The Food Storage Blog

We are very happy to announce that we have a new online storefront!  The current one will still work, at least for the foreseeable future, however it just isn’t meeting our needs.  It has a clunky checkout mechanism, was limited to PayPal Checkout which some people didn’t like, and in general was pretty slow.  Our new storefront is available at Discount Mylar Bags.  It has a lot of benefits over our current storefront, including:

• It’s much, much faster
• We are able to offer bulk quantity discounts on almost every item (drill down to the item details to see the discounts and quantities for each item!)
• You can use either Google Checkout or PayPal Checkout now; we received our first orders today and both systems seem to be working
• The checkout itself is much less painful to use=)
• We are allowed 5 times as many items as our current shopping cart software, which means you will have access to all of our inventory, instead of bits and pieces because of Godaddy’s 20-item limit (yes, I could have upgraded that with GoDaddy, but with all the other problems with their software, it just never made sense to pay triple to do so)
• The back end maintenance, order processing systems, and general ease of use seem to be much better, which will allow me to update the store more timely as necessary.
• Product reviews area are available, plus I will be able to add informational videos about each item, which I hope to start doing soon!

I hope all that means a better experience for our customers.  In honor of the grand opening, we are offering a 15% off coupon for those of us who shop early while their still might be some hiccups with the new system.  The Coupon Code is ‘Test15’.  I’ll be offering a special 1-use 25% coupon to the first 25 customers who shop the store and provide feedback about the new site at admin@adviceandbeans.com:  what they like, what they don’t, any errors encountered, etc.

In order to accommodate the different items we are now offering, I was unable to do a blanket free shipping model (because now you can order 1 Mylar Bag if you want and aren’t limited to certain quantities).  So what we are doing is offering free shipping on all orders over $50.  However, we’ll also be doing free shipping on the combo-packs of Mylar Bags and Oxygen Absorbers we have available at the Original Store, so nothing should change for most customers and you will still get free shipping on any of the quantities we offered before.

For those interested, the store is powered by Big Commerce.  I’m not sold that it is the best e-commerce solution, but for now it should help us expand our offerings and provide better service to our customers.

I hope you’ll come by and see us!  Again, our new store is open at Discount Mylar Bags.

Thanks to Don S and Alan B for our first two entries in our Food Storage Article Contest.  I’ll likely post all entries each Sunday and Wednesday.  Remember, if you’d like to participate, just drop a line to admin@adviceandbeans.com.  There’s over $500 in prizes up for grabs!

Thanks!

From Don S:

Food storage is part of survival.  Our ancestors stored food for times when certain types of food were scarce such as winter when fresh vegetables were not available or in summer when wild game was reproducing.  Now we just visit the store and buy what we fancy that day or maybe go to a restaurant.  Our storage thoughts go no further than the next trip to the store or what might be on sale this week.  We have become a dependent-on-others society rather that the “rugged individualist” we once were as a people. 

Lately, catastrophes have been taking their collective tolls on our comfortable ways of life. Some people are waking up to the possibility that Kroger might not have what we need every day.  What would we do if technology suddenly failed?  No electricity to power our comfortable way of life would cramp most everyone’s style to say the least.  What can we do to prepare for such an event?  Two things come to my mind.  Learn to identify edible wild foods in your local area.  Not just the dandelions but the violets, lamb’s quarters, amaranth purslane and whatever else you have been calling weeds in your garden for years.  These are foods you do not have to plant.  Just locate and identify them and prepare them for the table. This is free food for the picking.  The other thing that comes to mind is begin gardening with a vengeance.  Not just planting some lettuce and beans but growing heirloom plants and saving the seeds and planting them the next season.  These foods can be canned or dried and stored to sustain you when the cans of spam and tuna have long since run out.  Get out from in front of the TV or Play station and begin learning what our grandparents always knew, how to find and produce food. 

