Forum: Join in with Group Buying for Canned Butter Cheese and MR Es II

Continued from here. “Pass the jelly, please…”

Opening post from previous thread:

Fully Prepped In SoCal – at 20:48

Hi All;

We have been toying with the idea of using our combined purchasing power to negotiate wholesale/discount/group pricing on preps we are already purchasing, and I’ve decided to take the lead and start one for canned butter from New Zealand, canned cheese from Australia by Kraft, and MRE’s. The idea is that individually we probably don’t merit a discount for a purchase of a case or two of something here and a case of something there. However, collectively, we are a large buying group that warrants special pricing and consideration IMHO.

So, I have taken the liberty of negotiating a potential group purchase for fellow fluwikians with the importer of the above products so we can all take advantage of our collective buying power. Now, just to put everyone’s mind at ease, I am in no way connected with this company or will not be in the middle in any way handling any money or anything like that.

After seeing how many people had already purchased or were interested in purchasing this canned butter and canned cheese specifically, and reading on another post about this company and complicated past group buys on some other forums (see thread “Canned Butter and Cheese Distributor” at http://tinyurl.com/hjmab for more background), I contacted the distributor directly and asked if it was feasible. They tell me that it is something that they would welcome, and that they can make it very easy for us just by issuing a coupon for us to use while shopping on their site. That lets each person purchase whatever quantity they want, pay for it however they want, and have it shipped right away without waiting for someone else to pay if it were going to be shipped all together.

So, if you (like me) are in the market for some more of this stuff (which by the way is my primary motivation for putting this together - as I’m sure someone will ask. I just want to save as much money as possible like the rest of us, so the more I can save us as a group, the more I will save personally on my purchases) or if you have thought about purchasing some after reading some of the different threads on it, then I need your help. The only hurdle I have left is that I promised them this afternoon that I would get them some idea of what kind of volume we would be talking about over the next few days so they can price it as far below retail for us as possible. And although I haven’t been told they won’t take my word for it, my goal is to show them this thread in a few days after we have gotten some collective feedback from the group as to what a bulk purchase may consist of.

To give you some information to help with the decision making process, the company is www.mrewholesalers.com, they sell retail through www.mredepot.com (you’ll see numerous posts with praise from fellow wikians on their good prices, speedy delivery and customer service) and the canned butter is commercial canned in New Zealand in 12 ounce cans and is sold in quantities of 6 cans, 12 cans and full cases of 24 cans. I suspect we will be looking at a price between $70 and $80 per full case after talking with them a bit (retails for $92), and shipping is based on your distance from them, but ranges from $10 to $20. The cheese is made by Kraft in Australia, and is sold in quantities of 6 cans, 12 cans and full cases of 36 cans. Each can is 8 ounces, and we could be looking at $20+ off of the retail of $90 on that as well. Shipping is about the same as the butter, but they tell me multiple cases ship together and there is a big savings for that. MREs come 12 to a case and retail for $65, so I’m looking for a healthy discount there too.

For more info on the company or the butter/cheese/MRE’s check out the following thread as well; Real Canned Butter for Cheap; http://tinyurl.com/ygyaqa Canned Butter and Cheese Distributor; http://tinyurl.com/hjmab

Now, I need everyone’s help if you are interested - please post your interest and the number of cases of each that you may potentially be in the market for, as I will keep a tally and take this back to them to get us the best deal possible. We’re not committing to anything by expressing our interest, but we will be sending them a strong message that if they want our business they will have to earn it. If anyone has any questions, let me know.

Thanks in advance for the support!

Fully Prepped In SoCal – at 09:48

Thanks Zeta for getting the e-mail address up before I had a chance! scyros@MREWholesalers.com is the correct e-mail address for our contact, sorry - should have posted it before. Steven Cyros is the VP, and he actualy told me to post his e-mail address in case anyone had any questions, so he won’t mind at all (although I suspect he is buried right now;-)

Glad this is working out so well, I’m tickled that we were able to pull this off!!

I’m ready for the next one now. So far we have two suggestions, Alpine Aire and Nitro-Pak - both good ones IMO!! Any other suggestions/consensus??

Thanks BB!! Here’s a recap of the ordering info;

PRICE; They are going to offer us a 21% discount (note, they started at 15% with me at 30%, and that is where we met). I stressed the fact that the volume would be larger for a better discount, and I think they understand our potential at this point. We spent some time on this thread so they could get a better understanding of where we were coming from, so thank you all for the great points and participation! They say that the margin is slimmer on some items, and their goal was to do a website-wide offer for us to include every product on the site without having to exclude any items. The sale will be active early this evening (they promised by 5:00 PM Pacific/8:00 PM Eastern (less than an hour – wow it’s been a long day), and all we have to do is enter the code “fluwikie” at check out (no quotes or caps) and the discount will be applied on our entire shopping cart.

TERMS: I got them to agree to keep this active until the end of the year!! They saw the value of being able to allow friends, neighbors and family, as well as the community to take advantage, and understand we will need time to spread the word. They also are cognizant of the fact that the holiday season is right around the corner, and that some of us have budgets and can’t necessarily purchase everything in one shot/month. So, our group discount will not expire until 12/31/06 – that gives us 2 ½ months!!

Fully Prepped In SoCal

FANTASTIC!!!

THANK YOU!

Cinda said on the first thread: A thought- do you think you can get ordering info from MREDEPOT? Like after a week- how much increased $ came in just from the Fluwikie promo? If it was substantial, and I’m certain it will be- it might be just the thing to convince another company to do the same thing for us.

I’m sure they have a way of tracking this…and it would be nice to know how they’ve done in the last 24 hours and then later down the road to see if it affected their profits just by the shear volume of purchasing. I’ve shared the info with another yahoo group I’m on and gave the info to my closest fire station last night because we were holding a meeting in their conference room. I’ll do the same for the other guys just down the road from us!

If you’re a member of a yahoo group or some other online group, remember to invite them to take advantage of this offer!

Congrats on your success FPISC! As you look to negotiate group discounts with other vendors please keep in mind that some of us need to time our purchases. Given the rates you got at MREwholeslaers, I will most likely buy more than the 3 cases of MREs I had committed to…plus there are the other items that have become available with the discount. This will really put pressure on the bank account and I would hate to get locked out from other buys on a timing constraint. You did fabulous with the discount through the year end…it really helps us maintain financial flexibility.

Thanks again!

Analyst4mkts – at 13:02 you’re right of course….I’m hoping that if the company sees a good financial return on this effort, that they’ll consider extending the savings into the new year — it never hurts to ask as we draw nearer the deadline!

Just wanted to let you know that I just received an e-mail from mredepot which says my entire order was shipped today! Pretty speedy service I would think. :)

Just ordered 2 cases butter, 2 cases cheese. Shipping for 1 case was 22 dollars for the 4 cases 84.5 dollars. Not much savings on shipping.

Unfortunately UPS doesn’t discount on shipping until you reach hundred weight.

The discount covered my shipping to Northern Wisconsin. Again, I wish to thank you, FPISC.

Oremus – at 15:05 at least you didn’t have to pay an inflated shipping charge OR a handling charge!! And you probably saved enough making your purchase to have covered the shipping cost. Shouldn’t feel too bad about that!

Snowhound1 at 14:30 - yep, I just got one too. I will post again when order is rec’d. We are going to try out the butter and cheese and then may place another order - so far, excellent service.

i ordered last night, and they shipped today- can’t beat service and prices. thanks so much for helping put this together for all of us!!

bump so it doesn’t get lost in the thread closings.

Ordered at 1pm, shipping email at 6:36pm. Now that’s service.

I was playing around on the net and did a Google search for *Kraft canned cheese* and came up with this news article…

“The Strathmerton (Australia) plant will also lose production of the cheese spread and canned cheese currently made for Middle East consumers when Kraft opens a new manufacturing site in that market.”

http://www.confectionerynews.com/news/ng.asp?id=67995-kraft

Looks like you better get your canned cheese now before it begins being manufactured in the Middle East. I’d much rather be eating something that an Aussie produced than something made by people who generally don’t have our best interests at heart.

According to Kraft Australia’s website, the canned cheese will be produced in the Middle East by mid-2008.

“focus on domestic production at the Strathmerton processed cheese plant as cheese spread and canned cheese currently produced for Middle East consumers transitions to a new Kraft manufacturing site in the Middle East by mid-2008.”

http://www.kraftfoods.com.au/kraft/page?siteid=kraft-prd&locale=ausm1&PagecRef=2490&Mid=41

Ordered at 10:17am, shipping email at 5:06pm & a backorder notice we were all aware of already— we’re not slowing them down a bit — yet!!! :-)

Could someone please tell me what the price per case of mre’s came out to? I am on day 21 of sitting with my dad while he is in the hospital and my brain is like cheese. Thanks

$51 and change sorry about your dad…….been there with both parents

Or about $4.25 per meal

Thank you so much!

mojo – at 22:20 take care of yourself too, we’ll remember you both in our prayers

I sent this email to them earlier for a question that I had and received the following response. Thought others would be interested.

Hi Terri;

You are very welcome! Great idea – I don’t mind at all if you post, thanks for thinking of it. That will save me from figuring out how to post it myself, so I appreciate it!

Thanks again, and let me know if I can answer any more questions for you OR the group!!

-Steven

Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 5:08 PM To: Steven L. Cyros Subject: RE: A few questions.

Thanks Steven for your quick response. If you don’t mind I will post this on the wikie. Surely others have the same question and it may help to keep your e mail volume down..

Thanks again,

Terri

“Steven L. Cyros” <scyros@MREwholesalers.com> wrote:

Hi Terri;

It is I who should be thanking you – we are grateful for the opportunity with the forum members, and are very appreciative of the business!

You ask a great question. The butter, cheese and meats will probably last 10 to 15 years. The folks in New Zealand who can the butter say indefinitely, Kraft says 10 to 15 years on the cheese, and Werling and Sons say 8 to 10 years – but we have had an independent group test the packaging on all three products (just 3 weeks ago on the canned meats) and their expected shelf lives, and of course direct sunlight will shorten any shelf life – but kept cool you can plan on 10 years for sure according to the reports. The contents will most likely also be fine at the 15 year mark (i.e. not spoiled), but you may lose some of the nutritional value. When that happens, you will just find that some or all of the normal vitamins and minerals may wind up decreasing from the 10th year to the 15th year – but the food will still be safe for consumption and will still provide good calories in the event of an emergency. If kept cool enough, you will most likely exceed the 15 year mark, but we’re not exactly sure how far out it will go at that point. A good rule of thumb on any canned food item is throw it out if the can swells – and the best thing about meat and dairy products is that your nose will know if the food spoils after you open a can, so it won’t make it into your mouth in the event you find a spoiled can 15 years from now.

Hopefully that helps, but if you need any additional information, please don’t hesitate to call on me.

Thank you again!

-Steven

Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 2:54 PM To: scyros@MREWholesalers.com Subject: A few questions.

Hi,

I am a member of fluwikie and have a question for you. I am interested in purchasing the canned cheese, butter and some of the meats. Could you please give me an idea of the shelf life of these items? Thank you so much for your time and for the opportunity that you have given our forum.

Hi All;

I’m tickled to hear that everything went well. I kind of thought we would stump them on the shipping - but just had an e-mail waiting for me when I got home, so my order is on it’s way too… Amazing.

Good point on getting them to give us some sort of testimonial - that’s an awesome idea! I’ll ask the question and get back to everyone. I’d also like to see how they did today/this week/this month, so I’ll see if I can get my hands on that info as well.

Interesting info on the Kraft cheese - I don’t think it will be available in the US for much longer if it is going to be made in the middle east… Probably be harder to bring through customs. I’ll ask that also. I better get my my next order in a few days early next month just to be safe.

Thanks again for the praise and kind words all! I’ll see if I can start putting feelers out tomorrow on some of the other companies suggested - I’ll have more time tomorrow as I don’t need to be on the road all day. I’ll keep you posted.

Got an email that my order was shipped. Less than 4 hours after I placed it.

Hi FPISC, I’m wondering why you didn’t make your purchase while you were at their place, could’ve saved you on the shipping cost which would have been significant savings! They do also accept pick up orders, don’t they?

Hi Youngmom; I thought about it, but was afraid to give the impression that I was just negotiating on my behalf. I figured if I said “and by the way here is what I want”, it would discount the potential of the group buy in their minds and we may not have gotten the discount that we did. Plus, because I’m in Southern California, the shipping wasn’t too bad, and the discount more than made up for it. I think they do offer pick up as well, as I’m pretty sure I have seen that on their website.

