The Food Storage Blog

Hey y’all, looks like its time for my semi-annual post!  Yes, my blog is sad, I know, but someday I will be able to warp time and space and clone myself 7 times so I can get everything done every day that I want to!  I actually have a couple of posts lined up so it’ll have a flurry of activity for February at least.=)

My beautiful bebbies!

Personal Life Update:  And these babies are why; please welcome Dagny Abigail (left) and Liberty Belle (right), our beautiful twins, into this crazy world!  Prepping is an act of preparing for the unexpected.  And while the girls were definitely unexpected, my wife and I had already ordered our life in such a way that what might be a crazy emergency for those who don’t prep, for those of us who do it was more like ‘Groovy, scary, crazy, but in the end, it’ll be ok!’  I’ll have an entire post on how my wife and I felt and acted before, during, and now, in terms of living a prepared lifestyle.

New Product Update:  We’ve gone back into production for another full truckload of product, due to arrive in late March (Lord I hope the cold is long gone before having to spend the day unloading!).  Included in the new shipment are a couple of additional bag sizes in the awesome ShieldPro material.  Like all of our new styles, these were requested by customers.  (So if you think of something you need, let us know, we just might make 10,000 of them!)  I’ve added a new small zip-seal bag, a 6″x6″.  I’m always surprised by how many of our 4″x4″ bags we sell to folks wanting to store spices and supplements in their 5 gallon buckets.  I’ve had requests for something just a touch larger but not as big as our 1-quart bag (8.25″x8.25″), so we’re getting a test run of 10,000 units.  We’re also adding another zip seal to the line, ensuring we will now have a zip seal available in all our main sizes.  It is a 2-gallon Zip (14″x20″), a size I’ve been surprised to find some folks storing water in.  I’ll do some testing of that process myself and if it goes well, will do another post on that subject.

New Business Update:  A pet project I’ve had on my mind since I started Advice and Beans was a wholesale website designed just for prep store owners.  That project is now coming to fruition, as through negotiations with the previous owners, we were able to acquire the premiere domain name for our niche.  Our wholesale site is now live at www.mylarbags.com.  Like most folks who have sold food storage supplies, there is one place on the ‘Net that comes up first in most search results and offers wholesale Mylar Bags and Oxygen Absorbers (among other things).  However, after dealing with that company for a good long time (over a year), I came to understand why most people leave them quickly:  incredibly poor customer service, overpriced shipping, and inflexibility.

Mylarbags.com is our answer to that 700-pound gorilla.  We are making it as easy as possible for prep-store owners (whether brick-and-mortar or online) to source their goods.  First, our prices are better or competitive to anyplace on the ‘Net.  And that doesn’t count the additional discounting for pallet and truckload sized orders.  Everything on the site offers free shipping to the Continental US, so there is no going back and forth trying to nail down what that will cost. (one huge pain point I have had in the past with wholesale suppliers)  There is even an additional discount for orders paid with Cashier’s Checks, ACH, or Postal Money Orders as we pass on the savings from not have to pay a credit card processing fee.

We offer kitting in any combination the customer needs at a very reasonable cost per unit.  So we can ship in bulk if you need, however for folks doing gun and prep shows, our pre-made kits are a great time-saver.  If you like, we can even source kit-bags with your 1-color art (and appropriate lead time) as low as $.20/unit.  I am also personally available (as always!) to answer any questions or offer any advice to make your business successful.

So if you run a survival store or know someone who does, I hope you will send them our way and let us show them how customers should really be treated!=)

It’s looking to be an awesome 2014!  On top of the above, we’ll run some giveaways (my wife picked up yet another copy of a Rawles’ book I’ve read twice!) starting next week, hope to see you here!

This spring and summer has been a great adventure as we have worked to produce the best material and the best bags available for food storage.  It has finally come to fruition as my wife and I (with her 16 weeks pregnant with twins!) unloaded a full truckload of new ShieldPro bags this weekend.  It took about 4 hot, sweaty hours with my wife running the forklift and me manhandling pallets with a pallet jack.  Our warehouse is now filled to the brim with beautiful, silvery, metally, Mylar-y goodness!

Folks here know we have kept our focus mainly food storage related over the years (and intend to keep it that way, mostly!).  We have dabbled in some different products here and there, but through everything our main focus has been Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers.  Thus, we are very proud to announce a product that fits in one of those categories, but expands nicely in a direction we want to be moving.