From Alan B:

It is possible my advice could be considered the ‘first rule of prepping’ or food storage.  It has been repeated so many times by survivalists, homesteaders, and preppers of every school, mostly because it’s true:  “Eat what you store, store what you eat.”  It is so simple, but to this day many preppers I know still insist ‘at the end of the world, I’ll eat anything.’  While that may be true of the prepper herself, it might not be so true of her loved ones.

 The LDS Preparedness Manual lists ‘variety’ (or lack of) the #1 mistake of food storage (p32) and ‘not using your storage’ as mistake #7 (p33).  Having 500 pounds of wheat to turn into bread sounds like a great idea until you realize your cousin Charlie has a gluten allergy.  Plus, it also indicates that ‘wheat is too harsh for young children’ as a main staple.  If you don’t bake bread or use ground wheat in your daily cooking, why would you store it for an emergency?  You won’t know how to cook it, sprout it, or otherwise use it to its maximum potential.  You are better off having 50 #10 cans of Spaghettios than 10 buckets of wheat berries.  The same with rice and beans.  If you hate Chinese and Mexican food, do you think an emergency is going to change that?  Store cans of soup and Spam instead if that is closer to your usual fare.

 It doesn’t roll off the tongue as easily, but the rule should be changed to:  Eat what you and your family store, and store what you and your family eat.  Take into account the tastes of your entire family and any others who might stay with you during a crisis.  Make sure that if 2 family members have a peanut allergy that peanut butter is not a staple you are counting on to carry them through.  Include items in your storage that can be used to flavor food, such as spices (even just plain salt and pepper), bouillon cubes or tomato paste so you can avoid appetite fatigue. 

 If your family includes pets, make sure to include them in the rule as well.  Some dry pet foods don’t store well due to the oils, but make every effort to have as much food on hand for your dog or cat as you do for the rest of your family.  In a time of crisis, a happy furry friend will mean a great deal to everyone.

 Finally, make sure to store comfort foods; gobstoppers, fireballs, and other hard candies store relatively well.  Fruit punch or cocoa store less well, but should be rotated anyway like the rest of your storage.

 Make the effort to incorporate your food storage into your daily life.  If an emergency hits, at least your belly will hardly notice.

To give folks a chance to particpate we’re going to run a little contest over the next couple of months!  I’ll be including a flier with all new orders letting people know as well as providing up-to-date information about goings on at the store and blog.

Here’s how it will work.  In 300-500 words (about 1 double-spaced page in Word or Wordpad), answer the question ‘If you could offer 1 piece of advice about food storage, what would it be?’  Alternately, describe a situation where your food storage came in useful in a real emergency scenario.  Feel free to include pictures of your food storage pantry or video as well!

I’ll post the articles as often as I get them, and at the end of 90 days, 3 entries will win a combination of $500 at the store ($250, $150 and $100)!  I’ll also toss in some goodies I have lying around, including a spool of paracord, an awesome bug-out backpack from Rothco and some other great stuff!  And everyone who enters will get at least a cool coupon.

The fine print:  All entries must be new content and become the property of Advice and Beans, though of course you’ll be more than welcome to cross-post on your own personal blog if you have one.    We reserve the right to edit out any personal information and correct minor spelling mistakes.  Send your entries to admin@adviceandbeans.com and if you have any questions please let me know!

Good luck everyone!

My wife told me yesterday that she was actually tired of shopping; I couldn’t help but laugh!  That is probably not something a guy hears every day, but she spent several hours with her mom at Walmart on Friday and came out with 2 buggies full; she said the cashier actually took a break she had so much stuff.  She went to Costco yesterday and got another full load.  Basically, we doubled up on the staples in our storage pantry.  Oils (olive and corn), peanut butter (both my organic and her Jif), nuts, flour (both regular and gluten free), Bisquik, light bulbs, paper towels, tissues and toilet paper, and on and on.  Let’s say we took the advice given 2 posts back literally…I’d rather have basics and consumables in my pantry than excess cash in the bank right now.   We even got a little gas pump like they use for boats (14 gallons) and filled that up as well.