FPISC-My order is on the way as well. MREDEPOT is a highly-efficient, hands-on, courteous outfit. Hope our little deal gives them a big boost.

And you, FPISC, are a first class act. : )

Thank you for the VERY kind words MM!! Glad to hear it worked out for you too. I know I have been impressed as well. I’m waiting to hear back from them on how well this did for them in the first day - I’ll post their reply as soon as I hear back. I’m dying to know!!

I plan on researching the next one tomorrow from suggestions already made - I’ll keep everyone posted.

Well said Medical Maven!

I may place another order today — DH balanced the check book yesterday so I need to buy spare Berkey filters & another repair kit and more canned meat!

I ordered and didn’t rcv my shipping confirmation like you all did, so I sent a request for info to Steve and he got right back to me with the info I needed. I am very pleased with the service we are receiving from this company.

Cinda, is your spam alert set high enough that it might have put the confirmation in a spam box or in your trash?

OK, I just got the poop from mredepot on the orders - thought we would all get a kick out of seeing this. Yesterday they shipped 49 orders with our discount totaling $13,069 (plus their regular business). Today they have received 8 more orders totaling $1,127 (as of about 9:30 this morning when he e-mailed me back) and they are bracing for more. He said we definately taxed their shipping yesterday, but they got every single order out that was in by 3:30 - they even had to drive a few up to UPS that came in after the truck left. He said he knew I would be giving him a hard time if they missed the same day turn-around, so they even had the receptionist in the warehouse packing boxes!! Too funny.

Steven wanted me to pass on that they are extremely pleased with the progress on the discount, that we exceeded their expectations, having hit almost half of what we promised in the first 24 hours - and that they are going to go out and try to use their buring power to bring in some new and hard to find items for us over the next couple of weeks to try and say thanks. He also asked me to pass on a round of thanks to everyone for the business and the great calls and e-mails, as I guess a bunch of us sent thanks and praise by phone and e-mail. He promised to give me updates on the program whenever we want so we can use it to help with other group buys for credibility - and offered to have any other companies we think we may want to work with in the future call them to verify the numbers any time, and that they would give high praise for the value of our word for following through on what we promised to deliver. So a big thanks to everyone for making me feel good about delivering what I promised we would!!

I just placed my order, a case of butter, a sample can of the cheese (to try before buying whole cases), a nifty 5-in-1 Emergency/Survival tool, and Medic-Surgical Instrument kit. The discount was just as promised, and I got my order confirmation via email right away. Hopefully my order will be shipped as quickly as everyone else’s. If this cheese is good, I plan on ordering several cases over the discount offer period, as well as butter and other items. Thank you again for all your work here Fully Prepped In SoCal. And another thank you to the folks at MREdepot.com for their offer to us. ^_^

this would make a great press release.

I think they will see an order surge over the weekend for Monday, when people have more time to browse the site and put together additional orders.

Wow, I am REALLY impressed with the group buy that FPISC put together for us, THANK YOU! I have been wanting to order the cheese especially, and the butter for quite some time but just balked at the cost… with this group buy, I saved enough to completely cover the shipping charges as well as still have a pretty good discount from the normal case price!

Because DH doesn’t like cheese and wouldn’t see the value of such a purchase ;-) I emailed MREDepot right after placing the order to see if they could time the shipping so it would arrive on a day when DH wasn’t home. I told them that I didn’t care if it meant a 2 week delay in shipping if they could try to time it to arrive on such a day. NO problem! came the VERY speedy reply from them, it works out perfectly that if they ship it today that it will get here on a day that I requested! I am VERY impressed with this company and their great service. I WILL be ordering more from them as finances allow. Thanks again!

Fully Prepped In SoCal – at 13:07 That is FANTASIC news!!!! WOW - damn we’re good! :-)

I hope their receptionist doesn’t quit! Girl, I think you are going to be amazed before the end of the weekend at their figures vs what you promised them.

I hope our overseas posters remember that they can have something sent to a relative in the states or Canada and THEN have their friend or family member ship it on to them in different countries — that way they still take advantage of the discount, even though there would be dual cost for shipping to an overseas location.

And if you want to have something sent to someone else, if you use PayPal, just change the shipping address & your shipment will go to the address you enter, I guess it’s the same with using a charge card directly, you would just type in a different shipping address.

Kim, that’s so funny about wanting the shipment to come when your husband isn’t home — I wish that would work more often at my house, but the delivery guy always seems to come late on the days when I’m getting something shipped to me, and comes early to all the rest of my neighbors. :-)

Yeah, that’s the one thing that worries me is the UPS guy will pull up past his usual 5pm arrival time, just in time for DH to pull in after work. Hopefully either UPS will be on the ball that day, or DH will get home late :-) Think I’ll be sure to tell DH on that day that I’m making one of his *least* favorite dinners so he won’t be in any hurry!

Kim, you’re a riot!!

Listen everyone, I would suggest (even though I KNOW all of you have dozens of can openers already) that you invest in one that cuts the lid away in such a way as to not leave rough edges and also makes the lid ‘reusable’ — that’s what will work perfectly on your cheese and butter cans! They’re too big for plastic sealing tops like pet food cans have, and foils and plastic wraps won’t seal it as well as reapplying the lid could. I THINK I ordered one at www.onetouchopener.com, but I haven’t gotten a confirmation email from them so I need to call them and find out if I ordered 4 different times trying to get ONE to go through.

If you’re interested in that product at that website, they’ll offer you an improved ‘deluxe’ model for more than the $14.95 and then you’ll get an offer for a flashlight (Faraday shakeable one) and for binacolors (can’t spell that right)and you have to click through all these things with either a yes or a no to get to the end.

Anyway, you might want to consider one from them or find one on ebay or somewhere.

Nothing beats a Mirro wall mount can opener and a butter bell.

LOL

Hooah.

The group buy that FPISC put together for us is great. My order, though small, will cost only $1.52 to ship to VA thanks the the discount. Big savings over the normal $87.29 cost. Many Thanks…

Just got off the phone with mredepot. They said they don’t like to take orders over the phone b/c they don’t like to have access to credit card info. Told them I don’t like that either, that’s why I’m calling - to arrange an order and pay by postal money order! Absolutely no problem. The man, Steven, was so very, very nice and so tickled to have so much businiess. Most pleasant internet-related transaction I can recall. Yeah. I know I’m a Luddite.

I’m-workin’-on-it – at 15:57

Those can openers you mentioned are available at Linens N Things, at least at the store close to me. I used a 20% off coupon that you can usually find at magazines/newspapers (I get mine by slow mail since I’m in their mailing list), but don’t remember how much I paid for it but it’s usually at the msrp. They also accept competitor’s coupons such as Bed Bath and Beyond. So with the coupon and no shipping fee I think it may be a better deal for those interested. BTW, the product received pretty good reviews at Amazon.com.

youngmom – at 17:59

EXCELLENT information — I hadn’t thought of that….I know there are great can openers out there of all kinds — I have one that opens jars too that I love, as well as 2 manual ones in each BOB but none of them cut so you have a reusable lid remaining that won’t cut you — something else good about it during a crisis.

Hey,

I wrote a thank you to Steven at MREdepot & the employees today & late today I got the neatest reply that I thought needed to be shared with you — it’s funny, shows a lot of creativity on MREdepot’s part to face and succeed when presented a challenge, & is touching to the point of tears in it’s sincerety.

I’ll copy what I wrote to him first since I kind of wrote it as being representative of ALL of us, since he refers to it in his reply:

I wrote:

Steven and all employees at MREdepot,

I’ve purchased from you thru ebay in the past and you were wonderful then, and now that our fluwikie group is purchasing at the very gracious discount you’ve allowed us, you’re just top-notch in my book!

We thought we might slow you down a little on your shipping with an influx of orders, but you guys are on top of EVERYthing and getting our orders out as smoothly as ever! You’re absolutely amazing and so very nice to allow us to have this opportunity and to share it with our families, friends and our local first responders.

I’m more fortunate, due to a small family, than some with big families, in that I might from time to time have more money to spend on good quality products, but I’m always looking for good deals on those good quality products, no matter how blessed our finances might be.

But there are moms, daughters, sons-in-laws etc, on fluwikie that are trying to not only take care of their own household, but also trying to prepare for others not under their own roofs and on extremely tight budgets already, and your generosity to allow us a deep discount AND to allow us to purchase through the end of the year is such a blessing to so many people who are scraping together every dollar they can find to take care of others, no matter what the source of a potential threat.

Our prayers will continually be with your business, that you continue to prosper, you gain even more advertising through our involvement with you and that your own families will be blessed by your efforts to help others.

Thank you so much,

Rose Heath, I’m-Workin’-On-It (fluwikie), nappingcat (ebay)

(THIS IS THE TYPE OF COMPANY I JUST LOVE TO DO BUSINESS WITH) Here is his very touching reply :

Hi Rose;

I didn’t realize we had crossed paths before, it’s great to see you again - thank you very much!!

I hope you don’t mind, but I printed out your e-mail and put it up in the lunch room earlier today. I personally really appreciate the kind words and support very much, and I can tell you on behalf of everyone here who has read your e-mail (and I think everyone has by now, as I have gotten a lot of positive comments on it today) we really appreciate the time you took to touch base with us AND for all the business, so from the bottom of my heart, thank you Rose!!

I will say honestly that we were right at our limit yesterday, but I made a promise to your rep that I wouldn’t fall behind, and although we almost did (we had to drive a few packages to UPS at the end of the day because we missed our 4:00 truck with some stragglers), we were very happy to be able to get everything out! To be honest with you, it was a great challenge that we used internally to bring every one together here - we even had a couple of contests and handed out some prizes, so it was a great opportunity to pull together as a team focused on a common challenge. I don’t think there was a single person that was spared a shift in the warehouse yesterday - and I think right down to the last one they had a good time when all was said and done. I know we all grew a little bit closer yesterday as a company - and being able to read words like yours today after that exercise has really made a lot of people feel extremely proud.

We obviously feel the same sense of purpose on being prepared for the unknown - natural or man-made, and knowing that there are so many others who feel the same way is always encouraging. It is a tough thing even to know that you and your family are prepared, while at the same time wondering whether your extended family, neighbors or friends have thought ahead. So this was a very good fit not only for our business but for our personal beliefs and convictions - I only wish we had thought to approach you folks on it first rather than the other way around! If we just helped one person put some food away who may not have at the regular price, then it was definitely worth it!!!

On a business/professional note - we have certainly benefited from this relationship already, and it has only been a couple of days - so I thank you and the group VERY much for the opportunity Rose! As word gets out both on the forum and through family, friends, and the local communities I am sure this will just continue to grow - so please pass on our thanks to everyone, as we are very grateful for the chance to try and put something together like this. I’m hopeful that if we can show the success of this offer over the next few weeks, that I will be able to convince everyone here that we should do this on a permanent basis for all. So thank you in advance for getting the word out - I hope that together we will create more awareness in our respective local communities for the need to plan ahead!

Warmest Regards,

-Steven

Ah. Something to make you smile. A company that acutally cares about its customers and does its best to meet or exceed expectations. Not enough of those these days.

yes, I’m bitter. Today the lazy employees at BJs wouldn’t help me get my heavy storage shelves into my car and I banged myself pretty good trying to lug them around. I’ll be placing my order (gladly) with MRE tomorrow.

LauraB – at 20:07 I’m so sorry you had a boo-boo & it sounds like it really hurt! But I’ll bet your shelves are great & MRE will be glad to help you fill them up!!

Viral marketing at it’s best.

LMAO, I just thought about what I typed after I typed it.

No pun intended on the viral part.

Let me see if I can post this on the RIGHT thread this time…

…Just and FYI - my order from mredepot arrived today, packed very well too. Now that is an amazing turnaround… That’s got to be the fastest internet order ever for me! Definately an outstanding company!!!!!!

Thank you again Fully Prepped!!!!

I’m Working on It- I had to smile when I read your post. :) I had ordered some butter some months ago and when it arrived I oohed and aahed about what a pretty can it had arrived in. My friend went out and bought me one of the non damaging can openers, so I wouldn’t “damage” the can when I opened it. :) She told me at the time that she had bought one of the can openers for herself as well. I think I will give her some of the new butter that I just ordered from mredepot, so she will have some and be able to enjoy it as well.

Snowhound1 – at 21:38 Boy you’re good to your friends — she’ll love that, especially knowing how important it is to you-and how good it is!

Traveling on business the rest of the week but will make my order online on Sunday DV.

I forgot to check the status for awhile, but my order shipped today, same day as I placed it. These people are really awesome. Totally above and beyond, in my eyes.

