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If you look on the bottom row sometimes or at another location they should be have olive oil mixed with soybean oil at dollar tree. Mine had it hidden in the back bottom row for a while I was looking for it forever !
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.
watch the deal guy... walmart has many cheaper than items. .99 cent only had produce.if you have commonsense you can buy what is cheaper and better tasting from anywhere. kid failed too much. D, ,
I take the time to do this. I shop at a total of 5 stores to get the very cheapest price on every grocery and household item. I spend about half of what my friends with same-sized families spend.
@BlessedLifeOriginal you have to be smart and Shop the best you can a lot of people are and they don't care. Does the same thing applies to buying clothes whether it's a name or its quality D, ,
Well, every shopper has to factor that in. Maybe Wal-Mart is cheaper, but if going there requires gas in the car and time on the road (and time is money), the cheaper option may in fact be to buy at a slightly higher price.
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.
I still buy some items here. I'm still trolling kroger for marked down meat. I can afford more but I was too broke for too long. At least I have some extra $ to donate to various charities
@@shawbros which is cool, but not helpful when getting to Walmart isn't saving anything when factoring in gas or your clunker car might not survive the extra hour journey. There's a reason why doller general/dollar tree are still surviving while competing with Walmart where so many other retailers got out competed. Seen it first hand. Watched them fold when my town got a Walmart. But when I spent the summer in a home where the nearest grocery store was an hour away... And I was 15 minutes from a dollar general... Well. Oh course I grocery shopped when I could but when I just spent all week working 12 hours a day in the sun the last thing I wanted was to do a 3 hour grocery trip. Do not recommend the little stir fry meals tho, those screwed my stomach all up.
@@SoulDevoured Not everyone lives in a place where the only Walmart is an hour drive. In my area, within a 50 mile radius, there are a total of 51 Walmart SuperCenters or Walmart Neighborhood Markets.
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
@@sukaenacornelius9285you’d think it would be cheaper but buying from the dollar menu in McDonald’s and other alternatives are usually way cheaper than actually cooking meals from scratch 😭😭😭
@sukaenacornelius9285 it's embarrassing to not know how to cook, but it's how the majority of us were raised! My great grandma was probably the last person in my family who knew how to cook! don't worry I taught myself ♥︎
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
You know what, I actually really appreciate that you didn’t use salt because you forgot it. A lot of people doing this challenge will just say “oh everyone has salt in their home so I didn’t include it in the budget” and it really makes me wonder how much more adding in things apparently “everyone has” would add to the budget.
You can get staple items for less than $25-30 bucks,much less if buying from dollar tree and they last for months even years that’s why it’s impossible to really calculate the cost of those items. So salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, flour, sugar and cooking oil shouldn’t be added to the budget because it throws things off for most ppl who already keep those items in their home & very rarely have to replace.
seriously, not everyone has the same set of "staples" either. like sure i have salt and pepper but i dont have many other "staple" seasonsings cuz my household was unfortunately very bland. absolutely hate it not being counted to the cost videos. they should always be counted imo. you dont know who's starting out from 0 and who is starting at 2. just assume 0 if you're committed to budget survival videos
I hate that about budget living videos. They all have like olive oil, and dismiss it as a staple. Which it is - if you can afford it - especially now, and I'd highly recommend everyone splurge on a bottle and use it sparringly so it'll last a year or so (its a good investment) but someone going out to buy everything wont be able to - and its so faux to just handwave and go "Oh eeeeveryone has Beluga caviar dont they" - I'll allow water. Everyone can access water somehow. But thats about it. Just account for it in the purchase. The Sorted (cooking channel) guys have an app that seperates your shopping lists into the staples you'll always need and that stretch for a while, and then what you need for a specific recipe. And then they'll alert you when staples are running low. Chef budgetting saves your budget.
I rarely shop at dollar stores but there are a few things I consistently go there for. 1. Seeds for my garden. Normally 25 cents for a pack, and I never get through the whole pack. 2. Cards for birthdays. Only a dollar vs the $5 at most other places. Seasonal decorations. It's cheap crap, but so is the more expensive equivalent being sold elsewhere.
This was something I was thinking about that Zack didn’t cover. I buy a lot of cheap junk that is more expensive at the big retailers. Gifts and seasonal is a great example.
I agree and would argue anything thats not food is generally a good deal at dollar stores, especially disposable items. May not always be top quality but they do the job without breaking the bank.
First I don't know how he paid $4 for the pizza, my local Dollar Tree, Everything is $1.25 unless cards sometimes are 50 cents Seeds is a good one, my Dollar Tree has them sometimes Bleach, a little goes a long way Facial tissues, 175 per box , see what it is anywhere else Even TP, four rolls, what's that 2 weeks worth with just spare change Dry rice and beans, pretzels (don't eat the whole bag in one day) There's a bunch good stuff in Dollar Tree Plus it's in and out pretty fast instead of a giant parking lot and store with miles of isles for 1or 2 things.
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
i've always seen frozen burgers in dollar general but never considered ACTUALLY getting them. i just know the great value ones are rlly rlly rlly bad. i'll try them out next time, thanks for the tip :)
Here in Europe it's pretty standard to have unit pricing. Not sure if it's an EU law, but at least in Germany it's in the law, with some exceptions. But for standard stuff like flour, pasta, meats, detergent, etc. you'll see the price per 100g/kg/100mL/L listed on the shelves. It's smaller than the price per item, but still easy to find and easy to compare.
Hey @Astrolatry, as a customer if i see something on a cart that’s not being worked by an employee, would y’all have cared if i took the case and broke into it? (Assuming it’s on top and doesn’t require me to downstack the cart to get to)
honestly as someone who often shops at dollar tree, i appreciate how you showed a lot of the food being used as ingredients to a bigger dish that can be made better than the sum of its parts. most of the time if I personally don't have the energy to properly cook the vast majority of the time, but even seeing these ideas it pretty cool. also, glad to see all dollar trees just randomly rearrange everything for no fucking reason
Former Dollar tree employee here! I worked as a stocker at Dollar tree, I also helped stock multiple different Dollar trees when they were short staffed. The main reason that stuff gets moved around all the time is because. 1. The modules reset occasionally just like any other store. (But this doesn't happen frequently) 2. Because the store has to work with the inventory they are supplied. Meaning if you get 90 boxes of pasta but you only get one box of sauce well the shelf is going to be 90 boxes of pasta and one box of sauce. But you also can't put too much pasta out to clog up the shelves because the next truck might have a bunch more sauce and you don't want to have a bunch of pasta that didn't sell but a bunch of sauce that did but now you don't have room for more sauce and it just gets buried at The bottom of the pile in the back. 3. The piles in the back. Dollar tree does not have the more formal inventory system that somewhere like say Walmart (I've also worked at Walmart) has. There are no shelves with specific numbers on them that items go to so that you can keep track of where they are. So inventory management is all over the place. The system is basically "find whatever you can in the pile in the back and that goes on the shelf" Dollar tree employees are paid too little to really care, 90% of them are part-time and this is their second job because either their social security doesn't pay enough to live or there are struggling alcoholic or single mother (90% of the people I've met that work at Dollar tree) So the mixture of this is a part-time job and I'm not getting paid enough to care, mixed with the absolutely horrendous inventory, leads to this kind of nonsense. I'm not defending them I'm simply explaining in case anybody wanted to know. I need to justify the year and a half that I wasted a Dollar tree somehow lol.
@@shadowsoulless6227 YES and to add to that, sometimes the District Manager will come in, and in order to make it look like their job is not completely pointless, the District Manager will proceed to tell everyone that everything has been done "wrong". The employees will then proceed to move stuff to make it "right" in the eyes of that creepy ole DM.
