Ella Yoder is making a batch of snitz pies.
I had never heard of snitz pie, so I thought she was saying “six” pies. “My daughter-in-law is having church at their house tomorrow, so I thought I’d help her out and make some pies,” she said cheerfully, as she opened gallon tins of apple butter and poured them into a huge stainless steel bucket on her kitchen floor.
“Wow!” I said, sitting, as usual, as an Amish lady buzzed around the kitchen like a worker bee. “Six pies!”
“Oh no,” she said, stopping momentarily from her task of adding tapioca to the bucket. “It’s not six pies. It’s snitz pies, ya know, probably about fifteen of them.”
If I made six pies, the local media would be alerted. If I made fifteen pies, CNN would be alerted.
“Oh,” I said, overwhelmed by the thought of making fifteen pies. Luckily, the talented Ella was making them, not me. “So then, what goes into a snitz pie?”
“Dried apples, apple butter, applesauce, tapioca, sugar . . .” She continued listing the ingredients. “It’s cheaper to make a lot at one time—much cheaper. And we buy in bulk once a month. There’s a huge difference in price when you buy in bulk.”
Snitz pie, I learned, is a special treat for eating after Sunday services. Ella purchases flour 100 pounds at a time, and sugar 50 pounds at a time. She buys gallon tins of apple butter, though she does make her own applesauce. The dried apples, though, are a sore spot. “Years ago,” Ella said with a tsk, “I would dry my own apples for snitz pie.”
Clearly, Ella believes she is slacking off in the dried-apples department (I don’t have the heart to mention the huge tins of apple butter), but she’s still getting a good deal buying in quantity. (Dried apples are $7.79 per pound bulk, and $18.00 per pound at the grocery store.)
BANANAS FOR BULK
The Amish are bananas for bulk, and of course, most of the reason why is rooted in their penny-pinching ways. “They buy in bulk quantities at dry goods stores or damaged goods outlets (these are typical in Amish communities) where you can get damaged-package goods, or near- or past-the-expiration-date products that are still perfectly good, at a deep discount,” said Erik Wesner. “Wal-Mart is another mainstay in many settlements, and you might have a weekly or monthly trip where a van will pick up a number of Amish housewives in an area, and they split the cost of the ride to the store and knock out a huge grocery purchase at one time.”
Nearly every Amish community has a bulk foods store of their own, and, as Erik pointed out, even Wal-Mart is a monthly destination for Plain shoppers, as is Sam’s Club and Costco.
“Not having the vehicle at hand really cuts down on frivolous travel, and it forces you to plan ahead, and do things like buy in bulk quantities,” he said. “I wonder how much unnecessary gas and money we burn running to the gas station for a late-night overpriced gallon of milk. I’ve certainly taken that trip.”
Unfortunately, I am the queen of taking that trip, more than once a week, dashing out the door for a milk run, or for school snacks or bread or something else of which I’ve run out. I definitely am “paying through the nose,” as my dad used to always say, for the convenience of a last-minute grab ’n’ go.
What would be so much more expedient, mind you, would be if I actually stockpiled some of this stuff so I wouldn’t run out at 10:30 p.m. I only have so much room in the fridge, so milk is probably something we will always run out of. But school snacks? That I could buy in bulk. Katie does.
“I get peanuts, roasted sunflower seeds, sesame sticks, and raisins at the bulk food store, and then I mix them up and make snacks,” she said, with the serenity of one who does not have to face snackless children on crazy school mornings.
Amish homemakers buy things like snacking supplies, candy, and baking ingredients in quantity and resize them in smaller measures. For example, 100 pounds of rice gets resized into 10-pound bags. (I always run out of rice, come to think of it. Hmmm . . . )
Actually, the Amish buy everything possible in bulk. “Let me think about it a minute,” Bishop Jake mumbled, stroking his beard thoughtfully. “Well, for our planting, we buy seeds in bulk, and plastic for mulch, and for cooking and baking, we buy sugar in 50-pound bags.”
“Flour?” I prompted.
“Oh no,” he said. “We grind our own flour from speltz; it’s easier for your body to assimilate. And then we sell whatever we don’t use locally.”
Speltz? Now, this would require a Google. It’s actually spelled “spelt,” although the Amish commonly call it “speltz.” It’s a relative of wheat, and a staple peasant food mentioned in the Bible, the ancient writings of Horace, and the poetry of Pushkin. Naturally, the Amish are all over it.
“We buy salt in a coarse form and grind it ourselves too,” said Bishop Jake, getting warmed up. “It’s cheaper than buying salt at the store.”
Although I am a Mennonite wheat farmer’s granddaughter, I don’t think you’re going to catch me grinding my own flour or salt anytime soon. However, it was time for me to investigate this Amish money habit—buying in bulk—to see if it would also save me some cash.
Truthfully, I had my doubts.
I only have three children, after all—not fourteen, like Amos and Fern (the average Amish family has seven children). A big part of Plain folk buying in bulk is driven by their bulk-sized families.
The Amish are bananas for bulk, and of course, most of the reason why is rooted in their penny-pinching ways.