We’ve been receiving requests for this type of product for over a year now (over 100 customer comments in my little notebook at least), but finding manufacturing for something this specialized proved a little tricky.  As we worked on the ShieldPro brand, we thought this would be a great addition to our focus of storage, though outside the food niche.  I am very pleased to now offer the ShieldPro SafeCache storage bag.

This bag is awesome.  It is 11″x55″ long, made of the 7.5 Mil SafeCache material, the strongest metalized foil substrate I have found (and I’ve looked at hundreds of materials during this process!).  It is incredibly durable, with amazing barrier properties to moisture and oxygen.  The size will fit most long guns and AR’s (some optics may have to be removed for storage), as well as a ton of different types of equipment you may want to store out of your home.  It can be cut and resealed so that a single bag can fit multiple handguns, cameras, phones, or various electronics.

The challenge with trying to bury most standard gun cases is that water is a pretty amazing infiltrator, and it can and will seep through most everything.  The SafeCache bag fixes all that.  Used in conjunction with desiccant and standard storage procedures, you can bury whatever supplies you choose and know (barring earthquake or something crazy!) your valuables will be safe.

These bags are now available at Discount Mylar Bags.

However, for our food storers, please don’t despair!=)  We will have several new bags for y’all showing up at the store later this week.  We will be replacing 2 items permanently with a brand new ShieldPro product.  Our standard 5 gallon bag and 5 gallon zip bags, (both of which are still fabulous!), will be upgraded to the new ShieldPro 5 mil substrate (material).  Even better is that our pricing on both items will remain exactly the same ($1.27 for the 5 gallon and $1.79 for the 5 gallon zip).  We will be running clearance pricing on the 4.5 mil bags these are replacing.  ($.99 or less for the 5 gallon and $1.09 or less for the 5 gallon zip in bulk), and as mentioned in the last post, this is the lowest price offered on the ‘Net for these bags.  Please note there is nothing wrong with the 4.5 mil products, and they have been a staple with us for 3 years now and we have sold millions of them!  However, with our improved buying power, we have been able to work much closer with manufacturing to increase the quality of our products without increasing any costs to our customers, which is a great win for everyone!

Please note that while it has been a very busy summer, we’re not done yet!  We will be going back to manufacturing to figure out what other sizes and styles of bags folks might be needing.  If you have any thoughts, please drop a comment or email!  We don’t do any of this without input from our customers, as you are the most important thing in the world to us!

Hey everyone, I hope y’all are having a great summer!  We are having an awesome one, so I wanted to put up some updates.

First, we are very proud to start carrying the trademarked ShieldPro Brand Mylar Bags.  These bags are specifically designed for long-term food storage.  Not only are they beautiful, they offer absolutely awesome protection for your foods, with stellar oxygen and moisture barrier properties.  If you listen to one of the prepper podcasts you might have heard our first radio commercial.  We did it on the cheap, but I like the way it came out!  Take a listen if you’re interested.  We have one official ShieldPro bag currently available (a 1 gallon gusseted stand up bag), and we are currently scheduled to take delivery of a full truckload more on August 13-14 or so, so look for additional sizes then!

To help clear out some space in our warehouse, we are going to be putting up some awesome deals at the website.  For example, for 5-gallon bags, we will be offering 30-packs for $29.70 and 50-packs for $49.50, or $.99 a bag, shipping included!  If you’d like a larger quantity than that, we will go as low as $.89/each for 500 or more (email me!).  We’ll also have on sale 2-gallon bags and 5-gallon zip seal bags starting tomorrow.  Those who have read the blog often know I’m not prone to exaggeration, so I mean it when I say these prices may be the lowest you ever see for shipped bags.

Third on the agenda is the announcement of the Discount Mylar Bags Affiliate Program.  This will not be applicable to most folks, and is intended more for bloggers or folks who run websites.  Over the years I’ve had dozens of folks ask us if we run an affiliate program.  Until now, we didn’t!  But now we have one (Being run by Share-a-Sale) and will be offering a flat 10% for all orders referred to us through your affiliate link.  If you’re interested you can sign up here, or email me at admin@discountmylarbags.com for more info.