@@shadowsoulless6227 huh. So that's why every time I go there I can never find the thing I last purchased there lol. There was a notebook I liked that I bought from DT months ago but the other day I went back to see if they had more but I couldn't find it. They were even out of composition notebooks as well which is weird! composition notebooks are like... the default notebook that you can find anywhere!
As someone who not only watches an unhealthy amount of RUclips, but is also highly critical of everything on the platform, this is one of the best videos I've seen on here in maybe over a year. You deserve all of the success coming your way, Zackary. Keep doing exactly what you're doing. Unreal. I found your channel through this video if it matters.
Aldi really is one of the few stores that still has reasonable prices. Their bread and produce is so much cheaper than the big box grocers near me, and great quality generally. Meat prices are usually about the same as the big box stores but for most other staples, Aldi is easily 30-40% cheaper than everywhere else around here. I love them!
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
That is disgusting. I stopped eating shrimp for years and even now when my family makes it, I hardly eat. I had a bad experience when i was a kid eating shrimp. I threw up one time when I ate it. It's possible that i ate the shrimp with poop in it! 😢 😭
@@robertwilson8939 Idk about that being the reason it's cheap, however the poop chute is something that alot of ppl don't seem to know which is odd but it is fairly easy to remove it
Back when the 99 cents was still open,I had to use it to survive. A lot of elderly and poor people in my community did. The one thing I really appreciated was that they had some fresh fruit items, not all were great, but at least you could buy things like bagged salads, mangos, peppers, avocados.and full sized cereals and prepared meals. It was such a hard time in my life, and shopping there just compounded the feelings that I was so deep in poverty living, but you do what you have to do to survive. I'm doing okay now, and its one of those things that absolutely humbles you to the struggles of others because you know exactly what they are going through and how hard it is. Nowadays, for anyone who has access, there are so many Dollar Tree guru's, if you will, that break down how to save there, what to buy, what not to buy, or how you can go to places like WAlmart and really learn to budget and save. Extremely helpful information for those still out there trying to live day to day.
I LOVE this genre of video, where you take a “challenge” and actual educate people on the issue it deals with. While also acknowledging that for many it isn’t just a silly challenge but reality for many.
The only issue I have with these sort of "challenges" is that they try to do the 'how many different meals can I make' rather than how many means can you actually make. If they have rice, a loaf of bread, dried beans and maybe ground beef. You can make a lot more food. Normal people don't have the time to cook or eat individual meals every day. I am lucky to be in a very comfortable position in life now monetarily wise, and I still make a big pot of stew and rice and eat that for a couple days.
Its a pathetic way to create "content" there isn't a single thing he's said so far that isn't common sense. This dude must make videos for people that never left their bedroom at their mom's house
@generalsubs1359 stating a fact doesnt imply anything, its a sinple fact that this brainless content isn't worth watching. Anyone that e joys or thinks they're learning anything from these videos is factually less intelligent than those that don't. Its not a matter of opinion when it comes to standard quality
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.
this feels like an issue with your store....? i also worked at dollar general and my store itself didnt even deal with any stocking of fridge items- that was all done by a vendor who would stock our shelves and take anything extra that didnt fit. my store also didnt handle the twinkies or hostess items because a hostess vendor took care of those, too. vendors also took care of coke products. we rarely were overstocked on perishables, and we rarely were throwing out expired goods. the only time i remember us throwing out tons of perishables was when wed had a ton of expiring off-brand 2-liter sodas expiring, but despite company regulations to toss them we just... picked which ones we as employees wanted, bagged them up and put them outside so we could "throw them out at the end of the day" then wed just pick up our bag of goods after we clocked out. usually when goods were close to expiring wed just discount them and stick them by the registers and usually everything would go because cmon. who can resist a 50 cent candy when its right there at checkout so you dont even need to go get it... i imagine keeping up with expiries would be difficult at a store thats exceptionally understaffed or has somewhat less dutiful employees. most of the 5 people i worked with at my store were very hard workers, my store manager even more so, so we kept our extremely busy store in tip-top shape all the time.
I dont really know shit about anything on the financial side but i imagine they get some sort of tax or allowance for wastage, otherwise i'd imagine if they just had lower prices that they'd sell more stock and have less waste? especially for a store that's apparently known to be cheap. (from australia but we have equivalence)
@@notyaunzzz Yeah this problem for sure is a store-by-store basis thing, I worked at two different locations and one was much worse about it than the other, so it likely varies quite a bit by location but at least from what I heard from my manager there were a lot of other stores having the same problem. It's definitely a case-by-case basis issue but it's likely not too uncommon I wish my store discounted them and sold them, sure could've saved a lot! My coworkers and I also tried to take home some of the expired/soon-to-be expired stuff that was getting thrown out, it's crazy to me that the official policy is that you're not supposed to.
I had the same experience with the store I worked at, although I always made the choice to contact churches and other places that take food donations and I would donate what I could. However there was still A LOT of wasted food. It's sad, there's people who can't afford food at all and here they are throwing it out by the dozens. Im glad I was able to at least donate some of it in my time working there. Another issue I saw a lot was having to put up ads for "lower prices" or "deals" that were the exact same price as before. There was a lot of false advertising, or some kind of catch to the so called "deals" that was only noticeable through reading the fine prints. The only reason I no longer work there is because I was fired due to write ups. I kept being scheduled to run the store by myself, which meant me being stuck at a register dealing with angry customers and not being able to put up stock or do anything that involved being more than 15 feet away from the register. Of course it was them breaking their own policy but writing me up as if it were my fault I was getting no help. Very poor treatment to their employees, dirty stores, wasting food and finances massively, and lying to the loyal customers through false advertising and prices that are higher than every other store nearby. Dollar General is a terrible company and I've been saying that they will inevitably run themselves out of business or lose everything through lawsuits and court cases.
If you haven’t already,check out dollar tree dinners. She talks a lot about how it’s some people’s only options and tries to find ways to make nutritionally ok meals
She's great, but I think if we could have more channels that taught about food nutrition. I know this is for people in a pinch, but it'd be preferrable to teach them ways to make nutrious food from scratch. Like instead of how to cobble together Dollar Tree meals teach more about making bread or making more nourishing meals.. idk. I guess it is to say, in a perfect world - the Dollar Tree type budget meals should only be a temporary thing to get through a tough time.. but that isn't really the reality of our nation - who often don't have skills,money and or time to be making less processed food.
for boxed mac and cheese but you have no milk or butter - save about 1/2 cup of the starchy pasta water and add as much as needed to create the consistency that you want. you can also add any kind of fat, not just butter - olive oil, duck fat, chicken schmaltz, bacon grease, etc. you can replace parts of both with sour cream or greek yogurt as well if you want a different flavor. it's just mac and cheese, use what you have.
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
@@beastbalak typically, you can tell by the color but if anything look up comparable recipes and see how long they cooked it for. It can be a good reference sometimes for proteins
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.
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.
@kingbenjai2685 I wouldn't see it as ragging on me at all. Fact is because of how little we could get out in our short weeks, a lot of the food has to be non-perishable. But I've seen then have to toss plenty for that reason.