I shared the info with friends, so I am hoping they will order too. These are the kind of people I will always do business with, thanks to their attitude and response.

Hi All;

Looks like mredepot is living up to their promises, glad it is working out so well for everyone!

OK, I’m ready to start thinking about the next one now (or is it too early?). So far I have three suggestions (unless I missed one - if so, let me know); Honeyville Grain, Alpine Aire and Nitro-Pak. Which one should we put at the top of the list?

Or, should we wait a little bit so we can all build our bank accounts back up;-)???

Is the discount for just butter, cheese, MREs, or for other things on their web site, too?

you outed yourself I’m working on it!/ROse! thanks for taking time for the letter to Steve at mredepot. and of course, again to FPISC for setting this up. I LOVE these win/win/win scenarios. It also sounds like they treat their employees really well, with respect. It is so great to do busine

will place my order tomorrow to avoid weekend rush.

thanks also I’m Working On IT (what are you working on…? Prepping I suppose?!)for link to that no-damage can opener. I had never heard of such a thing.

that is, it is great to do business with companies like this. Sorry

How about Emergency Essentials? (BePrepared.com) They seem to be less expensive than Alpine Aire.

What about: providentliving.com lots of goodies PleasantHillGrain.com big berkeys? I like beprepared nad honeyville too. Mostly I’m thrilled to get my butter and cheese that I had given up on because of cost/shipping. Way to go.

Emergency Essentials gets my vote. Fantastic selection of goodies.

Meserole in FL – at 00:10 YES I was going to suggest that too,

mj – at 00:18 more good ones!

LizB – at 00:02 It’s for EVERYthing!

Fully Prepped In SoCal – at 23:51 Could you do more than one at a time?

I don’t see why we couldn’t try all of them - good idea I’m-workin’-on’it!! I’ll get an e-mail out to them all today, and lets see what we get back!!

Meanwhile I’ll try and see if I can get mredepot to give us a daily tally, as we’ll use it for the next ones to show we deliver what we promise.

I’ll keep you posted…

I’ll vote for honeyville grain I need some more eggs LOL

I placed my order last night for powdered eggs, cheese and butter. My gf was actually very supportive of that order. Butter and eggs were something she really wanted to be sure we had. I was suprised that she was letting me order. Sometimes she reigns me in, and other times she tells me to go for it. lately she has been more into the whole prepping idea. She likes that we have a good stash of things now and that “the bf closet” offers all sorts of interesting “treats” when cravings come up. We have finally moved towards using and replacing some of the preps now instead of jsut storing things. This makes it seem less “weird” and more like we just keep well stocked…like our grandma’s used to be when they had pantries. Not many people keep pantries anymore. But I’m glad I have one now! We never seem to be “needing” anything any more! -no need to “run to the store” for 1 or 2 things. We get to buy only when things are on sale to keep well stocked. I’ve noticed that overall we are saving a lot mroe money on groceries.

TreasureIslandGal – at 09:18 that’s great that you both see the benefits of not only storing but rotating & I’ll be you WILL safe a LOT more money on groceries since you can shop more strategically.

Carrey in VA – at 09:07

With Honeyvilles low shipping, I think they effectively have a discount built in.

Oremus - at 11:26

Your right of coarse, but it can’t hurt to ask.

Just placed my order for butter and cheese…. now I can sleep tonight! lol I am thinking of making baskets up for some of my family members for Christmas gifts with items such as these and information print outs…. one way to get them all prepared! Thanks!

Oremus – at 11:26; good point on the shipping, I noticed that today. But I agree that it can’t hurt to ask. Whenever a company does free or low-cost shipping, I automatically assume that it is built into their profit margin… After all, they are in business to make a profit. So, I’d be willing to bet there is room in there for them to do something for us above any beyond the low cost shipping.

I tracked down the contact and e-mail information for everyone we talked about, and just sent them all an introduction to our group buy offer (same as I did with mredepot). So, now we wait and see who gets back to us first, and if they all do, what we need to do to move it to the next level. I’ll keep everyone in the loop!

Also, be sure to post any feedback on mredepot here, and and too keep passing the word, as I’ll check back with them tomorrow to see how sales went so I can post it, as I will no doubt be directing many more companies to this thread as proof of our purchasing potential!

Thanks!!

AA - gift baskets with some different items, information print outs and some articles is a great idea… Thanks for just taking care of half my Christmas list this year! Wish I thought of that.

bump

Fully Prepped In SoCal – at 19:55

Until you get down to their cost, there’s always room for a discount. Even though I have enough dried eggs for 6 months, I can always work on a year; Put me down for a case of eggs and oxygen absorbers if you decide to do your magic with Honeyville.

Just placed my order! got some eggs and milk substitute while I was at it to store secretly for my friends little ones, their parents being confirmed non-preppers dispite my efforts. My they do have expensive shipping tho!! I was surprised..because you can’t really know until the end when you’ve gone thru the whole process. My shipping was a good third of my order which didn’t seem normal but maybe it is for these kind of companies?

It about equals out I think because the base prices are very good (crank radio, solar battery chargers both much less than I’d ever seen them for, got both). DIdn’t read until after about Honeywell being much cheaper shipping wise as above, would have gotten eggs their instead. At least I am supporting the fluwikie cause or at least reputation in some sense. At least they seem to be good people. No one else seems surprised about shipping, my incling is this is normal for such companies and I am just not aquainted with that…can anyone confirm?

Fully Prepped In SoCal thank you! Placed my order and rec shipping notice should be here on Oct 24, wow than k you very much for your hard work on this!

jplanner – at 00:29 The powdered products way a ton compared to the dehydrated stuff so if you’ve only been buying dehydrated it will seem high. If you’ve bought eggs before bo back and look at your invoice from a previous purchase from someone else except for Honeyville where they have a set ship price but their product price is high instead.

I have a couple of #10 cans of orange drink (I think it is) and milk drink upstairs that I have to use both hands for if I’m moving them because they’re just awkardly heavy for just one hand!

The shipping is the actual UPS rate and they’re shipping from California. The only way it could be better would be if they had a warehouse on MY side of the great Mississippi! I ordered Monday, should arrive this coming Monday (I’m in Alabama) and I’m VERY pleased with that turn-around.

Good morning, I placed my order Monday night for 1 case each of butter, cheese and MRE. And I received it ALL this morning!!! Thanks to all.

bump

Afternoon Everyone, just placed my order. Was small but plan to order every two weeks till i get everything I need. This is so Awesome. Thanks so much Fully Prep for setting this up.

Quick price comparision:

MRE wholesalers vs Honeyville: pre-discount, Honeyville is cheaper on Honeyville’s own products. Post-discount plus shipping difference, it may be a wash.

Pre-discount Eggs, whole: M = 12.95, H = 10.99 Freeze dry fruit combo: M = 85.95, H = 74.99 etc

But - when it comes to grains and many other items, Honeyville vs Walton, looks like Walton comes out way ahead even though Honeyville’s shipping is superficially less.

Hard red wheat, 50 pound bag: H = 36.89, W = 14.95 Pearled barley, 50 lb bag (or 2 25 lb bags): H = 36.85, W = 14.50 etc

(Also, Walton has a wider variety of grains including many organic; when I called to ask Honeyville if they had any non-GE grains, I was told many of their grains are GE. I haven’t noticed that they sell anything organic but I haven’t checked every item.)

Walton price list here: http://waltonfeed.com/cart/all.html#K

IIRC, Survival Acres drop ships walton and mountain house and alpine at either the same price you’d get buying directly or often at a slight price reduction.

Do some price comparisons. (Watch out for differences in packaging sizes.) No place is cheapest on everything.

Got my order today, pleased with everything except the packing peanuts…I hate those things. Also, it arrived before my DH got home. >;) All put up now! LOL

LizB – at 18:30

your right, no one place is cheapest on everything. Though what I have learned is that normally you can buy white flour, corn meal, and dry milk cheaper locally than over the net when you factor in shipping. But then, the only food stuffs I’m buying, that I don’t buy normally, is the dehydrated eggs. Honeyville grains are by far the cheapest when it comes to them.

Suggestion:

Put the site to order from and the discount “fluwikie” at the top of the page for anyone that is new to easily see -

Those who received cans from MRE - what condition did they arrive in? Back when I bought some meat from werling, 5 of 12 cans were somewhat dented. (I wouldn’t mind, except that all dents were at seams, whether top, bottom, or side; and to the extent I might want to make up gifts of canned foods like premium butter, dented cans make unattractive gifts.)

This is apparently a common problem, as the Werling package included a letter saying all cans were undented when packed. UPS denies responsibility because there’s no damage to the external packaging.

Is the butter/cheese arriving undented?

LizB – at 19:13 I’ve received some in the past, but no dents & I remember getting the letter. MRE hasn’t sent cans to any of us yet because their meat delivery isn’t into the warehouse yet — ask at the end of NEXT week.

Hi Everyone;

Couple of quick updates for everyone;

1) mredepot e-mail me the numbers for this week because I said we wanted progress reports, and as of about 2:00 when they e-mailed me, they were showing a total of 73 orders with our discount representing $14,753 in sales. As an interesting footnote - he told me they were considering making this a longer term sale if the numbers continue this way, maybe even permanent… Needless to say, I think they are pleased!

2) Emergency Essentials go back to me first (earlier today) on our group buy proposal; Their answer was that “they don’t normally do programs like that.” Their suggestion was that we subscribe to their e-mail news letter, as they send out “periodic specials on discounted items and close-outs”… Needless to say, I am going to see if I can work my way up the ladder to someone else, as that is not what we are looking for.

3) Honeyville Grain also got back to me a little while ago. They said it may be something that they will consider. When I mentioned we were doing it with mredepot, they said they know them very well and asked if I minded if they called them to see how it was going. I said no problem, and we agreed to follow-up again the first part of the week. So there may be some opportunity there.

LizB, if you’ve ever had much dealings with UPS then you know that you stand great odds that your package will arrive bent, dented, smashed, broken or mangled. I’ve had friends who worked in the local UPS shipping facility who say it is VERY common for packages to be kicked across the floor, thrown and bounce on the floor, etc. As a small business owner, I had plenty of rotten experiences with their shipping, both with what I received and what (little) I shipped with them. I personally don’t know how they stay in business… well, I guess it’s because their rates on heavy things are lower than anyone else. I found them always to be a PITA to deal with and soon switched to USPS, but then everything I shipped was small and lightweight. Since no one could afford to have this heavier stuff shipped by USPS, then I guess we’re stuck with the crappy UPS “service”. I haven’t gotten my order from MRE Depot yet, but since it’s shipping via UPS, I’m sure there’ll be some dents and dings.

I figured so many people have recently ordered butter and cheese, some must have opened the carton and could report the condition of the cans!

I ordered butter a few weeks ago from them and 4 of the cans had superficial dents in them…no major damage. I have 2 cases of cheese coming on Monday…will let you know.

Just placed my order, cheese, beef and mre’s. I ordered butter from them several weeks before, The buter came in a box inside another box with peanuts..no dents and it took about a week to get to me. Was pleased with the speed of the service, quality and their follow-up with emails and tracking.

Got my order yesterday and none of the cans were dented. We were so pleased with the quality of the butter that I ordered a case of it today. The service, BTW, was excellent. I did not get an email from UPS where I could track my order, emailed MREdepot and within minutes they had emailed me with the information.

Thanks again FPiSC for doing such a wonderful job in obtaining the discount.

Received my case of cheese here in TX 55 hours after I placed the order. It came in a box inside another box with peanuts..no dents. Wife said lets taste it, I told her hands off, it is only to look at. :-)

Dreamweaver - LOL! It was really difficult to open that can of butter:) But we had to know if we liked it, so we could order more!!

Fully Prepped In SoCal – at 20:50

I’m glad it is going so well, and thank you for all your work.

I haven’t placed my order yet, but plan to. I’m going together with a co-worker on the order so we can share shipping and we may split some cases.

I’m sure we’ll be ordering more too, since the discount is through the end of the year. It would be great if they would extend it, especially since Christmas is just around the corner.

Snowhound1 – at 18:35 Got my order today, pleased with everything except the packing peanuts…I hate those things.

hehehehe…you obviously don’t sell on eBay — if someone mails you something in a sturdy box WITH shipping peanuts to boot, that’s treasure in itself for those of us who reuse packaging! :-)

I’ll be placing another order tomorrow.

I’m please Honeyville Grains is at least willing to contact MREdepot to talk about the idea — that’s a GOOD thing!