I had also heard cautionary tales from friends who had been burned by bulk; instead of saving their money, they had actually paid for something they never used.
“It’s so exciting at first; you get such a rush from all the deals,” said Torey. “But then you discover too late that, yes, you might like olives, but you might not like a 40-ounce jar of olives. And there’s nothing worse than realizing you have ten more pounds of tortellini, and they don’t let you sell tortellini on Craigslist.”
Yet, Torey, yet.
Curious about bulk shopping, I embarked on an exploratory field trip to compare prices between the local warehouse club and my local grocery store. First, I scanned our cupboards, fridge, and freezer for foodstuffs we actually needed, because need is key. Knowing how flighty I can get around sales, and having heard stories like Torey’s, I knew I needed to proceed with caution.
Naturally, upon entering a warehouse club for the first time, I was dazzled by the taste tests (beef jerky! cherries! coffee! protein bars!), the Jones New York T-shirts for ten bucks, and mostly, the stunning array of recent books I’ve been lusting after, discounted by ten bucks or more a pop from what my local bookstore was charging. As a small bookseller’s daughter, though, there’s no way I was going to take business away from my local indie bookstore. But that’s just my little soapbox.
I did almost cave in and buy the $40 membership for what appeared to be a staggering deal on pine nuts. Ah, but I love the humble pignoli! Yet, I restrained myself, and was later glad I did.
Nope, this newly thrifty chick had a list, and she was sticking to it. Here’s how my comparison shopping trip shook out:
1. Fruit juice snacks: Wholesale Club: $6.49 for 24 bags of fruit snacks =$0.27 per bag. I thought this was a good deal, but suspected I could do better. I could. My grocery store: $2 for 10 bags = $0.20 a bag. Plus, these snacks are shaped like letters of the alphabet, and there are little phonics cards you can cut out from the box to spell words with your child. There’s nothing like them for teaching a little one to read!
2. Brand-name rice: Wholesale Club: $5.30 for 72 ounces of rice = $0.073 per ounce. My grocery store: $2.69 for 14 ounces = $0.192 per ounce. (Obviously, something like rice, which a family goes through like water, is a stellar bulk buy. And I love the idea of not running out of rice all the time.)
3. Brand-name coffee: Wholesale Club: $17.82 for 420 cups = $0.042 per cup. My grocery store: $7.49 for 270 cups (this is what the canister promises) = $0.022 per cup.
4. Name-brand olive oil: Wholesale club: $0.20 per ounce. My grocery store: $0.47 per ounce for the same brand in a much smaller bottle.
5. Name-brand cereal: $6.26 for 49 ounces = $0.12 per ounce. My grocery store: $4.79 for 18 ounces = $0.23 per ounce.
Obviously, not everything bought in bulk is a bargain. But since we go through a ton of rice, and my twelve-year-old son eats more cereal than Jerry Seinfeld, those two items would definitely be worth buying in volume. The pine nuts were a steal too. (Wholesale club: $14.28 for 15 ounces = $0.95 an ounce. My grocery store: $6.99 for 5 ounces = $1.39 per ounce). But once I did the math, I was glad I didn’t fork over $40 for a membership to save $6.60.
Curious about bulk shopping, I embarked on an exploratory field trip to compare prices between the local warehouse club store and my local grocery store.
I know bulk aficionados would say that I would potentially save far, far more than $6.60 over multiple trips and multiple savings. But I still have my doubts. We live about twenty-five minutes from the nearest warehouse club, and that has to be taken into consideration too. Would we drive that far to save $20 to $30 on groceries every other week? Clearly, millions of people do, but for us it’s hard enough to get to the grocery store as it is.
If you do love the largesse, though, I’ve gathered up some tips for savvy bulk buying:
• Bring a list and do not depart from it, because at a Sam’s Club or a Costco, the stakes are even higher if you don’t have a list: you could end up being stuck with a crate of something that is nothing more than an impulse purchase.
• Use discretion, because wasted food is expensive food. Unlike the Amish, we generally don’t have the knack for utilizing every scrap of food we buy, and masses go to waste. “We waste enough food to fill the Rose Bowl every day,” said Jonathan Bloom of the Web site wastedfood.com. In fact, “40% of the food produced for consumption in the U.S. never will be eaten” (Sharon Palmer, “Paying the high price of food waste,” SunSentinel, May 11, 2010). In a world of hunger and need, this is definitely a sickening statistic. Still, it’s so easy to amass food items bought at the clubs, and then end up like Jason: “We’ve bought bulk packages of cheddar cheese, Popsicles, honey that crystallized way before we were done using the entire jar, and oranges and other fruits, only to end up throwing away much of it because it expired before we could use it all.”
Friends Don’t Let Friends Rationalize Dumb Bulk Buys
It’s just not logical to buy a 50-gallon drum of shampoo, so don’t justify it because the price per ounce has stupefied you beyond all reason. This completely defeats the purpose of buying in bulk, which is saving money on things you need to buy.