@@kingbenjai2685 I've worked for Walmart, Meijer, and Spartan Nash. All three companies will tell you during training and in all written materials/correspondence that every employee *must* rotate product when stocking, following FIFO protocols (first in, first out). However, in practice, every single one of my managers stopped me from rotating when they saw me doing it. The common sentiment these managers used every time was "products fly off the shelf too fast for it to matter / as soon as we run a sale on these items, the shelves will be empty / these products have an expiration date two years out" etc. I should note that despite managers saying they'd only do this for nonperishables like canned or dried foods, underpaid and overworked employees applied that same lackadaisical attitude toward fresh products also. Can't even tell you how many times I saw someone putting lunch meat or dairy products in the cooler by simply shoving the older product to the back and putting the new load in front of it. Next time you stop into a Walmart, if you want to get grossed out, look toward the back of those cheese/lunchmeat coolers and see how much rotten stuff is back there, forgotten and ignored. It's a lot. They say these things during your shift but of course they would never put any of this in writing because they would face actual repercussions for not following food safety protocols. I ignore them when they tell me not to rotate, because it's the right thing to do and I'm not getting paid more by cutting corners. I'm not getting out early, either, so I'm going to continue doing it the correct way despite the fact that it pisses off my bosses. Just typing that out sounds insane but this is my experience in grocery across all three companies. It's unreal, man. Getting yelled at for doing the job correctly... I'd be willing to bet this isn't just happening in my local area either. It's probably (hopefully) less of an issue at small, locally-owned grocers... assuming there are any left. Big Box Grocery is pretty much all we have in my area. I agree. It should be criminal, and companies should be held responsible since it's up to them to provide the employee with enough time and resources to do the job correctly. These problems aren't going to be fixed until we start holding the corporate overlords accountable.
@kingbenjai2685 fun fact, best buy dates are entirely optional, largely meaningless, and unregulated. Actual expiration dates are highly regulated and limited to items such as milk, eggs, dairy, baby formula, etc. Selling expired food is illegal. Selling food that is past it's best buy date is not.
Tip from seasoned sardine eater: sardines or any canned fish is best on saltines with a flavorful sauce like hot sauce or mustard. Eating just the fish itself is kinda gross.
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😭😭😭
Pancake tip- wait until you see holes that stay open/don't get filled with batter immediately. Once you see a few of those pop up, THEN you can flip and there won't be nearly as much batter spilling everywhere and the pancake will be more solid. Medium heat, don't rush them :)
@@sshimmy2258 I see what you mean that both are in the same umbrella. But 3D Energy was created by Christian Guzmán in August 2018. After that, Logan Paul and KSI created Prime in January 2022. They ripped off the design from Liberty Pop.
I love the way you made this “challenge video” not just a challenge but also extremely informative aswell. Alot of people might not know or understand what its like to shop at these places and why they are so unfortunately crucial to so many people
i just wanted to say as a hispanic person living in socal, you cooking the tortilla on the gas stove is literally what we do. so sad to hear not everyone knew that’s how you make them. if you don’t have a comal you just cook it with your hands and the flame. so many of the meals you made involving tortillas is what my family would eat before our financial situation improved. wonderful video and resourceful cooking!
@@oliviawsome everyone in the know does this all you need is a stove burner and quick fingers .I'm white and surprised more non Hispanics don't do this
Oddly enough, a Hispanic cashier at dollar tree ..who also sold plates, called me out thinking I was also Hispanic when I bought flour tortillas, told me my mom didn't teach me well, that j should get corn tortillas and ...cook them over the fire or in the skillet. When I tell you corn tortillas became my favorite food after that for a good minute, I mean it ...
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
As a Jamaican, theyre an affordable breakfast "protein" and childhood staple. We slice and fry them, then cook them in ketchup (til the sugar starts to caramalize). 11/10.
@@lydialoud would i personally feed my dogs them? no. but like Zackary said, a lot of people literally don't have better options. they aren't any worse for your dog than beggin strips but they are cheaper, usually more high value for dogs, and generally more accessible. used in moderation with a dog without specific allergies or conditions, i promise the dog will be fine. you don't have to like it or do it for it to be an okay thing
My mom got food stamps and WIC when I was kid and when my sister was a kid. Watching this really brought my childhood back. Those canned peaches I LOVED. We would occasionally get the those bigger containers of ramen and teriyaki noodles. The flavor wasn’t bad. And oh my gosh Tony’s pizza was some of my favorite!! I’m 17 now and I’m much more fortunate now then I was for the first 15 years of my life but it’s never something I could take for granted!!
As someone who has lived off these chains for a good chunk of my life, including very recently, I appreciate you keeping an open mind when doing this challenge.
Man, I'm hesitant to listen to the algorithm because there's so much garbage peddling here but I'm glad I checked this out. What a respectful video and really entertaining. I can't wait to go check out more of your videos!
Same. If I didnt listen to the first 10 seconds I would have passed. Initially I thought oh swell another baffoon yter trying to belittle the poor folks by pretending to want to understand and relate to my people who have to live this on a daily basis. Most of these types of videos just piss me off. He seemed to at least have a direction and had good intentions.
Want to know what's rich? The fact so many of these dollar stores are in rural communities and they're literally surrounded by crop fields full of vegetables, but none are to be found inside that store.
Maybe all owned by big corps that ship all their produce to big processing plants to produced processed garbage. Instead of the surrounding community. Capitalism is so disgusting
True. Honestly if they can find a local farmer that's selling roadside produce that'd be great - take any opportunity to get fresh produce locally. I think another sad thing, perhaps is some folks have lost the ability and/or time and resources for more scratch made cooking or access to have basic gardens to grow some of their own fruits or veggies. So many of these cheap-fast-convience meals..but probably lacking much in the way of nutrients.
@@chestnut-v8h they are Dollar Stores, they still sell tons of things other than food. Cleaning supplies, organization stuff, birthday/party supplies, gardening stuff, dishes and kitchen supplies, soap and shampoo, toothpaste, office supplies. You don't just go there for food
One thunkful note you missed: there's a disproportionately large "classroom supply" section in Dollar Tree, because teachers are forced to buy supplies out of their own pockets and were buying crayons and stickers from the stationery aisle before Dollar Tree realized what they had on their hands and made a whole section. I'm not smart enough to articulate it but it feels skeevy.
My mom is a teacher, for every major holiday she gets school supplies, little toys, and sometimes candy from Dollar Tree to make goodie bags for her students, among other things. She saves her receipts for classroom purchases because the school helps cover expenses to some extent (I think it’s around $200 max yearly), though costs usually far exceed that.
@@ebbambI don't know what district she's in or grade or subject your mom teaches, but I do know that the teacher student ratio is super unbalanced at most schools, and I'm upset on her and her fellow teachers' behalf, because I doubt that $200 lasts the first semester
@ She works in the capitol city of my state, 2nd grade teacher. You’re right about the unbalanced student-teacher ratio, she usually has around 25 students I think, but more often than not she gets overflow from other classes (when other teachers are out, because the district apparently can’t hire substitutes), so that’s up to 30 kids in her class sometimes, usually the other kids aren’t even in the same grade. $200 is gone before the school year even starts sometimes, just buying things to prepare for it.
I think that's very smart of the dollar stores. They recognized a demand and provided an abundance of supply. The end result is that they get to make money, and the teachers get affordable and adequate supplies for their classrooms.
I call bs. 😂 Those little sausages have to be put on saltine crackers and is a meal for a king. We even made Vienna sausages and mustard sandwiches on white bread. 7/10 all day. Oh yeah and also have to drain them and rinse with water in the can.
I went into this video with basic expectations of it being a video showing what you ate at dollar tree for 10 days, but it was a lot more than that. Your great editing, great flow, and great research, made this a fantastic and yet informative watch. I will be subscribing ❤
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.
Sadly that's how it tends to go, the originals probably were great and set out to do exactly what was advertised, but then greed steadily set in, or maybe it was even the plan from the get go to choke out local business then start price gouging.
