Wholesale prices from your retail grocery store

My wife was shopping at Ukrop's one day, mostly for our daughter's foods.  Ukrop's is one of a limited number of places that carries foods that our daughter can have because of her allergies.  (Costco doesn't carry what we need here.)  When my wife goes there she will stock up on Soy Dream Enriched Original soy milk because it's one of the few ways she gets protein right now.

She was talking to one of the managers there and said, off the cuff, that it would be nice if she could buy the stuff in bulk.  To her surprise,

• He said that she could order items in bulk.
• They would charge her less than the shelf price.
• They could set up a recurring order for her if she wanted and give her a call when it came in.

So she ordered three cases (36 quart boxes — about 5-6 weeks' supply) of the soy milk.  It was delivered today, and the cost ended up being about 20 cents cheaper than the shelf price, per box!

That's pretty cool.  This is great business.  Actually, it isn't really as much of a cost of doing business for them as it might look.   Sure, they're selling the products for less than they would on the shelves, but here's what selling in bulk directly to the customer does for them:

• They're not paying someone to stock the shelves, inventory the items, arrange them, price them, etc.  The product stays in storage basically as it comes off the truck.
• The shelves aren't bare of that product.  There's only so much shelf space that a store can dedicate to one particular product.  If it's in demand for one reason or another, the product goes away quickly, meaning that other customers can't buy it.  By keeping a high-volume customer out of the shelves — in other words, not have my wife clean them out of soy milk every time she goes there! — they stand a better chance of keeping the item in stock for their other customers.  This means more sales for them.
• They basically know that the product will be sold.  My wife's 36-box order is a predictable source of sales for them.  It takes a little of the variance out of their sales numbers.  Predictability is a good thing.
• They have a very satisfied customer, with the prospect of others stopping by.  I mentioned that it's pretty cool that they're doing this for us.  How much more are we going to shop there?  How many people will she tell about the cool experience she had a Ukrop's?  How many am I telling now?

The main point of this post is that we didn't know that a grocery store would do this for us.  Our Ukrop's does.  It doesn't hurt to ask yours if you have a high-volume need like we do.