Our final big announcement is personal in nature, which I don’t normally do, so skip this part if I offend!  My wife and I have been together over 8 years now and married more than 5, and we always thought she couldn’t have kids.  She tried treatments and things in her first marriage, and they didn’t work.  I wasn’t about to fork out a whole lot of money to repeat the process, so we were content to spend our time together with each other and our dogs, and work on our own business and interests.  Well, the Good Lord Almighty decided that His timing was Now.  My wife is blessedly pregnant…with twins!!!  I’m a little worried about being 60 when my kids are 18, but I am doing my best to get back into good shape so I can try to be a good dad and be around for them as long as I can.  She is at 13 weeks now, we just had a 3d ultrasound done yesterday and all looks well so far, though they won’t be able to determine the sex of them until next time.  All Prayers are very welcome, as we know we’re in a higher-risk age bracket (my wife is 38 and I am 42), plus twins are always a little more complicated.

It also means figuring out how to store 2 more years worth of food, this time for kids!  Anyone with any advice on that and what you do for your younger kids, I’d love to hear it!

Thank you and have a great summer!

Hey everyone, I know it’s been a while!  While it has been quiet on the blog, we have been very busy behind the scenes trying to serve our customers better.  I’ve been thinking about doing a video encapsulating our philosophy of doing business, and what makes us stand out.  We have the best return customer rate in the business, and I thought we would share some of the reasons why.  If you’ve been on the fence about ordering from us, I hope this gives you some indication of how far we will go to serve our customers!  If you don’t know the address, here is our online store!

1)  Same Day Shipping – In the beginning, there is very little to differentiate one seller from another.  One of the ways we have done so from day one is offering same day shipping for all orders that come in until 3pm.  And many days if I can manage it, I’ll ship everything that comes in until about 5pm, stopping by the Post Office on the way home to drop off packages which miss the regular pickup.  Getting your package in the mail ASAP is very important to us.  We work 7 days a week (about a half shift on Saturday and Sunday) to make sure you get your item as soon as humanly possible without using Express Service!

2)  USPS Priority Mail Shipping for most orders – Whatever else one might say about USPS, I can attest that Priority Mail is the best reasonably costed standard shipping method available today.  UPS Ground can compete for a certain geographical area, but no one else guarantees 2-3 day shipping times (In TN and parts of surrounding states, some folks have told us they got their package the next day!).  This includes Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.  If you need your order as quick as possible, you can trust us to get it there.  Just today, we had several customers on the phone who thanked us on getting their order to them ASAP.

3)  We Value Your Privacy – I am a privacy nut myself, and so we go out of our way to protect yours.  First, we use discrete packaging, meaning nothing will ever show up on your door with a big ‘Survival Stuff Inside!’ or giant ‘Discount Mylar Bags’ plastered all over the box.  We have many folks who specifically request plain packaging, and this is to let everyone know we don’t have ANY outer packaging with our name on it.  The only place you will see our name is the return address as required by our shipping carriers.

4)  We Value Your Privacy, Part 2 – For all orders placed online, we NEVER see or have access to your credit card information.  It is handled in exactly the same manner as it would be at a department or other retail store…invisibly and behind the scenes.  Only our credit card processor actually sees your credit card number, so you never have to fear one of our employees gallivanting around Europe using your credit card!

5)  We Value Your Privacy, Part 3 – While I’ve thought about doing one, we don’t have a mailing list.  We don’t, and will never, sell your email to anyone for any reason.  I hate junk mail in my inbox, and many of the survival stores are terrible about sending out a ton.  The only way I would send an email to a customer is if they asked me to do a newsletter, and only then if they chose to opt in.  This is currently not in the planning stage, so if you’d like to see one, let me know.

6)  Free Shipping over $50 and on all kits – In the beginning I tested out ‘Free shipping on everything!’  That wasn’t very funny when I had dozens of folks placing orders for 2 Mylar Bags at $.25 each.  Needless to say, we lost our shirts and had to change that policy quickly.=)  We know $50 is a lot of money to some folks, and so we also offer free shipping on all our kits (located here).  Our goal is not to make money on shipping, and we only have the minimum charge to cover the cost of processing and packaging small orders.

7)  When We Screw Up, We Fix It – This is perhaps the defining aspect of how we run our business.  While we do our best to get all orders out the door perfect, inevitably we’ll mess one up.  However, you have my promise that I’ll fix it, quickly!  Your satisfaction with your order is our only concern.

8)  No Hassle Returns – Something not quite what you pictured when you bought it?  No problem, you are welcome to return anything at any time for a full refund!  Again, I only wish I could get the same from many of the places I order!=)  We’ve accepted returns from customers who had their product for a year and finally said to themselves ‘I’m never going to do this’.  And that’s OK, ship it back to us and we’ll refund it.

