After eliminating case lot sales last year and the first half of this year thanks to budget cuts, they are now back for stateside shoppers, commissary officials said.
The sales, which will be held at all stateside commissaries between mid-August and late September, will feature discounted bulk goods, some at a savings of 50 percent or more, officials said.
Commissary officials estimated early this year that doing away with the sales, which were previously worldwide, would save them $900,000 over two years.
Now, to keep the sales going the grocery industry has agreed to pick-up part of the tab, DeCA officials said.
Only bringing the sale to CONUS commissaries plus Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico cuts down the cost dramatically since no additional overseas food shipments are required. Instead of $450,000 a year worldwide coming out of DeCA's pockets, they are simply counting on local stores to use their own operating budgets to fund the at-location costs and the industry to get the goods there.
Overseas commissaries may host special sidewalk sales. The difference between a sidewalk sale and a case lot sale is that special goods are shipped in for the case lot sale.
One of my first commissaries memories is shopping a Joint Base Lewis-McChord case lot sale right before marrying my soldier. Later I stood in line at a case lot sale at Fort Benning in the hot, hot sun for almost an hour because the registers were all down.
Since then I've gone to a few, but have never found the savings to be that wowing, especially because they often do not allow manufacturer coupons at the sale. Since many of the items in the past were already discounted with electronic coupons, using a manufacturer coupon constituted coupon stacking, which the commissary does not allow.
What do you think about case lot sales? Do you miss them? Is it worth the work to bring them back?