@@LatitudeSky I did say dollar stores were better back in the day. At one point believe it or not dollar tree and the 99 cent store both only had items that cost 99 cents. And yes I know it doesn't exist anymore.
it's not. I paused to read the ingredients. it's basically some tomato sauce and then vegetable oil and whatever else it needed to get the consistency close to the real deal and make it stable. it has flavoring and color, ofc, and a teeny tiny bit of dried avocado dust. the ingredients that sound unfamiliar are stabilizers, basically to ensure it doesn't change color, taste, consistency and nutritional value until the best by date. So it's vegetable oil disguised as mashed avocado
@@dopaminedrought395 Holy shit, that's vile... Imagine how many people eat that, and in amounts they'd eat avocado... No wonder so much of our country is sick constantly.
Eddie sucks, his forced haha I'm cringe humor isn't for me. 10 minutes in the video he's standing in front of the restaurant saying "does it look like I'm holding it up" is that supposed to be funny?
Never buy anything perishable from a dollsr store. I used to work at one, people would let frozen sandwiches and lunchmeat sit out way too long then throw it in the fridges, that's probably why your fish n chips and other frozen meals tasted and smelt funky,, the workers are paid minimum wage and given like 10hrs a week nobody there is concerned about your food being safe
@nev8867 i dont think they suggested a 10 hour work week being exhausting because its a long time to work, but rather because it's impossible to live off of that, which is exhausting on its own. If you're making even $15 an hour, 10 hours a week only gets you $150 a week, which is only $600 a month, before tax. And since nobody can live on that, they probably have to commute to several different jobs to be able to afford to live, and usually none of your weekends are going to align, so you don't have a real day off. You also dont qualify for FT benefits like health care with so few hours, so theres a whole other slew of issues stacked on there.
to be honest it sounds less like they don't care and more like they literally were not given enough time to make sure everything was in order. 10 hours is not enough time to get shit done, especially if there's only a few staff members. And not everyone can be doing shipment when it's there as people have to actually man the registers. It's absolutely a corporate not caring issue.
Reminds me of when I worked at AM/PM as a teen. Usually one person works the register while another makes the cheap burgers and chicken sandwiches. After a few weeks of working there you know about how many of each you're likely to make in a shift. That's when some guy who was never warned against thi, or forgot, will decide to save on trips to the freezer by grabbing that many packs of burgers and chicken patties all at once and taking them over to food prep area, where they sit and thaw during an 8 hour shift. Anything they don't use gets returned to the freezer. New part time guy at the place I worked at got our food license yanked by the health dept by serving burgers that had actual mold growing on the patties, after God only knows how many shifts spent thawing and then being returned to the freezer to thaw again the next day.
Regardless of what it says on the packet, never microwave bread products. Always deconstruct the sandwich, microwave the filling and toast the bread in a toaster.
Those Jimmy Dean's sausage and cheese English muffins are so good when I cook the sausage in the microwave and put the muffins in the toaster. It is also one of the products that is name brand and CHEAPER to buy individually at Dollar Tree than getting the 4 pack for $6.99 at Target. I had a Sausage McMuffin from McDonald recently that is the exact same thing but not as good.
If you’ve got one of those microwave food covers, it helps to keep the water in your food. Usually, bread is alright when I use mine. Or if you don’t, something my family had done before is microwave the food with a glass of water too, it works.
It's a bit of a baffling product. In the UK we have sausage rolls (sausage meat in a pastry stick), they're staple snacks and lunch items. Why would you ever use soggy microwave bread instead of pastry?
I'm in one of those rural places where dollar stores dominate and are often the only option. I refuse to go there, but your experiment surprised me in terms of just how not-cheap the food is. I used to grab a bag of dried beans and a bag of rice and some frozen veggies and live off of that during hard times -- your experiment highlighted just how much more expensive food must be for people living out of their cars or homeless who don't have access to stoves, who can't take advantage of affordable food options like that. Not only was the food junk, it was pricey junk. Such a shame those stores take up so much space out here. Great video, subscribed.
You'd be surprised how many people also just don't know how to cook something as basic as rice and beans, and are intimidated or have some kind of mental block that stops them from ever trying to learn. I've had so many roommates who live off canned or microwavable crap or frozen pizzas and claim to be so broke. I've had literal years where my food budget was $30 a week and I made it work with a lot of dried beans, lentils, rice, and potatoes.
You’re probably not going to see this but you’re one of my favorite content creators and your videos feel so real and genuine content like this now a days feels really rare so every time you upload I’m immediately watching
Actually while toastums came out commercially first, Pop-Tarts (or what would later be known as Pop-Tarts) we're being tested and shown off to see public responses before to see if it's a sellable product and the toastums designed a copycat before they did a full release
@@War7123That's super wrong and actually sorta the opposite. Post(Toast'em) actually announced their product first which was originally called Country Squares but Kellogg (Pop-Tart) rushed out their product before Post made theirs and thrived. Post basically got left in the dust because of this, and sold their idea to another company later on when their product wasn't selling well. TLDR, Pop-Tart's are the copy and Toast'em up's aren't as they were announced earlier.
As a European its so weird to see how US still doesn't have mandatory price per weight of contents on all product labels. Its so useful for people, you can easily follow your costs of shopping and especially between different brands who try to fool people with packaging.
Do you want to know something whack? As a kid (home schooled for 3 years of that, this game starting between then) it was a game where I would calculate the price per weight when selecting goods off the shelf to find the best deal. At the checkout, I would provide my mother with the total, including tax (calculated in my head, and no we don't include the tax in the sticker price). If I was right, I'd get to pick a candy bar for the trip. It's no shock us americans suck at cost evaluation, everything is so obfuscated.
As an American, it's weird that all of you individual countries still aren't your own union yet you continue to compare your little countries to a country whose states could swallow yours and still have room. Weird.
To put a button on the grocery stores closing: most grocers make very little margin on fresh food. On some items, like milk, they often even take a loss. The grocer hopes that when you are in there on a milk run you will stop through and buy some of the much more profitable candy, canned goods, or non-food items, which is where most of the actual margin is made. So that 3% decline in sales that is taken by the dollar store is actually often a much, much larger portion of the profits of the grocer and is why the grocer closes. It's not JUST the "lower prices" of the dollar store
Can we also talk about the fact that we can’t afford to shop at the regular stores in town. Especially the small family run stores since they have to raise their prices higher than even the mainstream grocery stores. This is also my problem when I’m shopping for non-food items.
Just subbed because of this video. First video I've seen of yours and have to say, there's no wonder as to why you have a quarter of a million subs and counting!! Great job brother! Stay honest and keep integrity. It shows thru ur content.
As someone who grew up really poor, I recognized a lot of brands in this video, like Hunts sauce and Tony's frozen pizza. The secret to Hunts sauce is you need to get either the herb or original flavor (not meat), add white sugar, oregano, and a little garlic powder, then cook it down for a few minutes.
**says he has to be careful with the frozen pizzas to stay in budget** idk, if we pretend it's healthy and ignore his decisions and rules, 25 frozen pizzas would likely last 10 days
The nearest grocery store is 2 miles away from me. In that same radius is 1 dollar tree, 3 family dollars and 4 dollar generals. Even if you have the capability to get to the grocery store, the shear mass quantity of dollar stores makes you consider "why would i go all the way over there when this is right here?" Each time you pass one.
My hometown just got a dollar tree a few years ago before that it was gas station food or a 20 minute drive to the closest non branded grocery store, 45 minutes for food lion, an hour for Walmart
Additionally because most of the money apart from employee pay is taken out of the local economy meaning there is no velocity of money. I.e. you have $1 you give that to a baker, who uses that dollar to get more flour and it goes on and on. This is a very recent phenomenon due to the proliferation of national and international chains. There were places in the USA in the late 1800s early 1900s where $1 would stay in the local economy for an average of a year and ciculate 25 times. In low income neighbourhoods today 1 dollar stays in the lcoal economy 32 minutes and does not circulate once. It just goes to national and multinationals.
may i ask where that statistic on a dollar staying in the local economy only 32 minutes comes from? I'm curious about that and I'd love to read more about it
Rebecca from Dollar Tree Dinners has an excellent channel which informs about the options for living off this kind of food. I'm not from the US but her videos are so interesting to me. Your video is the other side of that
It is really interesting because I have never seen food in the dollar stores. I have Dollar tree and Dollar General around where I live but the most food I have seen are snacks and pop, one has a small freezer with ice cream.