Ask yourself, “Am I rationalizing this buy?” and if it has to be justified, it’s probably not justifiable. Or bring a straight-shooting pal who will, if needed, drag you away from that vat of barbecue sauce. You’ll thank her later.
• Consider storage. Don’t go hog wild, bulk crazy unless you use what you buy and have room to store it. Some folks have reportedly moved to another place so they have a spare room to store all their bargains! Sounds like a problem to me, not that I don’t have a few spending issues of my own. Others buy an extra freezer to hold all those bags of tortellini and mini corn dogs—yikes!
Don’t Buy in Bulk . . .
Seth Fiegerman of the money blog Mainstreet has some dos and don’ts for volume shopping in his article “Best Stuff NOT to Buy in Bulk” (March 29, 2010). A few of his don’ts:
1. Brown rice: “In general, we tend to think of rice as something that just lasts and lasts, but brown rice (which happens to be better for you than white rice) has a much shorter shelf life because it contains more oil.”
2. Candy: “One key rule of buying in bulk is that you should beware of purchasing guilty pleasures like candy and other junk food. Otherwise, bulk buying can turn into bulk eating.”
One consumer, he said, nailed it on SavingAdvice. com: “If I go to my local store and [buy] 2 candy bars for $1 a piece,” she reported, “I spend $2 and they will last a week. I buy a box at Costco of 24 candy bars for $12, they still will be gone in a week. Even though the unit price is less, I end up spending more.”
3. Paper towels and toilet paper: If storage is an issue, skip the mass paper products, said Fiegerman. “Bulk items that are light on your wallet can weigh down your life in other ways.”
4. Nuts: Because nuts usually expire within two months, unless you munch on them all day long, avoid buying them in great quantities.
5. Liquid hand soap: “An item that I don’t think I will ever buy in bulk again is soap,” says a poster on momlogic.com. “We had a thing of hand soap for almost 2 years and in about the last 6 months it turned into clotted jelly.”
Bulk items that are light on your wallet can weigh down your life in other ways.
Do Buy in Bulk . . .
1. Cereal: If you love your brand of cereal (Cheerios!), you likely won’t get sick of it, and you can save up to 40 percent by buying a really, really big box (there are usually two bags in the big boxes, so the toasty little o’s won’t go stale on you).
2. Soup: Canned soup keeps, and stocking up can be comforting to your wallet as well as your soul on a cold, sniffly day.
3. Dog and cat food: There’s nothing worse than running out of pet food. We have a very mournful-looking basset hound named Dinah who looks even more mournful when we run out of her food. This usually prompts me to microwave a chicken breast for her or open a can of tuna, which is absurd, but makes her deliriously happy and makes me feel less guilty. I’ve done the same for the cats. How much better to have a mondo bag of dog food and cat food on hand so it doesn’t come down to that?
4. Diapers: Well, there is one thing worse than running out of pet food: running out of diapers! Those years are, thankfully, behind us; however, I do recall spending $70 or more per month on diapers. Had I shopped at Costco during the diaper years, I could have saved $17.50 per month, or 25 percent.
5. Tuna: Canned tuna also keeps, and if you buy in bulk, you can save up to 47 percent. And there’s nothing fishy about that deal.
The Verdict
Though I don’t think extensive quantity shopping is for me, I did pick up a principle that, prior to this Amish money probe, had failed to penetrate my thick skull. From now on, I’m going to be looking at the unit price, that tiny little number on stores’ price stickers. This is the magic number that revealed, for one, that I was getting a better deal on a 10-packet box of fruit juice snacks from my grocery store than the bulk box of 24 packets from the warehouse club. ( Just because it’s in a big box, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s cheaper.)
And I’m going to start watching more closely for sales and stocking up on things I know we will use up, such as toilet paper, paper towels, canned soups, and tuna. Doyle hates to run out of paper products in the worst way, and would fill the garage with a pyramid of paper if it meant never running out. I was always more of the mind-set that running out of stuff was just life, but after examining bulk buying, I realize one can be more proactive and less reactive when it comes to these things. Yes, dear, you were right!
While it makes total sense for Ella to buy gallons of apple butter and pounds of dried apples at a time, she has established herself as a heavyweight baker. Actually, all Amish women have established themselves as heavyweight bakers, while I am more of a pinweight in the baking department. Ella is Muhammad Ali, and I am the 90-pound kid from the middle school who barely made the boxing team.
Those Amish baking giants can definitely take advantage of volume discounts offered at bulk stores, and they are such genius planners that they won’t waste the food.
Certainly, not a single dried apple ring went to waste that afternoon in Ella’s kitchen. As I rose from my seat at her kitchen table, I counted fifteen pie shells, and she had started to pour the filling into each. When I entered her home, forty-five minutes earlier, the table was clear and the only evidences of baking were those gallon tins of apple butter.
Astounded anew, I thanked the sweet lady and stumbled out to my car. They may be unplugged, informally educated, and doggedly committed to 1693, but as long as the Amish keep having fourteen children and making fifteen pies in forty-five minutes, they will undoubtedly flourish.