This article in the Wall Street Journal is just one of dozens I’ve read recently about rising food inflation; so if you are going to eat it anyway, folks, you might as well buy it now.  I’m going to take another look after we get our backorders out tomorrow and make another run myself to fill in any gaping holes…maybe another propane tank or two, some charcoal for the Bubba Keg, and some 5-gallon water jugs, for starters.

The enemy in my mind is not ‘the end of the world’, but simple inflation, which is in full bloom (and has been for at least a year).

All my stock orders came in at the same time this month, so in the next 4 days we’ll be receiving shipments of all our sizes of oxygen absorbers:  100cc, 300cc (yay!!!), 2000cc, as well as the larger Mylar bags.  It’s seemed like forever since we had 300cc’s in stock, but in reality its only been about a month.  Since January, we’ve doubled our order sizes (and frequency) yet again and we’re again doing an ok job of managing our inventory; I’m not really a doom-and-gloomer, but people are worried and its showing in our volumes.  And that’s all kinds of people; we get a ton of orders from places as remote as Alaska, Puerto Rico, and just recently, a rash of orders from New York City.  White color, blue color, working poor and upper middle class.  I’m definitely a believer in the ‘wisdom of the masses’, so my wife and I, as mentioned in our previous post, are putting some more resources into getting our house in order.

For the totally bored, we’ve hired a new local logistics company to handle our warehousing.  As we first started to grow our business, I ‘luckily’ had a business friend I had worked with for years at my previous job who let me use his warehousing facilities to handle our first pallet-sized shipments.  The reason is that it costs on average $150 to get a lift-gate truck to drop off pallets in places without a dock.  I had a couple dropped off at our home office that way early on, and it was incredibly cost-prohibitive.  As the business has grown to stand on its own, I felt it was time to move out and stop taking advantage of the relationship.  My friend is happy we are successful, and though I’ve offered to pay for the services given on multiple occasions, he has consistently refused.  So now, I’ll take him out to lunch and we’ll talk about old times and new business opportunities.

This leads me to a post I always planned to do on Advice and Beans, but which I never got to:  the power of your word and the magic of networking.  At my former job, there are dozens of buyers that beat down their vendors and suppliers regularly, and who focus on nothing but price.  What they don’t realize is that focusing on price only negates the power of relationship-building.  For many years, I managed a half-dozen suppliers where our company and theirs were joined at the hip, and real partnerships.  Sure, I wanted a good price on the services I purchased (print, office supplies and fulfillment services mostly), but I also wanted our partners to be successful and make a decent profit, for a lot of reasons.  For one, partners that don’t think you are taking advantage of them will go out of their way to help you out of tough spots, will provide what you need on-time and usually faster than they will other companies that don’t treat them with a high level of respect.

What does this have to do with anything?  Well, treating this one supplier with respect led him to, with no prompting, offer his services for the small business I was starting up.  And his services gave me the ability to cash-flow my way to much larger orders, and in turn, more business.  So the actions I took over the course of many years led to a result no one could have predicted.  This tells me that the golden rule works: treat folks like you want be treated.  Sure, not every relationship is going to lead to a ‘payoff’, but that should never be the intent anyway.  But if you treat every relationship you have like it is precious, likely when you need something, someone will be there to help.  If instead you beat up the folks who handle your furnace, your car, your insurance…are they really going to go out of their way to help you when you are really in a bind?  If instead you are long on patience, pay your bill quickly, and forgive mistakes, you will often have people who will put you at the top of their list in the event of a real emergency.

If the last year has taught me anything, it is that hard work, belief in a higher power, the willingness to take a risk and an overwhelming desire to treat people right are often the only things one needs to get ‘lucky breaks’.  The next time you find yourself complaining that someone else got some benefit because ‘they were in the right place at the right time’ or ‘got lucky’, or any other such statement, should realize that they likely received the benefit due to their actions over a long period of time.