” northeasterners start seeing #10 cans of TVP at your Walmarts.
I finally made the recon mission out to WalMart in Highlands Ranch, CO. I didn’t see any Augason Farms’ goods, and I think I was pretty careful to check all the endcap and center-aisle displays. Of the three that are in my typical shopping radius, that’s the one that’d be most likely to have something like that, I think. I’m not up on the prepper demographic, but I’m guessing there’s a higher likelihood of sufficient sales to support stocking such items in Parker, Castle Rock, and CO Springs.
Oh, I followed the link in the March 25 Sweetie update, and none of the comments, nor the 1st 2 fields of the comment form, display, but here is a visible HTML comment close tag. Something went sideways there, I suspect.
jed — Thanks for the Walmart update. Also the heads-up on the Sweetie post.
Everything looks and works fine on my browser. I’ve inspected the code and don’t see glitches. However, you’re the second person who’s told me something is wrong, so I’ll keep looking for the problem.
I was in walmart yesterday in Salem OR and checked. They had a small section of the Augason stuff, about the same size as the one I saw down south. I’m guessing the other two stores in town carry them, both being super wallyworlds.
I checked one of the Walmart stores in the Boston area. No freeze-dried food, no buckets of rice, no TVP, no butter powder. I couldn’t find any “prepping” supplies at all.
-S
-S — Thank you for the report, even if it comes as no surprise.
The day hardcore preparedness supplies show up at Walmarts in Boston, NYC, or Mordor-on-the-Potomac we’ll know the world has really, truly altered.
Hi Claire. This is on the main page.
If you do a view source in Firefox, it’ll be easier to see, because of syntax highlighting. Right after the PayPal button, find a P tag, followed by a BEGIN COMMENT tag just before ‘Follow me on Twitter …’. I’m guessing that’s not supposed to be there. That’s making everything be commented out until ‘List of authors’. Right before that is another BEGIN COMMENT tag, running into the H2 TAG, which I think is giving the parser fits, so it gives up, and I see the ‘List of authors, through to the link to your name, which is followed by an END COMMENT tag, which Firefox displays, because it doesn’t have a matching begin tag to go with it.
The 3/25 Sweetie page is almost the same — begin comment right before the ‘follow me’, and then right before ‘XHTML: You can use’, there’s an end comment run together with a P tag.
Could be that newer HTML parsers aren’t bothered by two tags run together when the left one of them doesn’t have a right angle bracket closing it. I think the parser should be treating everything in between the comment begin/end tags as comments, even if there’s no whitespace following the BEGIN tag, and it’s immediately followed by some other tag. So I guess I’ll call that part a bug in the parser used by this older version of Firefox I’m still running.
Digging out things like mismatched HTML tags can be painful, and I don’t, at the moment, have an editor installed that would perform that function. I think the Bluefish editor will do it — haven’t used it for quite a while.
jed — thank you for all that detail. I took another (brief) look and still wasn’t able to quickly spot the problem. So for the moment I’m taking the easy way out and replacing that post with a Sweetie update I was planning to do anyhow. When I get some time, I’ll go back to the flawed post (which has now rolled waaaaay down) and see if I can use your instructions to locate the glitch.
We have continually checked the Wal-Marts in Great Falls and Helena, and neither one is carrying the goods. This is so disappointing too.
Helena does have the reloading supplies also, Great Falls does not.