Day 10 : Buying in Bulk

Yesterday, we talked about using reusable snack and sandwich bags, as well as other lunch items, to reduce waste generated from individually wrapped snacks and such. But now we need to fill up those baggies! If you were thinking yesterday about what you could pack in your kids' lunches instead of the individually packaged snacks, the answer is bulk food!!



I'm covering bulk food in general today, not just bulk snack food. I think a lot of people don't quite realize how much food you can buy in bulk, removing the packaging from the equation.

I myself was curious about what I could find at Bulk Barn, the big chain bulk food store here in Canada. So I went "undercover" to show you just what is possible to buy in bulk. Here we go!



To be honest, the times I have been to bulk barn, I have pretty much always bee-lined for the candy and chocolates aisles.

Little note, all images enlarge if you click on them


I was good this time and only got Dino Sours

This time, I went through every aisle and was amazed at what I found!!

Let's start with snack stuff, since that is what brought us here. There's stuff like Bits and Bites, Hickory Sticks (my fav, got me some of that too). And pretzels of many shapes (not all really called pretzels, but you get the idea).


I love me some cornnuts!! Didn't get any this time though... And cheeses and stuff. Yeah, I know not the healthiest stuff, but man is it tasty!


They even have premade mixes. I know these ones show chocolate in them but they don't all have chocolate, I promise. There's about a dozen different mixes!


There's really lots of choices, way more than I'm showing you here, so it's worth checking out! But, I also want to show you what else there is, so much stuff I didn't know they would have.

There's the expected sugar (brown, icing, etc)


Flour. Funny thing, I didn't see the normal flour. I'm sure they have some, but didn't particularly look for it. Also a whole row of nuts! That would be a good snack, too.


Muffin and cake mixes. Many different types of milk powder, and cocoa powder.


All sorts of rice!! And pasta!! I had never realized they had this stuff.


What else? Powdered soups. Many different flavored hot chocolate!


And spices. So many spices!


I thought this aisle was super colorful with all the colors of confetti and cake/cupcake decorations.


If you like tea, they have a good variety, as well as some coffee beans (didn't take picture, oops).


There's even a little something for your pets! Dog treats, rabbit food, bird food.


I strongly encourage you to go out to your bulk food store and see what they have. Then you can start building your pantry staples around that, and forgo packaging! This is why I took pictures, though I wish I would've taken more, so I know what they have and their prices, so I can get more in bulk.

And remember what we covered Monday about reusable bags? Well those bags are good for buying in bulk, too, especially the canvas produce bags! They even have a little weight tag so the cashier can tare the weight of the bag off, so clever!







I party at these parties.