Surviving Off Dollar Store Food for 10 Days

Here are the chapters for this video. Feel free to jump around accordingly:

0:00 Introduction
2:10 Day 1
3:19 Exploring the Dollar Tree
4:50 My First Dollar Store Meal
6:55 My Second Dollar Store Meal
8:35 Day 2
10:40 The Rise and Cost of Dollar Stores
14:07 Day 3
17:04 Day 4
20:16 Day 5
24:51 How Dollar Stores Trick You
28:46 Day 6
30:45 Day 7
32:52 Day 8
37:09 Day 9
38:56 Day 10
40:33 My Profound Conclusion
41:13 Are Dollar Stores Actually Affordable?
41:57 Dollar Tree's Lack of Unit Pricing
42:48 Dollar Stores Don't Provide High-Quality or Healthy Options
43:26 How Dollar Stores Affect Local Economies
44:14 Dollar Store Lawsuits
45:42 Hope and Conclusion

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[rancid]

Im glad you covered the fact that some things were still cheaper at a bigger retailer like walmart. I think the biggest challenge when it comes to grocery shopping is that nowadays if you want to get the "optimal" grocery run, you need to go to 2 sometimes 3 or more different stores to get the best deals and most people just dont have the time for that. It turns a 1 hour grocery trip into 2 or 3.

[CoffeeArtThings]

Pro tip if you dont have milk and butter for mac n cheese save some of the pasta water and use it instead, not perfect but it will make a sauce instead of a sludge

[williamschachtel]

I doubt anyone will see this but the reason your shrimp tasted like poop is quite literally because you didnt remove the poop chute. On the back of the shrimp there is a vein looking line (when you buy shrimp without it they even call it "deveined") which is actually how shrimp get rid of waste. Even if you get rid of it after cooking, if you cook it with the vein in the taste spreads through the meat

[Lord_Uroko]

You overcooked the absolute hell out of that shrimp. I verbally said "he overcooked the shit outa that shrimp" 3 seperate times and you just kept cooking it

[masonblair]

There was a period of about 2 years in my life where I literally survived solely off Dollar Tree food because I couldn’t afford anything else at the time.

I would get a box of toaster pastries, a loaf of bread, bologna, sketchy cheese slices, chips, then like 6 cans of soup for dinner.

I remember finding a $5 bill getting out of my clunker car and got excited that I could get 5 more things lol.

I’m doing much better now, and look back on those more unfortunate times with a humbling appreciation for what I’ve got now.

[thewrm]

"i may have overcooked the shrimp"

*proceeds to cook the shrimp further*

[aidansouder]

Aldi mentioned, hell yeah. Actual grocery store with extremely low prices, produce, and well-made + organic options. If Aldi has no fans, I'm dead.

[astrolatry]

former employee of dollar tree (4 years of hell!) to say:
1. those fastbites burgers and spicy chicken sandwiches were the highlight of my lunch when i got lucky enough to work 8 hr shifts
2. the english muffins don't come on the food truck, they come on the bread truck! that's daily, and i'm sorry you missed out
3. you're right about the lack of unit pricing being a problem, but in their defense they can't really put prices on the shelves because things come in so often and sell so quickly--stocking is just shoving anything out anywhere it fits, so nothing would ever match

[nlong]

I really appreciate the tone of this video. Never taking the food reviews too seriously, but at the same time being vigilant in explaining impacts of these stores on local communities particularly low-income neighborhoods. It’s incredibly accessible to people from all walks of life and super entertaining. In every opportunity you had to punch down for a laugh, you don’t and instead take moments to educate to bring us all to a better understanding. Appreciate you. Subscribed.

[fattysenpai]

Fun fact! The Toast ‘Ems actually came out before Poptarts!

[ChesireTiger]

"it's shrimp time"
"I did not like the shrimp"
a horror story in just a few words

[lorahohday]

23:00 when cooking raw shrimp, I find that peeling it before cooking to be the best method. Your shrimp will tell you where it is at in the cooking process!! If it's light pink in a "U" shape, it's "Undercooked", if it's reddish in a "C" shape, it's "Cooked", if it's darker in more of an "O" shape, it's "Overcooked". Hope this helps

[dangnabbits]

fun fact! the Vienna sausages that got rated 1/10 as in not being suitable even for a dog are incredibly good training treats if you’re on a tight budget. cheap, easy to break up, fine in moderation, and 9/10 dogs go crazy for ‘em

[nexusgiga]

I won't lie. I came into this video ready to hate it. I hate when privilege rich dudes try to "see what it's like to live as a poor person" but you actually showed effort and showed what it really is like to budget and save for this sort of thing. I appreciate that. Thank you

[mariajose]

I know I'm bias but I feel like dollar store were better back in the day. Around 10 - 8 years ago all I could afford was the 99 cent store. I remember being excited when they started bringing in fresh produce. Once I got a better job and was able to afford bulk I switched so I see that bulk buying is cheaper. However back when I could only afford 20-30 bucks a week for food the 99cent store is the only way I could eat. When they announced they were closing the 99 cents stores I went one last time and teared up a couple times in the store. At the end of the day without it I would not have been able to survive. I will always feel gratitude toward the 99 cent store for that.

[preont]

I’m literally doing this for this month since I don’t have a car and I’m staying on my campus for winter break and the closest place is dollar general😭😭😭

[wheels]

From a former Dollar General employee:

Another huge problem with dollar stores is that the amount of food waste that happens is INSANE. Every time we got a shipment of refrigerated/frozen foods, we would get WAY more than could possibly fit on the shelves. We would sometimes get full shipments of items that were already fully stocked, like getting eight tubs of a flavor of ice cream that there were already eight of on the shelf. There was a fridge and freezer in the back but they could only hold so much and in the end, we ended up throwing out countless tubs of ice cream, boxes and boxes of frozen food and sometimes even gallons of milk.

In terms of the non-refrigerated items, it was better but not by much. There would be overstock of foodstuffs sitting on the top shelves for months (occasionally even years) after they expired until we eventually threw it out. I remember one time throwing out well over 100 boxes of twinkies and tastycakes at once because they were expired/expiring soon. My coworker and I salvaged what we could but of course we had to throw out most of it.

TLDR: Supply practices carried out by dollar stores creates a ton of food waste. Dollar stores (or at least dollar general) irresponsibly over ship food to their stores, resulting in a surplus that often has to be thrown out.

[ScathyPlays]

I used to work at Dollar Tree, and I can tell you we would be given 5-10 hours a week, in terms of our schedule. Unloading the truck would last a full 5 hour shift most times with us unloading 1300+ boxes of product. Meaning some weeks you'd only have one other 5 hour shift to put out as much as possible.

(That would be why you were told to come back on a certain day, because the day/night before was when all of the stockers got their hours.)

Most of the time, it's the managers working far above 40 hours a week (Paid salary, so they're not seeing any extra money past those 40) that actually keep the store functioning as well as they possibly can.

For those of you who DO shop at these stores (and I cannot stress this enough) please, please, please check the expiration dates. We would only have 5 hours to restock a shelf, rotate all the products, and pack our own carts. With all of the things we would have to do, we'd be lucky to get 3 hours of actual stocking time. Leading to products being out of date on the shelves due to us not being able to get to them, or simply not having the time to look everything over in our singular section. I'm not saying everything in the store is out of date, but typically Dollar Tree buys cheaply because products are closer to the end of their shelf life, or they're lower quality/quantity.

[izukukageyama]

4:41 The quiet giggle behind the camera was so wholesome

[jwcarlson]

That shrimp was so overcooked that you might end up getting sued by their grandshrimp.