For future reference, shrimp cooks very quickly. If you're doing a stir fry style, you're better off removing the peels and cooking them raw in the pan instead of boiling them first so they don't get overdone and turn hard and rubbery.
First time watching you. This video was well edited, not over-done. And the presentation kept me interested with how clear spoken you are. Well done 👏 10/10
Another one for the best hits!! Showing the scam of dollar stores makes it even more upsetting when you see just how aggressively they try to corner lower income areas. Food deserts break my heart, used to work for a conservation nonprofit that targeted food deserts in AL. One of our biggest programs was developing and supporting community gardens while equipping the communities with the resources and knowledge to utilize it. Since you showed there are better deals to be had at Walmart, maybe you could explore just how healthy you can eat on a similar budget. Keep up the great work, Zack!
"RFK is so gonna ban whatever I just ate" is such a good line. I also appreciate the "DONT FORGET IT" and the desk slowly rising up to meet you your editing is great :)
Vienna sausage is what I used to eat when times were bad in the 2000s. You’re not supposed to eat em outta the can- they’re made to lightly fry for 30 or so seconds after slicing. Good with rice or in an omelette- bad alone but good with stuff and made to last a while(why you had that icky juice) and at a poverty price(1$ per can at Walmart up to five years ago)
I dislike those sausages immensely during college. thought I could get a quick protein fix but horrible. until I met one guy who cooked them up for me once time. changed my mind about them after that.
@@strawsssssmy late dad would eat then straight out of the can. We grew up extremely poor so that was our go to snack. Now I can’t look at them without gagging. Idk if it’s bc it’s part of the few memories I have with him or how often we ate them lol
never seen this guy till this video,usually i dont stick around for this type of content but this guy honestly has a good carisma about him and honestly made me laugh alittle, like when he was eating the pretzels and randomly out of no where points at a thing of wood and goes thought that was a person with a change of music and then goes right back to what he was doing before,i 100% pressed that like and subscribe button
Another milk substitute for boxed Mac and cheese or instant mashed potatoes is unflavored powdered coffee creamer. You add the required amount of water that the milk in the recipe calls for say a quarter cup and then sprinkle in 2 tablespoons of so of powdered coffee creamer and stir. It will taste like you made it with milk. The powdered coffee creamer seems to last forever if it’s stored correctly. Also flavor your own coffee by crushing your own hard candy and adding it to hot coffee and stir. Tastes just as good for pennies. My favorite is werther’s coffee caramel candies.
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
i dont know how "poor people" eat a 7 dollar box of fishticks(18 count) from the dollar store. its just a convenience store; not meant to acquire cheap food. when you're actually poor you either go to a food pantry of get on gov assistance. if you have too much pride for that, you'll eat rice and beans for a month straight. this was just some silly video of him eating random crap food.
@@m.g.7475 no i didnt miss his point. i was pointing out that he started with a false premise. i always eat extremely "cheap" food. i buy meat in bulk, rice in bulk, bags of beans in bulk, et cetera. if i divide it by the week, my wife and i eat for about $10 a week. we'll make a pot of chili and eat on it for a week and a half. we'll make 5lbs of stuffed cabbages, 5lbs of chicken enchiladas, a large pot of beans and keep cooking rice until the beans are gone - with a side of chicken or pork. you can find everything you need at a walmart. EVERYONE can make it to a walmart. MY point, again, was that a dollar store isnt a place to buy "budget food", it is *only meant for convenience* , like the crappy food at gas stations. meaning, his whole video was pointless.
@@samwaldorf8777 Oh. You have the time and energy to cook, and the money to buy in bulk. AND you have access to a WalMart. How very nice for you. You missed the point. And then you missed it even worse. Brava.
As a hispanic, it is very common to toast tortillas on an open flame and usually that just means the stove. Its also done with banana leaves as prep for certain dishes
The trick of cheap mac n cheese if you don't have milk or butter is to leave a little of the water in the pan so the cheese powder can dissolve. I grew up in extreme poverty and even had stretches of bad struggle times in my adulthood so I figured out that trick.
yeah i was staring like just cuz u don't have milk doesn't mean you can't add water... just dissolve the powder and if it's too thin boil off the water till the texture is right 🥲
I use water because its how i did it when i was poor growing up. Now i mianly do it because I never have milk on hand because i don't drink or use it for anything
Pour the juice out the viennas if you dont like it, or eat the regular ones, they have about 50 flavors and are pretty much spam. Ps, try cooking them Pss, no disrespect is meant out this comment it is just advice from someone who loves viennnas
was just bawling my eyes out over a bunch of different things, this video helped me calm down and was very entertaining. if you can make a sad man stop crying you know your good at making videos. 10/10
Thank you for this. I shop at Dollar tree a lot, wasn’t even realizing the marketing tactics & how it’s not really cheap. A lot of great points were made.
I never realized that to other people there’s a strong and very noticeable after taste or rotten food in it because it’s so normal to us. Another thing that I think is really inportant is that most of the people who are buying from here are not only low income but also have bigger families. In our home there are 6 people who need to eat including a cat, so if we want Mac and cheese that night, it can take 3 to 4 boxes, which is also costing more money. Sometimes my mother doesn’t have money left after rent so I step in and get groceries but at dollar tree because it’s the cheapest. We were eating small easy frozen foods for a while not caring what we were eating because we couldn’t afford too. Unfortunately, that is the reality for many families. That’s why I try to feed homeless people when I can because I know that if I was ever homeless, I would want someone to help me, but I understand why some can’t help, because if they did, then they would go hungry themselves. It’s sad that “foodstamps” is treated as a “shall not be named” thing, when the cost of food is slowly climbing and climbing and the low income or drowning and drowning. Mental health is severely affected and holidays are sad. This year it’s just my 14 year old sister, my mother and I (I’m 18). There is no father and our brothers are still in foster care, we cannot open all our presents this year on Christmas morning because we can’t afford them until taxes (for my mom) or payday (for me). We decided to thrift this year because we can’t afford to get a bunch of new stuff. I could go on and on and on with the trouble we’ve had. We can’t even drink the tap water because it has brain eating bacteria and makes us sick, so we are forced to pay 3 dollars to buy docks of water. This was a very important and needed social experiment, im sorry you had to eat all this nasty stuff but it was incredible for you to bring light to the horrors and reality some of us have to go through. Thank you. I hope less people will look at us funny when we don’t have the nicer things in life and aren’t able to afford $200-$400 a month on groceries or luxuries.
if you're hurting that bag go to a food pantry. dollar stores are just for convenience; which is why they are always located at certain intervals between larger chains and usually in more rural locations, or within walking distance of extremely dense populations centers.
@@samwaldorf8777 this is the second time ive seen you comment this, but not everyone has access to a food pantry. even if they have access, some people dont have access to transportation to get to them. food pantries often run out of supply too early, or give barely anything.
This makes me incredibly thankful that I lived near a Grocery Outlet through my University days. While they don't always have a consistent stock, I could always get cheaper fruits/veggies on my stingy budget (and sometimes some really good stuff too). Having to live with going to a worse version of that, with mostly highly processed crap, sounds awful.