FYI, my local Cub Foods had cans of the Kraft cheese until about 2 hours ago. They were in the ethnic section, marked DISCONTINUED and were $3.63 a can.

The Cub in Duluth, MN has only one severely dented can left. There are Cubs all over the Twin Cities, though.

Good Hunting.

I am having a problem ordering from MREdepot. Is anyone having the same problem? I click on the button that puts it in my shopping cart and it goes in but only one item can be there at a time and the next item bumps out the first. When I go to check out it says that I have nothing in my shopping cart. What am I doing wrong? I would think it should be obvious since they are trying to sell something. Also I can`t find the phone number on the site either which seems strange. Otherwise I would call them. Since most other people on here have ordered and don`t seem to be having this problem, I assume it is something I am doing. Any suggestions?

Sounds like a cookie or popup is being blocked.

A few weeks ago I ordered one case of cheese and one of butter (before the discount.) I ordered on a Thursday and they were at my door by Saturday morning, in perfect condition. Amazing! I just ordered 3 cases of cheese and 4 of butter for friends who are prepping. They had sampled my cheese and butter and were very impressed. MREdepot is a terrific company! I’ve told other friends and family out-of-state about the discount and they are ordering, too.

senegal1 – at 23:08 If you look in the Contact Us section, I think you’ll find a phone number there…..I saw it a couple of places, but can’t remember exactly where.

If you don’t find it let us know again and we’ll post it for you.

I’m heading off to bed!

One company that might be worth considering is grandma’s country kitchen in utah. They sell dehydrated soy milk that might help out others with lactose intolerant children (that’s how I found them a while back through fluwikie). Also, good for infants. They have a program of monthly shipments which lead to a year’s supply of food. I haven’t tried the soy - don’t think I could tell if it tasted good or not. But their customer support and shipping time was great. And, I’m sure others are in the same boat and it’s not so easy to find.

LizB – at 18:30 But - when it comes to grains and many other items, Honeyville vs Walton, looks like Walton comes out way ahead even though Honeyville’s shipping is superficially less.

Yes, that’s true. But Walton says right on it’s Web site that it can take three to four weeks to ship. That’s a period of time I’m not comfortable waiting (not saying we shouldn’t pursue discounts with them, just saying for me…). I have ordered from Walton 1X, and while pleased with the product, it did take them three weeks to ship, and the outer packaging was a wreck.

I much prefer the quick ship aspect of Honeyville, although I would like lower pricing on grains, which is what I mainly order from them.

Grandma’s is a great company, verrrry nice people. Shipping can be slow at times compaired to the MRE Depots instant delivery but they have some great products (freeze dried broccoli anyone?). Check out thier website.

I tried to find Grandmas. Found that it’s grandmascountry dot com with no kitchen in there. Looked good. May check further. Aspargus on sale.

grandma’s country kitchen in utah I love their TVP list!

LizB – at 18:30 But - when it comes to grains and many other items, Honeyville vs Walton, looks like Walton comes out way ahead even though Honeyville’s shipping is superficially less.

And forgot to mention this regarding shipping being superficially less. As a contrived “benefit,” it is superficial, because Honeyville builds the cost back into the product price. However, the further away from Honeyville you are, the less superficial the shipping difference is. For example, I wanted to order 200# of grains last week. I’m in Walton’s Zone 8. To ship that quantity by Honeyville was $4.49. To ship that quantity by Walton was $85. The cost, including s&h, to order the grains from Walton would have been $153.25. The cost, including s&h, from Honeyville, was $152.67 and they ship quickly, which gives me peace of mind.

If you really want to compare apples to apples, the prices I’ve sited above do not include the cost of mylar, O2 absorbers, and buckets. The stuff from Walton comes prepackaged, so you don’t have those costs (or the hassle of doing it yourself). Honeyville does not include those costs, so the real cost for Honeyville is understated. However, for my purposes, I prefer to do the packaging myself and see what’s going into my pails rather than run into any EOTW surprises when I can least afford them.

FPISC: You might want to start a new thread on this and retitle it to reflect the current thinking (not butter and cheese, in other words). You may get more takers (although, it’s not like you are hurting for takers!). Plus, this one’s getting really long.

My stuff came today—I’m soooooo haaaaaaaapppppppyyyy!!!!

I didn’t get my second order placed Sunday — I suddenly got way behind on some things that have piled up but I should have a second order placed by Wednesday at the latest!

I’m-workin’-on-it – at 23:44 My stuff came today—I’m soooooo haaaaaaaapppppppyyyy!!!!

It’s a great day when we get our stuff in the mail. And Today is The Day. I’m happy for you (and me) and give thanks to Fully Prepped In SoCal for great work. This fills a hole in my preps that I wasn’t sure could be filled. It’s a great day in the neighborhood. Keep smiling, Rose. I’m Grinning ear to ear. Butter!!! Cheese!!! And maybe later in the week an order put in for…MRE’s? Lowers my PPF to be better prepped.

Does anyone know why my PayPal payment of $150 to MREdepot went to “Department of Land Transfer Information”???

Thanks.

Please ignore/strike my last post. Sucessful order placed.

That was weird S Arlington…glad you got it figured out! :-)

mj, I’m just the opposite — got my MRE’s and now want more cheese & butter — I’d bought both off ebay back when it was a ‘deal’ there ‘cause no one much was buying it.

I didn’t see a date mark on the MRE packages, maybe it’s inside the blue pouch, but I’m going to write it on the bag just in case for easy reference!

Gotta do as much house cleaning as I can between now and 1pm when the bug spray man comes, then I’m home free & can do internet orders!!!

I just got my order! Everything was packed nicely, and not a single dent to be found. I am saving the packing peanuts for my Christmas mailing. Bonus part of the order!

By the way, Honeyville Grain was mentioned as a possibility for a discount offer I believe? They still honor the discount code “AATW” (stands for Atkins All The Way) which gives a 10% discount. I thought I should pass this along for any who didn’t know about that promo offer.

I posted the note below on the Preps you might forget thread. I thought some of you who are “topping off” preps might find the link interesting.

Portion Packages

Here is a link to where you can order just about any condiment under the sun in either pouches or small jars. I have not ordered from them yet as prices seem a bit high for me but you can get a great array of product/brands here.

The link is http://tinyurl.com/y743op

They do have wholesale pricing available on orders exceeding $250. If anyone orders from them, let us know what kind service do they provide.

I got my butter and MREs. No dents at all. Everything was perfect. I could find not dates on the individual MRE packages, but there was a date on the box - 04/20/06. On the MREDepot website they said the first inspection date was 04/09. What does that mean? How do you inspect an MRE?

Deborah: Thanks for the discount code for Honeyville!! Does anyone know of a discount code for Grandma’s Country Kitchen (grandmascountry.com)??

Can someone provide the phone for ordering for MRE depot. I can not seem to order off their website although I have no problem with other sites. thanks.

Hi All,

I’m a lurker in S Alabama. I’ve been reading all the posts for a while now and I wanted to order some butter but just couldn’t bring myself to spend $100 on butter….then came the discount. Well I broke down and ordered a case and it just arrived. No dents in my order either. I feel so good knowing I have this put away just in case. I’ve been canning all summer too. I have about 6 months supply for 2 but I have grown children with children and I know they’re not preparing for anything. So, I have to stretch my supplies from 2 people to 15. So I still have a long way to go. I’m going to order some cheese and more butter in a couple of weeks. Thanks everyone.

Good job South Alabama!

UPS guy, just brought my shipment. Yay!

senegal1 – at 14:12 Steven Cyros, VP Sales buisness card was included with my invoice. Tel. 949–366–9484

UTmom – at 14:12 Why don’t you email them and ask if they have a discount cofe that you and some ‘friends’ could use….might help Fully Prepped negotiate an even better deal if some of us take advantage of a small discount first!

South Alabama – at 14:20 Welcome…..meet us over on the Alabama thread—glad you’re here!

My butter and cheese arrived yesterday, along with a sample case of MRE’s

Also no dents. I’m happy with the MRE selection.

And I just finished placing another online order for a couple more cases of each, and a bunch of cases of MRE’s.

Too bad they don’t sell storage units too. LOL

Ordered today. Butter with an “indefinite” shelf life solves my biggest problem - long term storage of fats. The grocery bottles of olive oil or other oils give just 18 mo to 2 years expiration date, I don’t cook much, so I was facing an expensive repurchase every two years. (The lard has no stated expiration date, but some are saying 3 years for rotation.)

Lard depends on how it was refined, and how it’s packaged.

2 years is not unreasonable if it’s hydrogenated and packaged correctly.

Oremus: thanks much I will call. Not sure what the problem is and I only experience it at this site. I can order from other sites around the world. Hummmm….

recieved my butter and cheese today. how nice to see them sitting in my cupboard. going to order more next week, and maybe i’ll get some of those MRE’s to, just incase. Again thank you so much FPISC for setting this up.

My mres came today! Good selection of meals.I was a bit worried as the pk said two cases of red feather but the correct items were in my box. Chipping away slowly at my prep holes!

Way to go mojo and AzNewBe — I ordered more butter last night — that’s 2 cases for me now in storage, which means I can SHARE!

I had gotten my case of MRE’s and that’s also what I’m going to have them mail to my sisters and brother — one case a week to one or the other of them, until they have a fair supply for a few days.

Thanks again, Fully Prepped… I should be getting my second order from MREDepots today and I can’t thank you enough!

I still do need to order grains and beans and I did have great success with two orders from Honeyville for fruits and vegetables but I’d rather buy organic g’s & b’s from Waltons that have been already packed for long term use in containers. Have you heard anything back from them re. a group discount? Should I wait a bit longer or just go ahead?

Thanks!

Well, my cheese arrived last night from MREdepot in PERFECT condition. As you may recall, I really didn’t want to tell DH about my cheese purchase as he doesn’t like the stuff and would see absolutely no use in it, and so had MREdepot time the shipping to arrive on a day when he’d be at work. DH was home when the UPS guy finally came dragging up at 6pm (grrr)… he saw the UPS guy coming up the walk but never inquired about what he was delivering (whew!). I’ve already got the cheese squirreled away in the pantry where he probably won’t see it. I’ll be ordering more cheese and butter as finances allow.

Oh yeah, I just HAD to open one of the cans to try out this cheese. It is GOOD!

Well, my cheese arrived last night from MREdepot in PERFECT condition. As you may recall, I really didn’t want to tell DH about my cheese purchase as he doesn’t like the stuff and would see absolutely no use in it, and so had MREdepot time the shipping to arrive on a day when he’d be at work. DH was home when the UPS guy finally came dragging up at 6pm (grrr)… he saw the UPS guy coming up the walk but never inquired about what he was delivering (whew!). I’ve already got the cheese squirreled away in the pantry where he probably won’t see it. I’ll be ordering more cheese and butter as finances allow.

Oh yeah, I just HAD to open one of the cans to try out this cheese. It is GOOD!

oooppps, sorry about the double post, not sure what happened!

I’m-workin’-on-it – at 10:27 I tried the cheese and butter from my order, they were both very good! The cheese made a delicious mac and cheese that I whipped up entirely from stored preps. I am going to order more of each, until I have about 4 cases or more of both for my pantry. Although I might get a can or two out every so often to use…that butter is really tasty! I am extremely pleased with the products, and even more pleased with the company (MREdepot).

The only problem I had with my order was a defective snap on the pouch for the multi-tool I ordered. I called the company expecting to leave a message and Steve answered. We chatted for awhile, he is such a nice man. ^_^ He is sending a replacement pouch as soon as he can get it out.

Has anyone tried one of the MREs? I would like to order a case or two so would appreciate some feedback from someone who has done a taste test.

Deborah at 11:54

What recipe did you use for the Mac & Cheese all from preps? That would be a great one to have in my “TSHTF cookbook”

Deborah at 11:54

What recipe did you use for the Mac & Cheese all from preps? That would be a great one to have in my “TSHTF cookbook”

I made a bechamel sauce from the canned butter and some flour. Added salt and a pinch of cayenne (you can use paprika if you like, or nothing at all if you like plain sauce), then powdered milk (Nido) mixed with water. Cooked until thickened and bubbly, then shredded canned cheese to taste. Pour over cooked noodles (I used rotini) and east as is, or bake for a tastier treat. I baked mine at 325 F after topping with Progresso bread crumbs mixed with melted butter and some italian herbs blend with a tiny bit of garlic powder. I cooked it until it was bubbly and the top was light golden.

