You must log in or # to comment.
1/8 tsp of turmeric.
I believe that companies package products like this because it is easier to distribute. It is also easier for them to sell. They know it will likely expire before you use a quarter of it. That is all inbuilt into their model. Waste. They know you will throw it out, go back to the store, buy some more and waste it again. They don’t care. They want that. There is no reason to not have smaller packages except profits.
Honestly, there’s a lot that goes into it, logistics costs, packaging costs, average usage, apparent value, etc. are all taken into account. The manufacturing and distribution cost of a 100ml bottle isn’t really much less than a 250ml one. If someone see’s a 100ml and 250ml sitting next to each other, with the actual price difference, they are vastly more likely to buy the 250ml… even if they’re only going to use 75ml. It seems like a “better deal” and thoughts of “what if I need it for something else? I’m not driving all the way back here for it!”. Combine that with “there’s a finite amount of shelf space” and the grocer isn’t going to want to stock both if 90% of the time people just buy the 250ml.
Smaller packages can be more wasteful. If you double the volume of a box you only need about 1.6 times more packaging. So assuming the same material was used for both packages, larger packages are more efficient.
I feel this way about some food places. Not all, but defintely some will charge a decent amount for something and then i get it and go wow thats a lot of food! Ill eat maybe half of it and its then 50/50 if i have the leftovers. I always think instead of charging me $15 for this why not give me the option of paying like $8 for half the amount. Especially these days, give me the cheaper option please! People are always looking for a cheap deal. Closest thing ive seen to this is a chain mexican place that offered exactly that, instead of the regular nachos they had a mini version and was still to big to eat it all. They also had a budget option for tacos as well that was great.
The cost of a meal is ingredients + labor + small portion of overhead (rent/electricity/etc.)
In most cases where meals are prepared individually the amount of labor is roughly the same for double or half the ingredients. That is why there is frequently why twice as much food is less than twice the price and a half portion is 2/3 the price.
In Korea there are Costco Club Clubs where lots of people come together and purchase stuff under one account that later on split in smaller amounts based on how much they need.
Never heard of it, how do I get in?
Move to Korea, befriend the frugal people, get invited into the club.
Does the leader of the Club wield a Costco Club Clubs club to display their dominance?
Give me half a liter (about two cups) of milk. I can’t count how often I have opened a liter pack of milk for something and then had it go bad because I didn’t need it for anything else. There are a few premium brands that sell milk in smaller quantities but those are way more expensive than one liter of the cheap store brand.
I can get a pint of milk where I’m at. Only whole milk though. Great because we just have it on hand just in case the kid still gets some calories if they dont eat enough otherwise. And ofc the vit D/C.
Pop over the border; we’ve got 500ml cartons of milk in the Netherlands.
Consider ultrafiltered milk. It’s higher in protein and lower in sugar, and lasts much longer.
I use it to make my morning coffee and even though I use a small amount every day, I always finish it before it comes close to going bad. The only issue is that it is more expensive, but I’m also not wasting any.
I noticed the grocery store near me started selling precut eggs by four instead of a dozen which is great since you usually only need like one or two eggs for baking stuff
One hint for anybody who is going to start buying eggs in smaller quantities… double-check to make sure they’re not already hard-cooked.
Precut?
Like they cut the carton into four eggs instead of the dozen pack
Ah, that makes more sense. I thought it was the eggs that were cut, but then you start talking about baking with them and that stopped making sense.
The dollar store! Not sure if that’s a thing outside of the US.
It’s not cost effective long term, but you might actually use up the small bottle haha
Please don’t support the dollar store. One of the worst companies in America.
Any of the other grocery chains aside from Costco are similar unfortunately.
Not really… the dollar store model is explicitly designed to completely take over small town mom and pop stores. Most other grocery chains can’t and don’t operate in those areas.
You don’t think Kroger and Albertson’s/Safeway didn’t do exactly the same thing to small town mom and pop stores?
At least in my corner of the US, the majority of mom and pop stores were shut down because of the larger chains.
Oh and happy cake day!
Unironically, bulk barn lets you buy exactly how much you want.
Except for saffron.
I had no idea they were Canadian, just assumed American
Isn’t that stuff more expensive than gold? I had a recipe which called for saffron, but it was an optional ingredient, and when I saw the price I put it back. I wanted to know whether or not I liked the recipe before I dropped $25 on a teaspoon of spice.
I love Bulk Barn - perfect when you want a small handful of different colours of sprinkles, or 1 teaspoon of a very specific spice.
I popped in to say Bulk Barn. I have friends from other countries that have told me that they can’t believe such a place exists.