As someone who has to live like this it's almost sad to see this grown man enforcing my childhood complaints. "Grandma the carrots are brown" "that's just what it looks like when you cook it"
I super appreciate you approaching this challenge from the perspective of someone who sometimes needs a store like this to afford food. While I am fortunately no longer in that position, I definitely spent my days looking for deals at the Dollar Tree just to get meals for the week in the past. One trick I remember was fondling the bags of frozen chicken patties because even though they were only supposed to have 4 inside, sometimes they would have 5. One time I even found one with 6 inside, you can imagine my excitement, lol. Anyways, killer video!
In the UK, shelf price tags & websites have cost per kg. e.g. "£0.60/kg" for budget spaghetti, "£1/kg" for a standard brand and "£2.40/kg" for a premium brand. It's a legal requirement to help shopper determine actual value & not be tricked by "X% MORE FREE" packaging.
In most places in the US, they are legally required to list either prince by ounce/pound or price by unit, with unit typically being for small things ala chocolate bars or something along those lines. However some states don't care all that much and basicallly just let companies do whatever they want. There are loopholes and other such tomfoolery that companies use sometimes, but broadly speaking that's the gist of it.
@@wan9840 Good to know 👍 I'm not sure if it's the kind of thing that can be made a federal law, but it should be. But like you say, there are loopholes regardless. I loophole I've noticed in the UK is that the shopkeepers can't always keep up with product changes. e.g. a food product decreases in size, but the price doesn't change & the packaging barely changes; the shopkeepers don't notice and the £/kg isn't adjusted on the shelf.
I know at least one store Walmart does it and they show the price per ounce. It’s very useful sometimes too. Smaller packages is cheaper than one large package when it comes to the price by weight.
Dollar stores sit in that grey area where they're not really a supermarket even though people use them as a supermarket. They're are classified as a variety store, which usually means they don't need to follow the rules that a supermarket needs to follow. I'm sure if you go to poundland they don't have the food marked as price per kilogramme or price per 100 g. Because they don't have to.
@@SunshineArt Interesting theory. I walk past a Poundland on the way to work, so I'll check tomorrow 👍 Update: Every item of food & drink in Poundland had both the price (£) and price per weight (£/100g) on the shelves. I expect they're subject to the same laws as other UK supermarkets.
Ever since their quarter price increase in all their stores, I will say the quality of dollar tree has skyrocketed, ESPECIALLY if your dollar tree has a fridge/freezer section
I survived off oatmeal and peanut butter for months absolutely had no choice was broken and homeless and addicted to drugs so that's all I could get without stealing it.
You chose your cheap foods well. Oatmeal gets boring but is great. Peanut butter is the best predictor of whether an Antarctic expedition will succeed or fail. The more peanut butter they bring, the more likely they are to survive and succeed in horrific conditions.
@EfficientRVer instant mashed potatoes even with out milk etc contain everything needed to support human life. You may even live longer than someone who's eats other things as there is evidence mono-meals take up less biological resources and induce less stress on the body, just not mentaly tho.
I survived eating Dollar Tree food when my brother purposely got evicted out of his apartment and I ended up homeless, literally just by myself in Florida. I’m grateful for those meals that I’ve eaten from DT ❤
Your videos are always so thorough and informative but still funny and entertaining. I imagine a great deal of work goes into creating them, especially the longer ones. Just want to say good job, and keep it up! Your videos are a diamond in the rough.
I feel like Zachary is most genuine in this eating from dollar tree video compared to other creators I see. I always feel like they don’t really eat and live off that daily especially when they are bringing in the views. But what do I know back to Zachery’s channel.
I really like these kind of videos that you do, which focus on elements of life in the US Heartland. You take things to the a degree that's wacky for most, though many are forced or choose to live that way too, and you manage to do it all in a way that's respectful of everybody and takes things seriously.
i really enjoy these kinds of videos for a variety of reasons, but the biggest one is i live in the same area as you and it's helped my view of the valley, especially as an 'outsider' to the area.
@@tribequest9 I just realized I can dox someone so I am just going to say that I believe he is traveling between Lancaster and Berks County (even maybe towards Allentown) to really cover the area which is about an hour apart.
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Thanks so much for watching! I hope you all enjoy. This one was a wild ride. Follow me on IG: instagram.com/zas11s/
If you look on the bottom row sometimes or at another location they should be have olive oil mixed with soybean oil at dollar tree. Mine had it hidden in the back bottom row for a while I was looking for it forever !
the canned tuna meals are better imo (depends on the person)
this was good i think i will sub interesting topic well done
dollar store food cost more because its a smaller shop. eggs are a buck more cheese is a buck more its a dollar more store. lol
taste is cultural, you've been shaped by what's commonly available
try doing a video about manipulating this and then try taste tests again
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.
watch the deal guy... walmart has many cheaper than items. .99 cent only had produce.if you have commonsense you can buy what is cheaper and better tasting from anywhere. kid failed too much.
D, ,
I take the time to do this. I shop at a total of 5 stores to get the very cheapest price on every grocery and household item. I spend about half of what my friends with same-sized families spend.
@BlessedLifeOriginal you have to be smart and Shop the best you can a lot of people are and they don't care. Does the same thing applies to buying clothes whether it's a name or its quality
D, ,
@@BlessedLifeOriginalI hope you take into account the gas and time it takes you to go to multiple stores.
Well, every shopper has to factor that in. Maybe Wal-Mart is cheaper, but if going there requires gas in the car and time on the road (and time is money), the cheaper option may in fact be to buy at a slightly higher price.
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.
Some stuff at walmart is cheaper than at Dollar Tree.
I still buy some items here. I'm still trolling kroger for marked down meat. I can afford more but I was too broke for too long. At least I have some extra $ to donate to various charities
Crazy that it's normalised to live like that in the US.
@@shawbros which is cool, but not helpful when getting to Walmart isn't saving anything when factoring in gas or your clunker car might not survive the extra hour journey.
There's a reason why doller general/dollar tree are still surviving while competing with Walmart where so many other retailers got out competed.
Seen it first hand. Watched them fold when my town got a Walmart. But when I spent the summer in a home where the nearest grocery store was an hour away... And I was 15 minutes from a dollar general... Well. Oh course I grocery shopped when I could but when I just spent all week working 12 hours a day in the sun the last thing I wanted was to do a 3 hour grocery trip.
Do not recommend the little stir fry meals tho, those screwed my stomach all up.
@@SoulDevoured
Not everyone lives in a place where the only Walmart is an hour drive.
In my area, within a 50 mile radius, there are a total of 51 Walmart SuperCenters or Walmart Neighborhood Markets.
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
I mean it's shrimp from the dollar store. 😂😂😂😂😂 you're not going to eat it rare.
Might have been good if he dropped them in a hot skillet with some butter and salt instead of boiling out all the flavor. 😅
Why are Americans so scared of cooking from scratch, isn’t it cheaper anyways?
@@sukaenacornelius9285you’d think it would be cheaper but buying from the dollar menu in McDonald’s and other alternatives are usually way cheaper than actually cooking meals from scratch 😭😭😭
@sukaenacornelius9285 it's embarrassing to not know how to cook, but it's how the majority of us were raised! My great grandma was probably the last person in my family who knew how to cook! don't worry I taught myself ♥︎
"wasn't raised with a silver spoon, more like a plastic fork" 😂
I love how you worded that. I can relate.
"it's shrimp time"
"I did not like the shrimp"
a horror story in just a few words
it is time for shrimp.
i bought this at dollar tree.
this was a mistake.
It reminded me of the one guy who's mom cooks bland stuff
😂
I wonder if they were deveined already or if he ate shrimp shit
@@faize28 Kay's Cooking?