You need to know a couple things if you are going to bake it rather than eat it unbaked. Firstly, undercook the pasta so it isn’t mushy after baking. You want it less done than al dente even, about halfway cooked is best. Second, you need a lot of sauce and you do not want it to be too thick. The sauce will finish cooking the pasta and get thicker as it bakes. Enjoy! ^_^

Almost forgot, you can add fresh tomato slices on top if you like, they are a tasty addition. You can add salsa and a bit of taco seasoning to the sauce for a spicy version. You can add meat if you want, or veggies. Try to think creatively. Something really good would be lump crabmeat mixed in along with a bit of onion, celery, and green or red peppers. Ground beef and a bit of catsup would make it more like a cheeseburger macaroni (hamburger rocks/canned or frozen ground beef works here), canned chicken and a small can of fire-roasted green chiles with a bit of cumin, there are a TON of variations if you just think about it.

Kim – at 11:13

Just tell him it’s his Christmas present, and you can’t tell him more.

Oremus at 13:27, oh that’s a great idea for the next order! Guess that means I’ve gotta get him some kind of Christmas present just to cover my a**, huh? (just kidding!)

Isn’t this fun? It’s the most fun part of this whole experience of learning and preparing for BF or whatever.

Kim, you sound like me, sneaking stuff into the house…. I have most of my stuff delivered to my office so I can sneak it in after DH goes to bed. He’s nosey though and has found most of my stuff. Thought I’d be cute and hide paper goods in attic while DH was at a self-defense class last week. A couple days later, my 5yo told on me -

Oh, and all of my canning is my “little hobby.”

tjclaw1, most stuff I don’t have to hide from DH, he supports prepping in general, but since he (claims) he doesn’t like cheese I figured that him not knowing about it would just be a “what ya don’t know can’t hurt ya” kind of thing ;-) The whole cheese thing irritates me for a number of reasons, the most glaring of which is that the guy will gladly eat pizza and lasagna dripping with cheese, and when I get in a mood and sneak grated parmesan cheese into the spaghetti sauce he always comments how it tastes just WONDERFUL! He claims to not like all kinds of things, but when he doesn’t know what he’s eating will gladly wolf it down. This surely must be one of those “men are from Mars” things!

Oh yeah, my DH likes to give me those pitiful “you poor demented person” looks too when I indulge my “little hobbies”. But he gladly eats those canned, dehydrated and homegrown goods and enjoys looking at the flowers. He should be glad I’m not into high fashion, diamonds and flashy cars!

Another thing he claims he wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole is bananas. Think tonight I’ll make some banana bread and put a scoop of ice cream (which he loves… oh, but he hates milk!) on top. Whatcha wanna bet he asks for seconds????? ;-)

Just got my order in, 3 cases of cheese and 2 cases of butter— Shipping to MD is high though the discount made up for it. Will try to order some more next month— have to see how the finances go.

Well, Kim, the truth comes out — I’m married to your husband’s brother!

My husband loves pizza and ketchup, but hates tomatoes. Loves Cheerios cereal but hates milk, loves noodles but hates cheese. whatcha gonna do??

Give him dog food.

:-)

Bird Guano – at 16:11 you’re onto something for Kim AND me!

I’m-workin’-on-it – at 15:17 “Why don’t you email them and ask if they have a discount code that you and some ‘friends’ could use….might help Fully Prepped negotiate an even better deal if some of us take advantage of a small discount first!”

I’m-workin’-on’it- OK! I emailed Craig at grandmascountry.com and inquired about a discount for us. I told him that it had been very profitable for mredepot.com and we’d love a similar arrangement with them. We’ll see what happens!

Great!!! Now when FPISC gets in touch with them, maybe it’ll ring a bell with them & they’ll work with us on a BIGGER discount!

I’m-workin’-on-it :

I really like how you got your pantry organized. I was wondering just how many shelving units you have for your pantry and did you make any yourself?

Then another question I have for anyone who does home-canning:

I have two nice heavy-duty shelving units that I keep my things stored on http://tinyurl.com/yfzc2g that I got from SAMS Club. I can store the half gallons and quart size jars just fine, but the pints and half pints would be nice to stack. How do you stack these? I know you can’t put them on top of each other as that might ruin the seal. I want to be able to see what is on each row, so putting the jars into something doesn’t work either. Any ideas?

deborah, I made my own “shelf-on-a-shelf” for the smaller jars. Use a piece of plywood, heavy paneling, MDF, etc cut to the same size as a shelf. Measure how high above the shelf you need it to be, the cut some “legs” for your shelf from 2×4, 2×2, or whatever sturdy scrap wood you have lying around (this is the most important part, get the legs all the same length and cut evenly or your new shelf will wobble). Screw the shelf onto the “legs”, flip it over, and set it on the shelf. You just doubled your storage space!

BTW, if your shelf is very long it might be a good idea to stick an extra leg or two in the middle for added support.

I’m workin on it at 16:10…. OMG, you mean there’s MORE of these guys out there???? God help all us poor women who have to try to figure out something to feed these picky eaters! LOL

Deborah, I bought plastic shelving from Home Depot — there are 2 different kinds, one more expensive than the other, and it holds up better — there are shelves that are straight all along the bottom, then there’s some that have a “sculpted” front and have 2 drawers on one of the shelves — they’re the best because they don’t bend under the weight of heavy jars and things.

I like the plastic, because I can take the rubber mallet and whack ‘em apart if I need to shorten them and move them somewhere else, etc. I would LOVE to have FIFO (first in first out) metal shelving, but can’t get that right now and they only work for canned goods anyway.

If I were to do another set of shelves, I’d use the free icing buckets you can get from your grocer’s bakery section & use them as spacers because you can also fill ‘em up with supplies too. If someone came to ‘rob’ you of your supplies, chances are they wouldn’t think about the buckets having stuff in them, especially if you didn’t write on the outside what was inside, or you painted them black or something. I’d think someone rushing to grab what they can, probably wouldn’t think about the buckets being anything other than ‘structure’.

I would probably use bricks and pieces of wood to store canned goods since you can adjust the heights any way you want to, to accomodate the height of your canned goods without wasting space.

I think I’ve just learned something from you, if you can’t repack your canning jar boxes with canned goods and stack them on top of each other……I thought you could and had started to do that — I kept the cardboard and the empty box that held the lids and put them back on top of the filled pinto beans I’d canned this week and set them on top of some dry milk (not canned just filled and with an oxy abs in the jar). Can you not stack one box on top of the other if it’s canned goods?? Better that I find out now, rather than later! Especially when I get to the meats!!

Kim, my husband doesn’t like beans in his chili either….and I’m not crazy about chunks of onion or pepper in mine so I put the beans, onion and pepper in the blender and puree them — that way we get the taste & the nutrients without having to ‘see’ them! :-) I also hate crunching into ‘soft’ turkey dressing and hitting a piece of crunchy celery!! If food is crispy, then it’s fine for it to crunch, but if it’s supposed to be soft and something in it is crunchy I hate that, so I guess I have my quirks as well. Maybe someone teased me once and told me whatever I’d crunched was a roach or something, I dunno, I just know if I’m not expecting it, I don’t like it so I can’t be too hard on DH!! :-)

Oh, Deborah, I forgot to say thanks for the compliment on the pantry, and tell you that I have 3 large bookcases (the full height that came in the set I bought) and 3 that are 1/2 high (one full set split into 2 sets) and another full set where I used 1/2 in one place in the pantry and the other 1/2 for something else in the attic.

They were about $30 each set I think.

OK, guys! I need some help. I emailed Craig at Grandma’s Country Kitchen and he replied and said he could work out a discount for us, but needs to know how many people are in our group. I have no idea!

Also, I thought if I could give him the name of a contact person at mredepot.com perhaps he could call them and verify the “buying power” of this group. Thanks!!

I’m-workin’-on-it : I have been told by several different sources never to stack jars because the weight on the lid will cause the seal to break eventually.

My aunt cans a lot, and has a huge pantry in her basement (that reminds me of I’m-workin’-on-it’s in terms of the quantity stored)that has homemade shelving. Her shelves were set up so the jars fit nicely on each shelf, with a few inches of space above them before the next shelf starts. She has shelves for each size of jar, with room to spare in case she has a bumper crop to preserve.

I think she probably has close to a 5 year supply in her pantry, if you count the 3 freezers she has too.

I just couldn’t do that in my basement, due to the potential for flooding. Wood is out, so I have to go with metal and plastic. And the lower 2 shelves of my basement pantry have rubbermaid tubs with paper products (TP, paper towels, paper plates etc) so in the event the sump pump goes out my food stores will not be endangered.

My project this winter will be to make canvas or burlap type curtains to cover the shelves. This will keep dust off the jars and cans, and disguise the shelving somewhat. I think it will look more like a portable closet rather than a pantry, so when my husband has company in the man-room portion of the basement, his friends won’t feel like they are in a mini grocery store. He likes to have football gatherings down there.

Now if only the cans of butter were made so they stacked better, but I can’t have everything! Except more cans, of course! ^_^

UTmom – at 20:00 I’d just wait and let FPISC contact them — now that he knows that we’re interested, let him sweat a little. Either he’ll get on board or he won’t and it sounds like he’d throw out a tiny discount if any right now. We need a decent discount since there are so many competetive sources to buy from like Amazon to eBay to any number of prep sites — he would need to cough up the best discount he can. It might be best to put him further down the list and contact some of the other sites first and make him WANT to come on board with us.

If telling him that we did around $14K the first day didn’t impress him, he’s going to need more than just info from us and FPISC can give him that info in a concise format like she’s doing for everyone else she’s trying to reach.

You can click on the little tiny rainbow colored box below all the links over in the gold section of this page (or any fluwiki page) and find tons of traffic info, but pogge already said it would be impossible to give someone an idea of how many “members” there are here, since you can sign on with so many identities and your ISP can change depending on a number of factors.

I thought he might give you some sort of temporary coupon if you asked, sometimes if you write a company that takes online coupons before you buy, they’ll give you a code to use, but sometimes they won’t.

Hang loose for now and wait…maybe it’ll pay off. Meantime, why don’t you shop around for us for some other sources and do some price comparisons for us on things like the powdered sour cream or margarine. Keep in mind that MREdepot said they could sell it to us, AND said they’d be adding more items for us later as well….don’t know if it’ll be food stuff or other stuff…..thanks for trying to get some cooperation from him….sure makes MRE look all that better doesn’t it!!!

Deborah - that is so funny that you are thinking about making covers for your shelving. I am too! I saw some listed in a catalog somewhere and I thought that was a brilliant idea to disguise things a bit. But I am going to try and make my own since the shelves I have are not the same size in the catalog. All our preps (when I get around to moving them) will be in the unfinished partr of the basement, which, unfortunately, is where all the utilities are. Anyone who has to come in for repair work would see it. So I need to make the covers first, then re-organize everything.

For anyone needing to store all these cases of cheese and butter, BJ’s and Costco have good prices on the rest. grade metal shelving. BJ’s price is $69 for a 18″dX48″lX72″h shelf. I think Costco’s price was similar. It’s heavy as all get out, but little ol’ me assembled all by myself it was soooo easy. They come with wheels if you want to make it mobile. Bj’s also has a 24″ size.

Hey, I wonder if those plastic coated wire cup stacker things would hold the cans of butter? I have 2 of them…they have a center handle to pick them up and 4 wire prongs that stick up and you stack your china coffee cups up and the prongs along with the center handle hold them in a nice stack so that you can carry several around at once. I think I still have some….I may have given them away, but if I didn’t, then they should hold at least 8 cans each I would think. That’s better than nothing……..’course a proper sized box would be just as good!

FPISC, Have you decided which co. you are going to approach next for discount? Do you need help with this?

Hey Edna a al Mode, please keep me posted on how this is working out. Getting tired of canning butter in the pressure cooker! ;o)

deborah – at 20:00

I did the “closet” thing with my shelving units. I had found fabric at wally world for $1/yard and bought a bolt. I made a simple pocket and using left over conduit for poles, hung it with straps from the rafters. It looks great and keeps out light and dust and children!

Ok I just got off the phone with Steve Cyros at MRE Depot. First I have to say WHAT A NICE GUY! Super pleasant and very knowledgable. Here is our discussion:

1. There is a problem with the website that some people are having. They think it has to do with some of the security software that some people may have installed on their computers. He suggested making it so you could see the pop ups. This has not worked for me but maybe it will work for you. Otherwise do what I did — call them 949 366 9484.

2. They sell MREs on the GSA schedule to fire and municipal governments. He said that they will be delighted to take orders from local fire departments and other government agencies. Our discount is BETTER than the GSA schedule discount and your local fire department and other agencies can save a lot! For example one case on GSA is $65 a case with the flu wikie discount its $51 a case and it gets better as you order more because you also get the bulk case discount on top of the flu wikie discount. Its $15 to $18 dollars cheaper or around a 24 percent discount. He suggests talking with your local fire department, police, ect and have them call him. He can arrange taking a purchase order from the agency. He said a couple of small towns and fire departments had already ordered.

