Buying In Bulk at Honeyville Farms for Extra 20% off (Plus Several Pictures of our Bulk Food Supply)

Honeyville Farms is a bulk food company that offers really competitive prices on bulk foods.  Well, even better, they have released a 20% off coupon code that you can use on all your online orders between now and tomorrow (April 9th, 2013).  Also, the shipping is very reasonable at a flat rate of $4.49 no matter how much you order.

We wanted to mention this sale because we have purchased a good chunk of our bulk food supply from Honeyville Farms.  Thankfully, we have one of the only three brick and mortar locations in the country within a 45 minute drive of us.  This is good news as the prices in their store are even better than online.  So if you are near one of their 3 locations, shop in-store instead!

Here’s what we have bought and how we manage our bulk foods. We had one major goal with bulk food buying….that we actually cycle through it and not just store it for those rainy days (which means that we would hardly ever get eaten and thrown away from getting too old).  So we have a very simple system to rotate through, and it also means buying foods and getting prices better than coupons with sales and with much, much more simplicity and ease.

Here’s what we have bought this year so far from Honeyville Farms:

• One 50 lb. bag of dehydrated potatoes
• One 50 lb. bag of 6-grain oats
• One 50 lb bag of 9-grain cereal/mixed grains (shown above)
• Two 50 lb bags of yellow corn grits
• Two 50 lb bags of dehydrated corn
• Two 50 lb bags of long grain brown rice

We paid between $20 and $30 in-store each bag (which is a SUPER price) and for example the corn was just around $22.  There is no way I can buy 50 lbs worth of fresh corn and dehydrate it for that price.  The time alone would be super incredibly exhausting. So it is a great deal!

Now the online prices are about 40% higher, but still a better deal than many other bulk options.  We also spent a couple of hours researching online bulk prices and Honeyville is very competitive with their prices being some of the best out there.  Now, if you have a local option, there is a good chance that it will be better prices than bulk buying online.  But if you don’t, then you might want to compare the prices online.

With them having some of the best online prices, you can take another 20% off your order with coupon code: SPRING13. What this means, is that the prices are the best and there is a good chance that they will also beat many local prices too with that 20% off!

Okay, so now for some crazy pictures and the first time ever that we have shared pictures from our unfinished basement that is a giant storage room and pantry! The basement pictures are not great because it is a dark, cold, day here and so no sun was shining through this morning when I took them and the lighting down there is already terrible 🙂

So here’s the very simple process we use to store, rotate and use our bulk foods.

A couple of different views of our bulk foods bins in our basement.

First, we store the bulk bags in giant plastic bins.  We do this because they are in the basement and so this gives an extra layer of protection from elements that could ruin the food, like water (moisture or flooding), pests, etc. (which in the 6 years we have lived here has never been a problem anyway).  We can open them from the bin to fill-up the 6-gallon storage buckets….which leads me to step #2!

Second, we have seven 6-gallon buckets with lids that are called “gamma” lids (Honeyville sells these too, along with many, many other stores) which allows you to have a tightly sealed bucket, but also allows you to open and close them with ease.  The buckets have the 6 foods listed above, plus an extra one for the dried beans that we get at the case lot sales in our local grocery stores.

Third, we store our bulk foods and spices in glass jars in our pantry upstairs in the kitchen.  So when a glass jar is empty, we fill it up (we obviously have more than the 6 foods we have bought from Honeyville because we buy even more bulk foods from other sources too – I have around 20 glass jars in my pantry with different foods and grains :)) by taking it downstairs and going to the bucket and filling up the glass jar.  When the bucket runs dry, we fill-it up with the 50-lb bags in the bins.  We often find that our 32 oz jars can be filled dozens of times from the buckets and the buckets are filled about 2 times from the bags.

In the end, we are giving ourselves ease in using our supply, but not having to break into the bags often.  We cut it open once, fill the bucket, seal it with packing/duct tape and then open it the second time and throw the empty bag away.

Our food is accessible, safe, and clean.  I get my glass jars at Walmart or IKEA or when there is a special sale at other stores.  I pay $4.97 – $5.97 per jar at Walmart and about the same at IKEA depending on the size (which is why I have all different types!). I also recycle pretty much all the glass jars I get from store-bought products too like spaghetti sauce, pickle jars, etc. as I use them for freezer jams, refrigerator fermenting veggies and pickles, homemade dressings, bulk spices and so much more.

Between our bulk beef and chicken supply (we buy a half cow from a local farmer and buy our chicken in bulk from Zaycon Foods), our cheese supply, our produce co-op, our local dairy milk delivery and our bulk dried foods, we pretty much don’t have to grocery shop and can live off of all of this for a long time.  It also means that I am not dependent on coupons, which was one of my goals….to buy food, have a supply on hand and do it all in our low food budget without needing to use coupons.  Coupons then become just a supplement when it works! The coupons are not deciding what we eat and as a result, we are now eating simpler, healthier and even more frugal than before because most of this still ends up being cheaper than buying food with sales and coupons!

So, if you want to see if you can get better prices at the Honeyville site with the 20% off coupon code, head to the Honeyville site HERE.

Where do you buy bulk foods and how do your prices compare so that everyone can get some ideas?