Amish stores thrive amid U.S. economic woes

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 put 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," said Rebecca Miller, an Amish woman who opened N&R Salvage with her husband last year on the outskirts of Mesopotamia, in northeast Ohio. The couple have never taken out an advertisement, she says, but the customers keep coming.

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 local 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., said sales grew 12 percent in 2007 and that his chain of 11 stores is on pace to increase sales by 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," said Barbara Byler, 41, an Amish woman who runs Shedd Road Salvage in Burton, Ohio. "Some people don't have jobs. We expected them to come."

The Amish are scattered across 28 states, with the largest populations in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana. A deeply religious group, they traditionally live off the land and 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 five poorest urban areas.

"I'm trying to find ways to cut back on my grocery bill," said Shirley Baxter, 73, 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."

The narrow aisles spill over with water-damaged taco shells (25 cents per package) and pesto sauce that expired four months ago (five packets for $1). There's low-price facial moisturizer, tubes of old toothpaste, discounted rolls of toilet paper, even expired over-the-counter medicines.

At Triple M Salvage in Middlefield, adventurous customers can buy Hair Regrowth Treatment from Rite Aid that expired more than three years ago. For a buck, they might try a bottle of Dulcolax stool softener that expired in June or year-old caplets of Tylenol Allergy medicine.

Food becomes salvage after it is discarded by supermarkets, typically because it is damaged or nearing expiration. Seasonal products whose shelf life is over, such as Christmas-themed paper plates, end up in the scrap heap. The products are then shipped to reclamation centers, which are owned by major grocery chains or independently run. Some products are thrown out; the rest gets trucked to discount stores across the country.

Products that are too old or moldy are thrown out or marked as free, Byler said. Greg Martin, manager of Banana Box Wholesale Grocery, a Kutztown, Pa.-based food brokerage outlet that works with salvage stores across the country, said he's seen incoming loads covered in cat litter.

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," said Leyda, a mother of five. "If it's a bottle of salad dressing that's, like, a month expired, there's probably nothing wrong with it. But generally, I just stick with the scratch and dents."

Customers at B.B.'s boil down to "people who value a dollar," Marvin said. The chain has expanded to four stores since opening 15 years ago.

Amish expert Don Kraybill of Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pa., called the popularity of salvage stores a "mini Amish industrial revolution." He said it is a natural outgrowth of booming Amish micro-enterprises, a result of the decline in farming.

"Their businesses frequently succeed because they have low overhead, they work very hard, they're creative," Kraybill said. "And they have an ample pool of labor within their extended families."

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