Everyone this is a great chance to do some pandemic awareness raising with you local town and get them something at the same time!

3. I asked about when to use MREs and what portion of the your preps they should be. He had some great suggestions: MREs are dollar per calorie expensive. You should consider using them to reduce menu fatigue. You know the 15th day of rice and beans. We discussed this could be very important especially for kids who under stress situations who can just decide not to eat. Second they are very good when you don`t immediately know the duration of the emergency and you don`t want to break into that 50 lb pail of wheat. Also the high calorie count (1250 per meal) allows you to eat one or two meals in an emergency situation and still be ok. Then there is the convenience factor and that ability to have a complete meal in the car, boat, etc. If you are prepping for example for three months, he suggests you might want to have 1 week to 3 weeks of MREs on hand. By the way he says the taste is outstanding!

4. Size of MREs: The case is 16 inches by 9 inches wide by 11 inches tall. Inside that are individual boxes containing the full meals. You can even take the pouches inside these boxes out and store them. There is no extra room in the box so you are moving around the same volume but it you can store it in a flexible manner.

5. On the canned meat: according to Steve this is the cadillac of the canned meat world. There are no fillers, no fat floating at the top, no skin, bone,etc and the broth is clear. The size of a 28 oz can is about the same height as a soda can and a little smaller than three soda cans together. Its about 2 lbs of meat and will easily make a meal for 5 with left overs. Taste is great too — he said they eat these all the time. He mentioned that two products the smaller can of beef with gravy was so so and the BBQ beef was too sweet for him.

6. Finally, according to Steve, they think we are going to hit the target amount sometime at the end of this week. He mentioned that some skeptics in the company did not think we would do that volume at all and he thought it might take us a couple of months. He mentioned again potentially keeping the discount on past the end of the year.

I have an idea….I’m going to email Steve & see if we can do something fun….I’ll get back with you…snicker….

OK, I wrote a note to MREdepot’s Steven and suggested that we start a thread for him so that he could pop over here to the fluwikie when he has a chance every evening or two or three times a week and answer questions for us if we have any about his products. I figure that’s fair and if it helps him to control his time so that he can set aside a convenient time to sit down and visit with us, answer our questions, see what items we’d like to purchase that he could add to his inventory, etc., it might be beneficial to us all. I explained that we like to keep ‘advertising’ off the wiki but if we’re discussing things we’re buying, it’d be just like our discussing what we bought at Big Lots or Wally World, etc., and if he could answer questions like the good ones that senegal1 – at 22:16 had, that’d be GREAT!

Anyone see any problem with that? I asked him to think about it and get back with FPISC and we’d help him get a thread open if he (or any of his staff) thought he’d like to participate. Maybe he will.

Check out this site www.keystonemeats.com

Dinkers – at 21:47

You are pressure canning butter? Recipe, please. I’ve not seen that one.

While several people can butter, it is not considered safe to do due to the risk of botulism. There is no safe, approved method for home-canned butter, cheese, or milk. If you choose to do this, you do it at your own risk.

While many people have had excellent results, most say it is nothing like fresh butter because the safest (not safe, just safest) method is to drive off all the moisture from the butter before canning it. What you have is more of a homemade ghee afterwards. For those that do not drive off all the moisture, the process involves a lot of shaking of the jars in order to distribute the moisture back evenly into the fats. There is no approved method for canning butter.

You might have good results doing this, and never have a problem. But the risk is very serious, and you need to ask yourself if saving a little money and doing this at home over buying a commercially canned product is worth your life, or the life of a family member. Because this is a thing that has the potential to kill you. Just an FYI before you try this.

Anon7588 – at 05:33 Check out this site www.keystonemeats.com

I found keystone meats at Walmart in Van Wert OH. Found Turkey, Pork and Chicken.

Is the salt content really fairly low in the keystone meats? I looked on the site and they claimed a low level….

I’m-workin’-on-it – at 23:22

pork net wt 14.5 oz serving size 3 oz/ servings per container about 5 per serving: calories 100 calories from fat 30 total fat 3.5 g sat. fat 2.g trans fat 0g cholesterol 65mg sodium 180mg total carb <1g dietary fiber 0g sugars 0g protein 18g ingredients pork, salt

turkey 14.5 oz serving size 3 oz/ servings per container about 5 calories 110 calories from fat 20 total fat 2.5 g sat fat 1.5g trans fat 0g cholesterol 65mg sodium 180mg total carb 0g dietary fiber 0g sugars 0g protein 21 g ingredients; turkey salt

Thanks — that’s not bad! I’ll look for some!

Long thread, wow! I think this one is going to go to part 3 shortly. Update from me on a multi tool I ordered from MREdepot that had a defective snap closure on the pocket…Steve said he found several other defective ones after our chat. Here is his email reply, I hope he doesn’t mind I am posting it. ^_^

Hi Deborah;

Thank you again for the time on the phone – I really appreciate hearing the fantastic feedback AND am grateful for the advice on both a professional and personal level!

My sincere apologies for the problem with the first 5-in-1 tool. I’m really glad you took the time to call me on this, as we found a total of 17 more that had the same problem, so you probably saved us hours of work and hundreds of dollars worth of shipping! That wound up being almost 1/3 of the ones we had in stock, so it is a problem we will address with the manufacture today, and we will also proactively contact other customers to insure they didn’t have the same problem.

We have shipped a replacement tool to you today, and I have inspected it personally to make sure everything was working fine. I hope you will not be offended that we sent the entire tool out to you, as again, you have saved us a tremendous amount of time and money by bringing this to our attention, and I am hopefully that you will be able to find a use for the other tool with the defective strap (second care, personal preps or friend/neighbor/relative).

You will receive the tracking number for this replacement by the end of the day directly from UPS, and it should be delivered to you by the middle of next week. Let me know if you have any trouble getting this one from UPS, and I look forward to a long future of working together with your group!

Warmest Regards,

-Steven

PS I did spend a little time on the website today looking at the great comments everyone has posted, as well as yours, and am tickled that everyone seems pleased with our service. That means a lot to everyone hear, and I am going to post some excerpts later today for all of our people to read as our pat on the back to them for a great job!

I hope any other company we end up dealing with as a group is as special as this one.

“The butter, cheese and meats will probably last 10 to 15 years. The folks in New Zealand who can the butter say indefinitely, Kraft says 10 to 15 years on the cheese, and Werling and Sons say 8 to 10 years – but we have had an independent group test the packaging on all three products (just 3 weeks ago on the canned meats) and their expected shelf lives, and of course direct sunlight will shorten any shelf life – but kept cool you can plan on 10 years for sure according to the reports. The contents will most likely also be fine at the 15 year mark (i.e. not spoiled), but you may lose some of the nutritional value.”

Texasgirl, thanks for posting that info. I was surprised to see a one year date on the cheese, I was SURE I’d heard it would last a lot longer.

Ordered couple of days ago in the afternoon, I meant to mark the order “no hurry” (I hope they aren’t paying overtime wages to get our discount orders out the door so fast!) but they shipped same day; UPS email said it would arrive the 31st but it came today, more than a weekend early.

Everything well packed. Lots of peanuts to reuse for Xmas gift shipping :) (Or take to Mailboxes Etc or Pack N Ship, they always welcome donations of peanuts).

Now I guess I need to buy rechargeable batteries for the solar recharger! Their recharger does two batteries at a time, 2 Ds take 9 hours. I guess one needs several rechargers, or one of the expensive ones that does more batteries at a time, if one plans to use battery power for more than occasional short uses.

Feels real good to have 6 months of long term fats under the bed, no need to store and frequently rotate far more lard or olive oil than I can use up in normal life. One case of the butter = one month of fats for one person, at fats being 25% of a 2400 calorie diet. And I believe the “indefinite” life because there are no vitamins in butter to lose!

Edna Mode — Yep. I found the recipe months ago here on the wiki, but in short, you slowly heat umpteen pounds of butter to foaming stage, turn down the heat, skim the foam, and fill hot, sterilzed pint jars (I recommend widemouth). Processing is a whopping one and a half hours at 260 (10 pounds) in a pressure canner. While cooling, up end the jars a couple times to mix the fats and liquids. Seems to work. Getting melted butter into the jars is a mess, but you won’t need lotion for your hands for a while. ;0)

Living in earthquake country, I’m glad I bought butter canned in METAL and not in glass canning jars.

At least I know I can dig it out from the rubble, and still be able to use some of it.

LOL

I’m really happy with their service, although I do wish they offered Vegetarian MRE’s by the case for the FD.

Got home tonight and my cheese, meat and mre’s were on the step. They came faster this time and I was pleased with the response the first time compared to other places I have ordered. These guys rock!

My meat came too today….I’m think I’m going to try some next week.

Fully Prepped In SoCal hope you’re doing ok…..know you’re busy…..hope you’re feeling fine. Just wanted you to know you’re being thought of and hope you have a great weekend!

I have not seen the coupon on this page, do we need to call them directly?

I ordered the meat before a few months back from the original company and made beef and noodles with the beef and a stoganof(sp)dish with the hambuger (not very unique but tastey) with only prep canned and dried items and both turned out really good and didn’t take long to cook.

Nidaho – at 20:59

Go to this link www.mredepot.com and when your done ordering put in fluwikie in the Promo Code field

the first time i went to the wrong site and spent along time looking around.

Yeah, what KimT said….the promo code is at the bottom of where you fill in your name and address if I remember correctly.

Placed the (1st) meat & cheese order and the discount offset the better part of the shipping charges (east of the Mississippi). Thanks again FPISC! Hope to place at least one more order bfore end of year.

If anyone tries one of there MRE’s, let us know how it tastes:)

anonymous – at 15:59

Thanks for the recipe!

I just ordered 2 cases of each, cheese and chicken. I already stocked up on butter, but might get some more later. Thanks again for working out the dicount.

Anon7588 ¨C at 06:32 this is in honor of your question:

OK!!!!!

We just had MRE¡¯s for lunch! THEY ARE GREAT!! My ONLY 2 suggestions for convenience is that you put a pair of scissors or a knife with your stash of MRE¡¯s. If you have wet hands (raining) or a bad cut or a broken finger or arthritis, it¡¯s harder to open the inner packages ¡ª not impossible, especially if you use your teeth, but it would just be sooooo simple with scissors, and that keeps you from breaking your pop tart or crackers, etc. And 2, that you put napkins with your meals¡ª you might need to wipe your fingers or mouth or catch crumbs!!

There is enough in the kit to stretch the whole day if you¡¯re not just doing back-breaking work all day long - a breakfast tart, a couple of snack things and a main course.

If you¡¯re unsure about how these kits work, you get a plastic bag that you tear the top off of and you open a box, take out the main meal and slip it into the top of the plastic bag. Then you open a salt water pouch and pour the salted water into the plastic bag, fold the top over then tuck the bag, folded end first, into the box, close the box and let it sit for 12 minutes.

Meanwhile, I opened the other little packets ¡ª my kit came with raisins, crackers, peanut butter, a strawberry poptart type thing, pepper, a packet of red fruit powdered drink in a small packet but big enough to flavor a 20 oz glass of water nicely, and an oatmeal cookie. And a moist towelette. (No napkin)

My husband ate the Chicken Noodle kit and he everything I did except he got a spreadable cheese packet (so I gave him my peanut butter and I ate his cheese) and a shortbread cookie instead of oatmeal. 1180 calories total.

I had the Spaghetti with meat and sauce. It was heated thoroughly, tasted GREAT ¡ª was seasoned well so that it had some ¡®spice¡¯ to it ¡ª not bland kid¡¯s meal sauce. Large amount of food, covered my salad/dessert-sized china plate (smaller than a dinner plate). One of my cats licked my plate after I was done ¡ª he¡¯s finicky so that was a good sign too! 1310 calories total.

My husband¡¯s Chicken Noodle looked like a chicken pot pie with out the pie dough. He said it tasted GREAT! Was unsalted, but very flavorful and he had a pepper packet but didn¡¯t use it ¡ª said it wasn¡¯t needed. He¡¯s full now.

I¡¯m forcing my 3¨C1/2¡å wide (guessing) oatmeal cookie down and washing it down with the last of my red fruit drink, because I¡¯m already full!!!

This is definitely a package/kit that can be spread out over the course of a day or at least a half day.