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
Cacio e Pepe is made from, basically, pasta water.
Mayo or sour cream work just as well as butter, as well
You should be doing this regardless 😉
I'm strolling in and out of the store with a backpack, sunglasses, face diaper and hoodie before I rely on McCheese'n
I do this all the time and just use butter and skip the milk. Much cheaper and tastes better in my opinion.
You know what, I actually really appreciate that you didn’t use salt because you forgot it. A lot of people doing this challenge will just say “oh everyone has salt in their home so I didn’t include it in the budget” and it really makes me wonder how much more adding in things apparently “everyone has” would add to the budget.
lets go pens
@@maryamm.9Let's go utensils
You can get staple items for less than $25-30 bucks,much less if buying from dollar tree and they last for months even years that’s why it’s impossible to really calculate the cost of those items. So salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, flour, sugar and cooking oil shouldn’t be added to the budget because it throws things off for most ppl who already keep those items in their home & very rarely have to replace.
seriously, not everyone has the same set of "staples" either. like sure i have salt and pepper but i dont have many other "staple" seasonsings cuz my household was unfortunately very bland. absolutely hate it not being counted to the cost videos. they should always be counted imo. you dont know who's starting out from 0 and who is starting at 2. just assume 0 if you're committed to budget survival videos
I hate that about budget living videos. They all have like olive oil, and dismiss it as a staple. Which it is - if you can afford it - especially now, and I'd highly recommend everyone splurge on a bottle and use it sparringly so it'll last a year or so (its a good investment) but someone going out to buy everything wont be able to - and its so faux to just handwave and go "Oh eeeeveryone has Beluga caviar dont they" - I'll allow water. Everyone can access water somehow. But thats about it.
Just account for it in the purchase. The Sorted (cooking channel) guys have an app that seperates your shopping lists into the staples you'll always need and that stretch for a while, and then what you need for a specific recipe. And then they'll alert you when staples are running low. Chef budgetting saves your budget.
I rarely shop at dollar stores but there are a few things I consistently go there for.
1. Seeds for my garden. Normally 25 cents for a pack, and I never get through the whole pack.
2. Cards for birthdays. Only a dollar vs the $5 at most other places.
Seasonal decorations. It's cheap crap, but so is the more expensive equivalent being sold elsewhere.
This was something I was thinking about that Zack didn’t cover. I buy a lot of cheap junk that is more expensive at the big retailers. Gifts and seasonal is a great example.
GIFT BAGS. They have great gift bags, especially during Christmas. So inexpensive!
I agree and would argue anything thats not food is generally a good deal at dollar stores, especially disposable items. May not always be top quality but they do the job without breaking the bank.
First I don't know how he paid $4 for the pizza, my local Dollar Tree, Everything is $1.25 unless cards sometimes are 50 cents
Seeds is a good one, my Dollar Tree has them sometimes
Bleach, a little goes a long way
Facial tissues, 175 per box , see what it is anywhere else
Even TP, four rolls, what's that 2 weeks worth with just spare change
Dry rice and beans, pretzels (don't eat the whole bag in one day)
There's a bunch good stuff in Dollar Tree
Plus it's in and out pretty fast instead of a giant parking lot and store with miles of isles for 1or 2 things.
Birthday cards they do have the better option.
"i may have overcooked the shrimp"
*proceeds to cook the shrimp further*
Time stamps
in for a penny, in for a pound
It’s shrimp time ! As Zack lets it rise up on his cool desk! 😂 epic !
This is definitely part of why they werent very good. The longer you overcook shrimp, the more flavor it loses
shrimply cook it to a brick
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
Sounds like Burlington and certain other clothing/retail stores
i've always seen frozen burgers in dollar general but never considered ACTUALLY getting them. i just know the great value ones are rlly rlly rlly bad. i'll try them out next time, thanks for the tip :)
Here in Europe it's pretty standard to have unit pricing. Not sure if it's an EU law, but at least in Germany it's in the law, with some exceptions. But for standard stuff like flour, pasta, meats, detergent, etc. you'll see the price per 100g/kg/100mL/L listed on the shelves. It's smaller than the price per item, but still easy to find and easy to compare.
@@Patagonicus42can certify it's a EU law, unit pricing exists everywhere I've been to, from Greece to Italy to France to Belgium
Hey @Astrolatry, as a customer if i see something on a cart that’s not being worked by an employee, would y’all have cared if i took the case and broke into it? (Assuming it’s on top and doesn’t require me to downstack the cart to get to)
honestly as someone who often shops at dollar tree, i appreciate how you showed a lot of the food being used as ingredients to a bigger dish that can be made better than the sum of its parts. most of the time if I personally don't have the energy to properly cook the vast majority of the time, but even seeing these ideas it pretty cool.
also, glad to see all dollar trees just randomly rearrange everything for no fucking reason
Former Dollar tree employee here! I worked as a stocker at Dollar tree, I also helped stock multiple different Dollar trees when they were short staffed. The main reason that stuff gets moved around all the time is because.
1. The modules reset occasionally just like any other store. (But this doesn't happen frequently)
2. Because the store has to work with the inventory they are supplied. Meaning if you get 90 boxes of pasta but you only get one box of sauce well the shelf is going to be 90 boxes of pasta and one box of sauce. But you also can't put too much pasta out to clog up the shelves because the next truck might have a bunch more sauce and you don't want to have a bunch of pasta that didn't sell but a bunch of sauce that did but now you don't have room for more sauce and it just gets buried at The bottom of the pile in the back.
3. The piles in the back. Dollar tree does not have the more formal inventory system that somewhere like say Walmart (I've also worked at Walmart) has. There are no shelves with specific numbers on them that items go to so that you can keep track of where they are. So inventory management is all over the place.
The system is basically "find whatever you can in the pile in the back and that goes on the shelf"
Dollar tree employees are paid too little to really care, 90% of them are part-time and this is their second job because either their social security doesn't pay enough to live or there are struggling alcoholic or single mother (90% of the people I've met that work at Dollar tree)
So the mixture of this is a part-time job and I'm not getting paid enough to care, mixed with the absolutely horrendous inventory, leads to this kind of nonsense.
I'm not defending them I'm simply explaining in case anybody wanted to know. I need to justify the year and a half that I wasted a Dollar tree somehow lol.
@@shadowsoulless6227 YES and to add to that, sometimes the District Manager will come in, and in order to make it look like their job is not completely pointless, the District Manager will proceed to tell everyone that everything has been done "wrong". The employees will then proceed to move stuff to make it "right" in the eyes of that creepy ole DM.
@@shadowsoulless6227 huh. So that's why every time I go there I can never find the thing I last purchased there lol. There was a notebook I liked that I bought from DT months ago but the other day I went back to see if they had more but I couldn't find it. They were even out of composition notebooks as well which is weird! composition notebooks are like... the default notebook that you can find anywhere!
a gestalt...
As someone who not only watches an unhealthy amount of RUclips, but is also highly critical of everything on the platform, this is one of the best videos I've seen on here in maybe over a year. You deserve all of the success coming your way, Zackary. Keep doing exactly what you're doing. Unreal. I found your channel through this video if it matters.
That’s a huge compliment, thank you! I’m glad you found my channel!
your algorithm must suck
@@itrytobegood Yes. Yes it does.
@@ChrisMeadows92 why?
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.
yo same, thats the backbone of my diet right there
I love Aldi! They don’t have them where I live now, which makes me sad :(
i definitely be aldi shopping but it has a lot of inedible shit like the chips
Aldi really is one of the few stores that still has reasonable prices. Their bread and produce is so much cheaper than the big box grocers near me, and great quality generally. Meat prices are usually about the same as the big box stores but for most other staples, Aldi is easily 30-40% cheaper than everywhere else around here. I love them!