Once I saw a video of a chef that swears by putting fish sauce into his chili. I tried it and it tasted good. I no long have a fear of fish sauce. I put fish sauce in everything,
Mmmm umami 🤤
“smells like feet, tastes like meat”
-Adam Ragusea
If you don’t like or don’t have any fish sauce for some reason, adding some worcestershire sauce (technically a fish sauce of sorts, I guess) accomplishes the same thing.
Or even soy sauce, both of them were created to imitate fish sauce.
Ancient romans when they created garum:
What’s that?
Fish sauce
ooh I’ll have to try that! fish sauce brings an amazing flavor to many dishes
I miss radio shack… and frys, I don’t need 100 5k ohm resistors, I need 3. Thank god Microcenter and EPO are still around. Shoutout to Mouser and McMaster Carr too but their shipping adds up for oddball stuff.
EPO in houston? i miss that place. and micro center. closest one to me is in san jose. wish they’d open one in seattle
Yep! They used to have a location down by NASA too but that closed in the early 00s.
The nice thing about living in a “not wealthy enough to become a corporate hellscape” country is that I can go down some random roads and get to the streets where independent vendors live, and buy any extremely spesific and small electronic component I want with individual pieces or handfulls for quite cheap.
I was honesrly a bit culture shocked visiting sri lanka and seeing the vendor to vendor next to each other lining themselves for 1-2 km. Couldnt imagine each of then surviving on the amount of money they are making.
Just the wonders of non-corporateism and not being car dependent.
Jameco is another good online vendor. They sell resistors by the tens.
I’ve never tried ordering just one small thing from them though, I make a list for a few different projects and then order it all at once to save on shipping, and I’ve got a bin for extra components to reduce the need for oddball orders.
Radio shack was awesome, it’s a huge shame it’s not around anymore.
Yeah, they are just farther away from me vs Mouser and have the same problem with shipping. A 10 cent resistor costs $15 to ship.
It’s definitely going to depend on where you live, the shipping estimate gives me for one is eight dollars. To a certain extent I feel like Amazon has given us an unrealistic expectation of how much shipping things costs. Eight dollars even for a tiny resistor though isn’t that far out of what I expected it to be, a lot of other places I shop online have pretty similar shipping costs. I’m willing to pay it in many cases though because it means not supporting a company like Amazon.
Shipping costs business around $8 at the lowest end now. Retail shipping expect prices up at $12 for an ounce.
Thank the pedotus. They raised rates 4 times this year so far and another is coming next month.
That’s already a thing.
Look for one of those hippie grocery stores that sells spices etc. in bulk, where you scoop however much you want into a baggie and pay for it by weight.
I’ve never seen a place selling fish sauce in particular that way, but the one near me does sell liquids like soap, honey, and various nut butters.
Yeah, and after the $60 membership fee, everything is twice as expensive and you might as well just go to the normal stores and throw half of it away.
The place by me that does this and doesn’t require any membership fee and is fairly affordable. You walk in with your own mason jar or some canister, note the initial weight, fill up with what you want, and then at checkout do the final weigh and pay for the weight of what you filled up with.
Or just buy a bunch of small containers and split normal size things with friends.
I’m legit thinking about doing this now, I have so many containers in my fridge that don’t have to be anywhere near as large.
I don’t need a big bottle of Worcestershire, and I like having a large selection of mustards.
The place by me doesn’t require a membership either, although being a co-op, it certainly offers one. The prices are generally terrible – think “even worse than Whole Foods” – but the bulk spices are less outrageous. More importantly, you still come out way ahead buying only the little bit of some weird spice you need for that one dish instead of a whole jar, even if the price per pound is higher.
But it’s fresher so you only use half as much.
But then it’s so delicious you’re cooking with exotic spices twice as often.
That’s why I have 1162 square pyramid studs of various sizes. Only needed 8, but I don’t know enough punks with notions.
I kinda wish this for everything, Europe does it better but they still have stuff I just can’t use all of before whatever it is expires.
Fish sauce isn’t going to go bad, no need to keep it in your fridge
LoL like seriously, just do a little research on how it’s made
Dollar General kinda already does this, and it makes food more expensive over all, as the packaging to product ratio is worse, and you end up paying a lot more for a lot less. Sometimes it’s so extreme you pay more for less product than if you wentt to a regular grocery store.
This is common in the Philippines for commonly needed things like shampoo etc. Downside is increased packaging litter
Could turn it to a no waste store. You can bring your own container and pay for what you fill
I could also see a store where you’ve got a running balance and get charged full price for a bottle of fish oil, bag of salt, whatever, but if you bring it back you get credited back most of what you spent based on the remaining weight.
At least until the one asshole comes along and cuts the cooking wine with vinegar or something to save a few cents.
I wouldn’t worry about vinegar as much as I’d worry about piss.
That sounds ripe for contamination