These came from MREdepot using the word fluwikie as the promotional code! Buy with confidence ¡ª I¡¯m gettin¡¯ some more!

I’m-workin’-on-it – at 14:44 Good to know that they are tastey! I bought two cases but havent wanted to try them yet. Took over some butter and cheese to a neighbor and told them about a group buy but they dont have internet access. Gave them the book from Will to read too. They have been my one and only success at convincing to prep.

Well I ordered the MREs, canned butter, and canned meat yesterday and feel better. Finally had to use another computer than the one I have at home. I still have no idea what the problem was. I am looking forward to getting these and I am going to talk to my local fire department very soon!

I tried one to the Chicken Tetrazzini, it was good came with crackers and cheese, fig bars, raisins, drink mix.

Anyone know of MRE’s that have chicken nuggets, big macs… ; )

OH! I forgot to mention that my husband’s MRE came with a fig bar! He said it was just as fresh and good as if I’d bought it at Winn Dixie that afternoon.

bump

I’m in central Canada. I just wanted to report that my order arrived today, just 7 days after I ordered.

My order consisted of 2 cases of cheese, 6 cans of butter and a package of oxygen absorbers for a total cost after discount of US$177.59 plus UPS shipping of US$61.49.

On delivery today, as I sort of expected, I had to pay the UPS guy a UPS customs brokerage fee which came to Cdn$ 42.95. He was able to accept cash, check or credit card.

I inspected all the cans and all were in excellent condition with no dents. :)

Wow, you gals really take it in the shorts up north on fees and taxes.

Got my shipping confirm today - this place kicks *ss! I waited a month for a similar order elsewhere and had to contact the company to get it moving. I will DEFINETELY order more from mredepot. Many, many thanks FPISC - a real quality outfit!

FPISC we’re missing you…..hope you’re just busy & not having to deal with fires either real or symbolic! We really apperciate all your work on this monumental project!

I’m-workin’-on-it – at 21:24 I second that. Hope the only fires FPISC is dealing with is another deal with another supplier. You’re a gem, SoCal. All the best from the midwest. (and thanks again, I’m-workin’-on-it, for planting the seed - it germinated into a wonderful outcome for many, many people)

Hi All;

Phew, sorry for an extended absence! My company is being acquired, and after 2 months of due diligence, they ran into some last minute trouble auditing the customer accounts and needed someone to fly to Toronto for a “couple of days” to help with a forensic accounting. We’ll, guess who got volunteered?? You guessed it - only a couple of days turned into a week of 12 hour days - Sunday to Saturday… You have to love corporate America!! Not only was it freezing up there (at least for me), but the hotel only had dial up at $4/minute.

So, needless to say, I’m WAY behind on everything - including my updates and communication with mredepot, sorry. BTW – my hat is off to all of you who have to prep for a cold climate – hadn’t really thought about that until last week!!

OK, where do I begin… First, I have received several e-mails from mredepot over the last week and today (I think they thought I disappeared, as I am usually right on top of e-mail with them). The good news is that the updates from last week were all good. Here’s they are in a nutshell condensed from like 4 e-mails;

1) Sale is going well, still shipping same day, spoken to some great people. They say to pass on their thanks.

2) Honeyville grain called them to check on us, and they gave us a glowing review. Said they wouldn’t mind if I gave their number to anyone else for the same thing.

3) They have sold some large orders to both individuals and to some first responders (a FD, PD and a municipality - said all used the fluwikie discount, so he figures we got the word out and wanted to say thanks.

4) Promised me an advance notice for the group on any new products. He said they would be adding 25 to 30 new items for us over the next 30 days, and he would keep me posted so we could have first shot.

Then, the best news came in an e-mail today - they broke the $25,000 mark over the weekend – a little over 300 orders to date. I guess everyone is very happy with the progress over there. They are pushing to make the offer permanent, and told me he would have an answer in a day or too. Great job everyone - I appreciate all the support, as this should help us tremendously on the next one. I am going to see if I can get mredepot to write us a letter of recommendation or something on their letterhead, as every bit will help.

Now, on the other companies - I have not received any more e-mails back from anyone else. That makes it only Emergency Essentials who contacted us (and told us to subscribe to the e-mail list, as they don’t “do” programs like this) and Honeyville grain. Honeyville actually wanted to meet with me last week, but I obviously didn’t get back to them in time (sorry all). I just e-mailed and asked to meet Wednesday, Thursday or Friday of this week, whichever was more convenient for them. So I will keep us posted on that one, but it looks like I will get in there this week and hopefully get a good program put together there too. On Emergency Essentials, I am going to try and call tomorrow to see if I can scout of the name of the president or VP and try again at a different level to see if that will help.

On Grandma’s Country Kitchen, thanks UTmom for planting the seed there – if you want to give that one a try, you are definitely more then welcome to. Or, if you want me to touch base with your contact and hit him from two fronts, I can do that as well – just let me know.

The others, Providentliving, PleasantHillGrain, Alpine Aire and Nitro-Pak never responded to my request - I never even got a return e-mail. I’ll start trying to track down phone numbers for them to see if I can find someone in charge and try again. If anyone has any contacts there, let me know.

Thanks again for all the kind words – I really appreciate it! I’ll keep us posted this week, as I’ll be local this week (no more travel for a long time for me if I can help it!!).

Fully Prepped In SoCal – at 23:06 Glad you’re home safe and sound and warm. Thanks for all you do. Would love Honeyville, but you might also try Lehman’s at 1–877–438–5346 www.lehmans.com They have many non electric items, berkeys, some food items, laundry items. Good service. Nice folks. A family orginization. Contacts are Galen Lehman, Pres; Glenda Lehman Ervin, VP of Marketing; Jay Lehman, Founder. They are in Kidron OH near Canton/Akron. They have 100% satisfaction guarantee. I’m not associated with them but have purchased from them and was very happy with the products and service.

Thanks for the updates! I figured you had your hands full with something going on, but was hoping it was something more fun than forensic accounting/auditing. So within 3 weeks we broke the mark with MRE — that’s GREAT especially since we still have time to go till the end of the year - and maybe longer!

You might want to mention to Steven that Costco now sells MRE’s for the same price as MREdepot, just so he knows!

I hope you’ll contact Grandma’s Kitchen as well as UTMom — I’d suggested she contact them as a wakeup that we’re around just to see what they’d do, and if they hear from you both, and you provide them with the concrete numbers that you have, that’d be absolutely a hard-hitting approach.

Remember that Nitro-Pak gives you a $10 off your NEXT order after you spend $100; they send you a coupon of sorts inside your package — knowing that might help you know what to say to them.

You’ve done an amazing job getting this down to such a simple process for us and even though we have a Costco here in town, I’m STILL ordering from Steve for the MRE’s I want to ship to my family out of state — Gotta love Steven and his crew!

GET SOME REST FPISC you deserve it!

I am trying to decide on what to get for my next order tomorrow. I am a bit torn trying to decide between cheese or butter. Also I want one of those solar battery rechargers, so that will definitely be in the order. It gets so hard to choose, I wish I had enough cash to just stock up all the stuff I wanted right away instead of making small orders every week!

Fully Prepped In SoCal, Thanks for arranging this discount for us. I ordered a case each of cheese and butter today.

I ended up ordering another case of butter, and the solar battery recharger. While I like the cheese quite a bit, we can do without that for awhile longer while I work on increasing my fat stores. I guess I will be buying a case of butter every week for this month and then start on cheese in December.

With the long shelf life, I won’t have to worry about it going bad, and it can be kept solely as a prep item instead of being used. As long as I can still buy butter in the grocery store (umm, and also as long as there is no pandemic outbreak!) I can use that is our daily diet. Same goes for cheese.

Fully Prepped In SoCal - thank you again for what you have done for us and particularly my family. Without this arrangement, I certainly never would have been able to purchase these stores in the quantity I want to end up with. And I can’t thank MREdepot enough either, they are a great bunch of people.

Hi All;

Just a few quick updates to pass on;

1) I’m-workin’-on-it; I too just want to make sure that due credit is given… I get all the thanks and glory it seems, but it should be noted by all (as pointed out by Wolf – at 21:46, thanks for the reminder) that this was actually her idea originally, and it was her guidance/suggestions that got me pointed in the right direct. So thank you again for everything IWOT!!

Also, I just let Steven know about Costco selling MRE’s, and he was surprised by it. He says he hasn’t seen them at his Costco, but he would check again. He said to say thanks for the heads-up! Thanks also from me on the discount at Nitro-Pak - I will definately be sure to use that if we get a chance to negotiate with them.

2) I have an appointment booked with Honeyville for this coming Friday. Just to refresh everyone’s memory, we no know that they have a 10% discount already (thanks to deborah – at 12:49 10/29 for sharing that one!), a low flat rate shipping fee online, that they have spoken to mredepot about this and have probably gotten a glowing recommendation on us from Steven. So, I am going to go for the close Friday and see if we can put something together for us all by Monday. I’ll keep everyone posted. They are only an hour from my house, so not a bad drive.

3) Some REAL good news from mredepot; They have agreed to keep the discount up through all of 2007 since they are so pleased with the response on the program. He said it would probably be permanent, but that the legal counsel felt it was safer to initially extend it through all of next year.

4) Mredepot also said they are adding serveral items over the next couple of weeks, and wanted to give us some advance notice. They are going to get me a complete list shortly, but gave me a few item specifics. They’re adding a nitrogen packed line of heirloom vegetable and herb seeds for long term storage, many different sized water containers - from 5 gallon up to 55 gallon, 1 gallon, 5 gallon and 7 gallon pails of mylar/nitrogen packed grains, beans and flours and about 25 different emergency kit items for those who want to make their own emergency kits by adding their own food and water but want to pick up some of the hard to find items like “light, shelter, heat and tools/radios/flashights” according to Steven. He promised more specifics in the next week or two, and I will pass them on.

He also asked me to ask us for any specific requests on certain items. He says they would love the chance to use their purchasing power to try and pass on some savings on popular items to us as their thanks. I guess he has already gotten a few suggestions and is working on them (he mentioned water purifiers, mre entrees and snacks, vegitarian mres and more freeze dried items. I told him I would ask the group and put together a list for him to source for us - so let me know if anyone is interested in any particular items.

Thanks also MJ for the suggestion on lehmans - I will definately add them to my list!!

Through 2007!!! That’s just wonderful FPISC! And an extended product line! You’re a dynamo! Bless your heart.

Agree with I’m-workin’-on-it: Get some well deserved rest! We’ve got lots to keep us stocking up.

Fully Prepped In SoCal – at 19:51 Great update. I would like to have MREdepot carry freezedried hamburger, other freezedried, repair/replacement for Berkey’s, more choices on solar supplies, rechargable batteries, etc. I would like the freezedried because I’m east of the Mississippi, and freezedried is usually lighter to ship. They’ve been great, and I’m still smiling when I look at my butter. Thanks again.

I love everything about MREdepot except their shipping costs. They are fast, but I would like to see a slower, cheaper shipping option that one might chose if time were not of the essence.

Be sure to tell Steven to pack those buckets in square boxes for UPS delivery — they charge a BUNCH more for shipping round buckets, than they do for square boxes for some reason — so he needs to figure in boxes into the shipping cost!

One thing they might consider are the preparation books that are out there — I know they can’t beat some of the big sellers on discount price, BUT if someone’s buying from them anyway, they might pick up a book as an add-on sale. The books about cooking with powdered eggs and other specific titles like that, or just books on how to cook with your food storage, or nuclear fallout preparation stuff, etc.

MASKS!! OMG, MASKS!!! I’m buying off ebay for better prices — ya’ll don’t outbid me now that I’ve said that….I’m just a little cat napping on ebay…..

Solar anything probably!

And finally, I’m humbled that you want to give me some credit, but I really and truly don’t deserve any — you had the ball rolling, I just suggested you make a separate thread so everyone else would see what was going on and I GUARANTEE you, you would have thought of that by the next morning if not later on that night! :-)

I’m just glad that everyone is getting a chance to get a good deal on some VERY essential purchases.

Fully Prepped, thanks for all the updates! Mredepot is fantastic. I’ve placed about 7 orders there (for friends & neighbors who are nervous about internet ordering) in the last two weeks and the service is impeccable. The husband of one friend tried the butter and said “WOW! Order more of that right away!”

Regarding Grandma’s Country Kitchen- The way I left things with Craig Fairclough (craig@grandmascountry.com) (801–748–0808) was that you would be contacting him. I gave him some basic info as well as Steve’s name and email address so he could see what kind of business we’ve given them. If Grandma’s doesn’t come through with a discount maybe we could add soy milk and sprouting seeds to the list of items we would like to see mredepot carry? Thanks for all you do!

