Amish salvage stores offer old-fashioned bargains

MESOPOTAMIA, Ohio — In a quiet gas-lit farmhouse, two girls in bonnets and long blue dresses wind tape around expired bottles of Newman’s Own salad dressing, and wipe dust off dented cans of vegetables and crumpled boxes of Butterfinger candy bars.

They are picking through the leftovers from America’s supermarkets.

Amish-run salvage stores, a thriving discount industry tucked away in America’s farmlands, sell expired food and medicine dirt-cheap. This shadow economy, run by people who typically shun modern methods of commerce, is drawing a steady stream of non-Amish customers seeking relief from the country’s financial ills.

“We have anything from a Mercedes in our parking lots down to horse and buggies,” said Ray Marvin, general manager of B.B.’s Grocery Outlet, an Amish-owned salvage store chain in Quarryville, Pa.

The customers are after prices resembling those of old-fashioned nickel-and-dime stores — paper towels for 50 cents a roll, salad dressing for 10 cents a bottle.

Except for baby formula, the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t prohibit the sale of expired foods or medicine. The agency bars the sale of adulterated or misbranded drugs, but those are evaluated case by case.

Everything else is fair game — “buyer beware,” as B&K Salvage owner Bill Gingerich puts it.

Salvage goods also show up on the shelves of some close-out stores, but those primarily sell bulk wholesale and overstocked goods at discounted prices.

“We’ve been amazed how good we’ve done,” says Rebecca Miller, an Amish woman who opened N&R Salvage with her husband last year on the outskirts of Mesopotamia, in northeast Ohio.

While most of these Amish-run businesses have been around for several years, store owners say business has picked up considerably in recent months as the country struggles with rising gasoline and food prices, a credit crisis and home foreclosures. While some stores advertise in newspapers, their popularity has largely spread through word-of-mouth.

Several Amish businesses declined to cite sales figures. Non-Amish salvage store owners also report climbing sales.

Mike Mitchell, owner of Amelia’s Grocery Outlet in New Holland, Pa., says sales grew 12 percent in 2007, and his chain of 11 stores is on pace to increase sales 23 percent this year.

There are at least six Amish-run salvage stores in northeast Ohio and nearly a dozen in Lancaster County in Pennsylvania, forming something of a discount shopper’s marathon course.

“A lot of people drive from one salvage store to the next and see how many bargains they can get,” says 41-year-old Barbara Byler, an Amish woman who runs Shedd Road Salvage in Burton, Ohio.

Only the savviest bargain hunter would be able to find N&R Salvage, perched on a grassy slope with open fields as far as the eye can see. The store is heated by a coal-burning stove, and Miller rings up customers using a battery-operated cash register.

The Amish are scattered across 28 states, with the highest populations in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana. A deeply religious group, they traditionally live off the land without electricity, among other modern amenities. Yet many have abandoned farming for family businesses, construction work and factory jobs.

Heavy losses of manufacturing jobs have hurt Amish and non-Amish alike in northeast Ohio. The nearest city, Cleveland, recently landed on a list of the country’s top five poorest urban areas.

“I’m trying to find ways to cut back on my grocery bill,” says 73-year-old Shirley Baxter, pushing a shopping cart down the aisles of B&K Salvage in Middlefield, Ohio. “And a place like this helps. At our age we’re on a fixed income.”

Since she discovered salvage stores, Jo Leyda of Windsor, Ohio, almost never pays more than $2 for a box of cereal.

“Why not? I don’t care if the box is ripped,” says Leyda, a mother of five, shrugging.