If there’s anything we can do serve you that we’re not currently doing, please let me know!  We are working on getting some new bag sizes in to fill requests of customers, so I hope you’ll check back!

There seems to be a good deal of misinformation and lack of information out there about folding of Mylar bags and whether the resulting pinholes will hurt your food storage. I have answered this question before in our FAQ, however because it has come up pretty frequently lately I thought I would do a post about it.

First, I think part of the challenge is because the idea seems to make sense, and so folks read something like ‘folding makes Mylar bags unusable’ and accept the information at face value, understandably. Also, even some of our competitors who should (and probably do) know better do it, for whatever reason.

I think the main cause for the confusion is that folks often use different terms than what they really mean. For example, there is a difference between a pinhole and a puncture when it comes to Mylar bags. A pinhole is a natural part of every Mylar bag. It’s not a dirty word; it doesn’t affect the longevity of your food. Every Mylar bag, whether the lightest 2 mil bag to the heaviest 7.5 mil Mylar bag, has pinholes. There is a measurement that manufacturers use ‘Pinholes per meter squared’ that they use to describe the effect. So when you stick your head into a bag, or shine a flashlight into it, you will see pinholes. That is absolutely normal, and nothing to fear.

A puncture, on the other hand, is an incredibly rare defect in a Mylar bag, usually caused by it being poked by something. It almost never occurs naturally, maybe 1 in 500,000 bags. The main times it occurs is when a manufacturer gets to the end of their roll stock when producing bags, and will occasionally slice a bag. Even though we tell them not to, many times they will tape the tear (which always shocks and annoys me!) and ship them to us. Usually we catch these bags when we package and do not send them out. On a rare occasion, they will make it to a customer, and we apologize when that happens, and will always gladly refund or replace damaged bags.

To understand why pinholes are not an issue, let’s take a look at how Mylar bags are built. Mylar bags are usually composed from 2-5 layers of barriers (though we’ve carried some with 6 on occasion, and for some applications you can get them with more), adhesives and foil. A barrier layer is one that blocks oxygen or moisture, and is usually invisible (except for foil); an adhesive layer is what holds the different layers of the bag together (and some adhesives even have barrier properties as well). And the foil layer is what we actually ‘see’ when we look at the bag, the metal that we refer to as ‘Mylar’. In actuality, Mylar is a clear polyester type material. Only because it is often bonded with an aluminum or metallized layer do we think of Mylar as ‘metallic.’

A pinhole is where the foil layer did not bond to the upper and lower barrier and adhesive layers of the bag, or may happen during shipping. They occur at random places during manufacturing, and again, will show up in all Mylar bags to a greater or lesser extent.  However, every place you see a pinhole, there are still 2-4 layers of material protecting your food.  The very act of storing your food and pulling a vacuum, will cause some more pinholes to occur.  Again, this is completely normal.  As all together those pinholes represent less than 1/1000th or 1/10000th of the total area of the bag, the actual loss of MVTR and OTR is negligible, less than a rounding error.

To demonstrate, I did a Youtube video showing that I can crinkle, crush, and fold a Mylar bag, and it will still be airtight. I took a picture yesterday of a different bag to demonstrate the same thing.  It’s hard to tell in the picture, but the bag is holding about a gallon of water with no leaks.

Generally speaking, in our household we only use Mylar bags that have been returned from customers, often because the customer felt folding damaged the bags somehow.  Even after packaging and shipping bags two ways, we have never had a bag fail.  Foil is simply a material that ‘prints’, meaning if you even touch it it will retain the mark.  You can ‘write’ your names on Mylar bags with a coin or fingernail.  Doing this does not hurt the bag.

This business is our livelihood, and I care about our customers.  Many of them have become friends.  I would never do anything to put any of them at risk by shipping product in a way that could potentially make it not work correctly.  We ship hundreds of thousands of bags per month, and there has never been a case where a bag has been returned (except in the case of the tape issue mentioned above) where I have not been able to achieve an airtight seal.  There are several other prepper businesses out there that also ship their bags folded; none of us would even have a business if folding bags damaged them, because we either would have switched to a rolled shipping model, stopped selling them or gone out of business due to the number of returns.

So the next time you are on a prepper or survival forum and someone says you should stick a flashlight in a bag and if it has pinholes it should be returned, please drop me an email, as I will gladly go to the forum and gently reply with the correct information.=)

Keep on prepping folks!