Fully Prepped - that’s such great news! I’ll wait to order the grain and beans in pails from MRE; any chance they could have organic or at least non-GMO foods (wheat berries, adzuki beans, rice, oat groats, etc.) for their m/n-p’ed pails? If not, I’d probably order from them anyway after the thoughtful way they’ve shown us, especially toward you. Such good people.

And Heirloom Seeds!!! Fantastic! I’d also love some sprouting seeds. How about thermal/black-out window shades. They can be easilly made at home, but it’s just a thought. How about a gutter water diverter and the water drum with screen and spicot. Also another easy-to-make set-up but would be nice to have available for those who can’t… As I live way across the country(ME.), I’d probably not be able to pay the shipping price for a drum. Others might though. Thanks again!!!

Non GMO grains, rice, and legumes in nitrogen packaging

Vegetarian MRE’s ( I need about 10–20 cases of these )

Heirloom seeds

LED and tactical Flashlights

Adventure Medical Kits or similar.

Lithium long-term storage AA, C and D size batteries

Portable solar chargers. ie: rollup chargers for laptops

Water treatment/purification systems (http://www.pwgazette.com/gravity.htm) for examples of field-expedient water purification systems they may be able to offer us at a discount. My fire department has two of these with resin pre-filters for filtering pool or pond water that may contain poisons and heavy metals, both are stored in a Pelican case on the fire trucks.

Also tell him to get on the California GSA list as an approved vendor. There is only one mre vendor on the state fire contract right now @ $69/case for MRE’s.

suture kits would be awesome, I’m ordering a medic kit with one in it but stand alone suture kits would be great.

Really love the job everyones been doing Mre staff and Steven. And to you as well FPISC.

As mj said….more freeze dried food would be great.

  I put in my first order today, and got email confirmation that it has been shipped. Awesome !

 I didn`t see anything new yet, will keep watching.

Mayday brand emergency ration bars. Best price around now seems to be from aaoobfoods.com, in case he is looking for a benchmark price.

I placed an order today for 3 cases of mre’s, 1 case of the milk substitute and 1 case of the powdered eggs. Nice discount! Thanks to FPISC!! I will sleep a little better tonight knowing its on the way. Next month maybe butter and cheese. Thanks again!!! God Bless!

Almost forgot to mention. My shipment total was $64 and change. I live Texas though. I think the discount covered the shipping costs. Imagine without the discount?? Thanks!

does anyone have telephone number for mredepot? I can’t find it anywhere on website. Thanks so much.

  I looked, actually find 2 different numbers.

Customer Service MREdepot.com (949) 218–4365

 and

   949–366–9484

This isn’t an 800 number, but here is the one right off the business card I got with my invoice.

949–366–9484

Thanks so much cactus & deborah. I must be going blind, but I still do not see number located anywhere on website. Cactus, did you pull these off their site?

emergency dental kits would be nice, as well as masks for children

 cabingirl, I got them from emails they sent me to confirm my order.

The grain mill everyone raves about, is it called country living? I hate the one I have. Thanks again!

mojo – at 17:03

I got the Family Grain Mill and I love it. There’s a good review of it at Pleasant Hill Grains.

http://www.pleasanthillgrain.com/family_grain_mills.asp

The model I bought (from EverythingKitchens) attaches to my Kitchen Aid mixer and also has a manual base that clamps on to the counter. I figure I’m covered for all contingencies! ;-)

http://tinyurl.com/yfzuks

Hi All;

Just a quick update - I just got home from meeting with Honeyville Grain, it went VERY well!! They took me on a tour of the plant, and it is absolutely enormous. They even have their own fleet of 18 wheelers, as most of their business is local bakeries, restaurants and food factories.

They said they were very familiar with the forum, and have spoken to a number of members in the past. They’re very open to putting something together for us, they just need to figure out the logistics. I pitched that we just keep it simple and offer a discount across the board, but they weren’t sure they could do that as there are so many products on the site. Some of their retail packed items have more margin so they can give us a better discount. and some of the bulk items there isn’t a lot of profit in them (and their flat rate shipping on the heavy items cut into the profit all ready).

Surprisingly, I didn’t have to sell them on the concept - I guess mredepot did that for us already. He claimed that we got a glowing review from Steven, and that Steven strongly urged them to put together a good package for us - so that was already resolved.

He asked for a few days to sit down and try and figure something out now that they know exactly what we want to do, then he may need a day or two to run it by corporate (Salt Lake City). He thought he may have some questions, so he’s going to stay in touch with me by phone and e-mail until we get something done - and of course I’ll keep everyone posted as soon as I hear anything.

I also passed on all the suggestions on new products to mredepot today - and he aksed me to keep them coming and he would go to work on these.

That’s all for now - I’ll let you know what else I hear, but it looks like at least Honeyville is in the bag shortly.

PS Phone number for mredepot is listed under the Policies page in the Damaged Merchandise paragraph - I knew I had seen it before, but I had to dig around for it as it is not easy to find. I guess they don’t want to advertise it, not sure why.

Fully Prepped In SoCal – at 19:09 You’re AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don’t know what you do in “real” life, but whomever you work with is lucky to have you!

I’d looked for that phone number too & couldn’t find!

You GO girl!!

FPSC - getting a Honeyville discount would be awesome! I would definitely order more from them - I was very happy with them already but a lower price always helps. Thank you so much for doing all this work!

MANY businesses (especially internet businesses) prefer to not advertise their phone number. As a former small business owner I came to rue the fact that I had a phone line. People call with questions (which even after the answer is fully explained to them they still don’t understand, and which may or may not have anything at all to do with your business), and cannot understand why you don’t have half a day to sit on the phone and chitchat with them. They’ll call and pick your brains about a particular product, and after you’ve spent 1/2 an hour answering their questions, they’ll say you’re not as cheap as so-and-so so they’ll buy from your competitor. They call and want you to donate to whatever their cause is, and get testy if you don’t. I got very few orders with a telephone call, mostly just questions which never resulted in a sale, and came to realize that there are a LOT of lonely people in the world who will divulge their life stories to anyone who’ll listen. In short, a well-publicized phone number can put you behind and waste a lot of time.

Kim, that sounds horrible! That’s probably why email is sooooo popular!

I’m workin on it, email can be almost as bad! Especially when you’re an internet business, your email address is always out there… as prime pickins for email harvesters who then sell your email addy to spammers. It was NOTHING for me to get over 1,000 emails a day, 95% of which were from spammers. (And at that time, I didn’t have any kind of spam program for my ‘puter…. Wahhhhh!). Even with a good spam program, you still have to manually glance at all that crap to be sure you’re not deleting anything important, and if you can’t download your email every day, your mailbox fills up in short order, which makes everything bounce when the mailbox overflows. All spammers should be locked in a room with a computer for 5 years, where they must spend all their waking moments looking only at spam and deleting each one individually. Enough to drive ya nuts!

Wow. I just got my order from MRE Depot. I ordered 3 - 10 case lots of MREs — thats 360 meals which would be for intervals throughout the time period to avoid menu fatigue and also some to store at our offices. I also ordered a case of beef, chicken, butter, chesse and some misc items. My shipping cost from CA to VA was $10.00! I couldn`t believe it! It really pays to order more in one chunk if you can afford it.

MO Molly – at 20:24 I love everything about MREdepot except their shipping costs. They are fast, but I would like to see a slower, cheaper shipping option that one might chose if time were not of the essence.

Mo Molly, I agree, and I contacted Steven about it. I asked him if he could figure out less expensive shipping if I were able to get a bulk order together that would ship to one address and we’d worry about distributing to participating members. I am working with like-minded friends/family members to get an order together. Steven is working on a way to implement it on the Web site so that others can pool orders in a similar fashion and save on shipping. For example, my three case initial order was going to cost nearly $100 to ship (Calif to NH, bah humbug). Steven quoted me ballpark shipping on an order of 30 cases (10 butter, 10 cheese, 10 MRE) costing about $350 to ship. Huge difference BUT we’d basically get it in the same amount of time.

FPISC, I’d suggest to Honeyville that they could set up a wiki-only page that includes all discount-eligible items and then give us a discount code to use at checkout. They do this all the time (the code part) with X% off milk or X% of cocoa. Alternately, they could set up a wiki discount code, give us a list of eligible items, and we can pick and choose from general online catalog as we see fit knowing what is discount-eligible and what is not. I know they have a mechanism in place to designate certain items as discount-eligible, so this would probably be the easiest for them. We could give the list here a permanent home in a logical spot on the wiki side.

As for things I’d love MREdepot to carry…gamma seal lids.

I guess I have a problem with a company that doesn’t display their phone number easily or a contact e-mail if there is a problem. I have a problem (ordered 2 cases two weeks ago, did not receive confirmation e-mail or number so I can’t check status) in that my credit card was charged 2 weeks ago, I’ve called twice and left voice mail, and still no reply. I have no way of knowing if I made a mistake on the order form or whether I’ve just fallen through the cracks. I’m a little frustrated….

cabingirl – at 17:27

949–366–9484

Thanks anonymous, got it. I’ve called twice now and gotten Steve’s answering machine both times , but I have not received a response yet. still hopeful…..

Well I just talked to Steven and he answered the phone right away. My order should be here in two days. No problems with them at all. Nice service too. Thanks FPISC!

Received my order of meats and cheese - fast, too. No dings, no dents. I’ll gladly place another order with this company.

uummm, uummm good. Eatin’ crow tonight!! Got my cases! Don’t know exactly when, BECAUSE dh did pandemic reassortment while I was traveling, and I just found it buried! I called Steven again just now (he was there and answered!) to let him know I/WE goofed big-time. He seemed VERY nice and understanding (sounded a little tired though), although he did admit he hasn’t had time to check messages for a few days. Note to self: avoid ordering from multiple vendors the same day (just too confusing for my guys when all packages come in all at once and I’m not here to sort). My bonus room is starting to look like a freakin’ warehouse! Luckily I’ll be able to distribute some of this stuff when relatives arrive for the holidays. Think I’ll experiment with the butter over Thanksgiving….

Cabingirl; I’ve placed several orders with them, and the confirmation e-mail is always only 2 or 3 minutes behind, which tells me it is automated - so if you entered your e-mail address correctly, you should have gotten it. If you didn’t, check your spam folder, as you may be blocking their e-mails by mistake. I’ve also received three or four e-mails the same day I placed an order - confirmation, payment receipt, shipping notice and tracking number.

If you can find your confirmation number in your blocked e-mail/spam folder, you can check the status of your order through the website anytime - and get the tracking info. Just enter your confirmation number on the customer service page.

If you didn’t get any e-mails, you may have made a mistake entering your e-mail address. try e-mailing them - the business card I have says scyros@mrewholesalers.com. Hope that helps!

headliner1215, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head about the e-mail. It was very late when I did a bunch of ordering, so I must have gotten sloppy with my e-mail address. I get a little nervous when I have to travel a week or so at a time (mostly without internet access), so I tend to order heavily before I leave (just in case? worry wort that I am). Confidence renewed, won’t hesitate to make a future order.

You guys might want to consider using RoboForm to fill out forms in the future. It’s a free download, unless you want the fancier version. I started out with the free, used it awhile, LOVED it, and now can’t live without it so I upgraded. I fill out a bunch of surveys & it always helps with that and I never get my email or my street address or phone or anything wrong & it stores your passwords so I don’t have to keep looking them up in my hardcopy!

I’m Working On It; Outstanding find on RoboForm - just dowloaded the trial and tested it out. Wish I found that a few months ago. I’ve placed so many orders online for hard to find items that I have probably typed my info no less than 100 times. Thanks for the great advice!!

I love it too! Who knew there was such a thing? And I don’t even understand most of it so I don’t get the full benefit, but don’t need to understand it in order to use it for my main purpose which is quick fill-in — the one trick I had to learn was that up on my Roboform tool bar area, I’d see my name, and next to it I’d see the name of the website I was filling things out on and I could move my mouse over my name and get either the “fill in” or the “fill in and submit” form. If I’m doing a credit card I ONLY do the “fill in” click so that I can eyeball what I’m sending just as one final check, before the form gets sent.

Put in my Christmas order, everyone’s getting MREs, canned butter and cheese for the holidays!! All except for Grandma and Grandpa, they’re getting a new generator to replace the leaking, old, too small one!!

Thanks you Fully Prepped In SoCal. I got such a wonderful deal! Can’t wait to see what new items they’ll put up next.

  Got my cheese,butter, and eggs. But, they backordered the solar battery charger.

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