TL;DR I haggled at two grocery stores for milk about to expire. Resounding success, turned the milk into cheese.
Store one I ended up going to two places. At the first, I picked up two glass bottles of unhomogenized milk. Both bottles were due to expire on the 6th but considering there were only two, I figured that the store wouldn’t be willing to budge on price. Five minutes after finding a manager I was walking out of the store with a gallon of milk for 20% of sticker price. Initially the manager had offered 50%, I asked for an additional 30% and she immediately agreed.
Store 2 The second store was only slightly more challenging. It was a large chain store, so in order to talk to the manager I had to get through an employee first. After explaining what I was after, he told me “we don’t do that here.” I love haggling, so I’ve heard this a lot. Often it’s because the employee has never dealt with a customer interested in haggling. I asked him if he would be willing to do me a favor and ask his manager anyway. He pointed me towards his manager and walked off.
The manager was clearly interested. We walked over to the dairy section so I could show him how much of his milk supply was nearing expiration. The previous manager had quickly agreed to the price I asked, so I figured stores were more eager to offload surplus milk than I had thought. He accepted my first offer and walked me over to a register to adjust the price. In the end I went home with 6 gallons of organic milk for $18.50. Enough to make ~4lbs of cheese.
January 09, 2019 at 12:16PM