Not every area has aldi. I used to go but because I would stick up on certain things my husband banned me cause I would overspend in the now
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
Bump
you're telling me he ate poop shrimp? incredible, 10/10 video
That is disgusting. I stopped eating shrimp for years and even now when my family makes it, I hardly eat. I had a bad experience when i was a kid eating shrimp. I threw up one time when I ate it. It's possible that i ate the shrimp with poop in it! 😢 😭
oh god thats why its so cheap
@@robertwilson8939 Idk about that being the reason it's cheap, however the poop chute is something that alot of ppl don't seem to know which is odd but it is fairly easy to remove it
This man gets in his car, drives to a park, and gets on his laptop to research dollar stores. Bro's built different.
a true test of free will
fr he could’ve done ts at the crib💀
I knew this clip was different when he found the “Baby Boy” film souvenir!!! 😂😂😂
Bros built like my big toe
Buhl
Back when the 99 cents was still open,I had to use it to survive. A lot of elderly and poor people in my community did. The one thing I really appreciated was that they had some fresh fruit items, not all were great, but at least you could buy things like bagged salads, mangos, peppers, avocados.and full sized cereals and prepared meals. It was such a hard time in my life, and shopping there just compounded the feelings that I was so deep in poverty living, but you do what you have to do to survive. I'm doing okay now, and its one of those things that absolutely humbles you to the struggles of others because you know exactly what they are going through and how hard it is. Nowadays, for anyone who has access, there are so many Dollar Tree guru's, if you will, that break down how to save there, what to buy, what not to buy, or how you can go to places like WAlmart and really learn to budget and save. Extremely helpful information for those still out there trying to live day to day.
I LOVE this genre of video, where you take a “challenge” and actual educate people on the issue it deals with. While also acknowledging that for many it isn’t just a silly challenge but reality for many.
The only issue I have with these sort of "challenges" is that they try to do the 'how many different meals can I make' rather than how many means can you actually make.
If they have rice, a loaf of bread, dried beans and maybe ground beef. You can make a lot more food. Normal people don't have the time to cook or eat individual meals every day. I am lucky to be in a very comfortable position in life now monetarily wise, and I still make a big pot of stew and rice and eat that for a couple days.
Its a pathetic way to create "content" there isn't a single thing he's said so far that isn't common sense. This dude must make videos for people that never left their bedroom at their mom's house
@@Squashedelicawell that would imply he made the video for you. Sorry you didn’t like it
@@generalsubs1359 and I'm sorry that your mom still folds your clothes and washes your dishes 🤣
@generalsubs1359 stating a fact doesnt imply anything, its a sinple fact that this brainless content isn't worth watching. Anyone that e joys or thinks they're learning anything from these videos is factually less intelligent than those that don't.
Its not a matter of opinion when it comes to standard quality
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.
this feels like an issue with your store....? i also worked at dollar general and my store itself didnt even deal with any stocking of fridge items- that was all done by a vendor who would stock our shelves and take anything extra that didnt fit. my store also didnt handle the twinkies or hostess items because a hostess vendor took care of those, too. vendors also took care of coke products. we rarely were overstocked on perishables, and we rarely were throwing out expired goods. the only time i remember us throwing out tons of perishables was when wed had a ton of expiring off-brand 2-liter sodas expiring, but despite company regulations to toss them we just... picked which ones we as employees wanted, bagged them up and put them outside so we could "throw them out at the end of the day" then wed just pick up our bag of goods after we clocked out. usually when goods were close to expiring wed just discount them and stick them by the registers and usually everything would go because cmon. who can resist a 50 cent candy when its right there at checkout so you dont even need to go get it... i imagine keeping up with expiries would be difficult at a store thats exceptionally understaffed or has somewhat less dutiful employees. most of the 5 people i worked with at my store were very hard workers, my store manager even more so, so we kept our extremely busy store in tip-top shape all the time.
I dont really know shit about anything on the financial side but i imagine they get some sort of tax or allowance for wastage, otherwise i'd imagine if they just had lower prices that they'd sell more stock and have less waste? especially for a store that's apparently known to be cheap. (from australia but we have equivalence)
@@notyaunzzz Yeah this problem for sure is a store-by-store basis thing, I worked at two different locations and one was much worse about it than the other, so it likely varies quite a bit by location but at least from what I heard from my manager there were a lot of other stores having the same problem. It's definitely a case-by-case basis issue but it's likely not too uncommon
I wish my store discounted them and sold them, sure could've saved a lot! My coworkers and I also tried to take home some of the expired/soon-to-be expired stuff that was getting thrown out, it's crazy to me that the official policy is that you're not supposed to.
It’s shocking that corporate doesn’t work with local food pantries, but I guess it’s not because that would keep people from shopping there
I had the same experience with the store I worked at, although I always made the choice to contact churches and other places that take food donations and I would donate what I could. However there was still A LOT of wasted food. It's sad, there's people who can't afford food at all and here they are throwing it out by the dozens. Im glad I was able to at least donate some of it in my time working there. Another issue I saw a lot was having to put up ads for "lower prices" or "deals" that were the exact same price as before. There was a lot of false advertising, or some kind of catch to the so called "deals" that was only noticeable through reading the fine prints. The only reason I no longer work there is because I was fired due to write ups. I kept being scheduled to run the store by myself, which meant me being stuck at a register dealing with angry customers and not being able to put up stock or do anything that involved being more than 15 feet away from the register. Of course it was them breaking their own policy but writing me up as if it were my fault I was getting no help. Very poor treatment to their employees, dirty stores, wasting food and finances massively, and lying to the loyal customers through false advertising and prices that are higher than every other store nearby. Dollar General is a terrible company and I've been saying that they will inevitably run themselves out of business or lose everything through lawsuits and court cases.
If you haven’t already,check out dollar tree dinners. She talks a lot about how it’s some people’s only options and tries to find ways to make nutritionally ok meals
She's great, but I think if we could have more channels that taught about food nutrition. I know this is for people in a pinch, but it'd be preferrable to teach them ways to make nutrious food from scratch. Like instead of how to cobble together Dollar Tree meals teach more about making bread or making more nourishing meals.. idk.
I guess it is to say, in a perfect world - the Dollar Tree type budget meals should only be a temporary thing to get through a tough time.. but that isn't really the reality of our nation - who often don't have skills,money and or time to be making less processed food.
Yes I'm surprised you didn't use her recipes going in!
I love her channel, and it's a little more accepting in the sense that some people like to save $ & shop there no matter their income.
Rebecca is an absolute legend 💯
I absolutely adore that woman. She's so beautiful and intelligent. Sigh.... 😊😅
for boxed mac and cheese but you have no milk or butter - save about 1/2 cup of the starchy pasta water and add as much as needed to create the consistency that you want. you can also add any kind of fat, not just butter - olive oil, duck fat, chicken schmaltz, bacon grease, etc. you can replace parts of both with sour cream or greek yogurt as well if you want a different flavor. it's just mac and cheese, use what you have.
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
Amazing
That's a neat trick.
isnt "C" just a turned "U"? what if the shrimp just turns?
What a cute little trick. Thanks for that 😊
@@beastbalak typically, you can tell by the color but if anything look up comparable recipes and see how long they cooked it for. It can be a good reference sometimes for proteins
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.
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.
Not to rag on you at all here. But the fact that it is likely they are selling expired product should be criminal.
@@kingbenjai2685Yeah they mistreat their employees, so it's not their fault as much as it's the fault of the company.
@kingbenjai2685 I wouldn't see it as ragging on me at all. Fact is because of how little we could get out in our short weeks, a lot of the food has to be non-perishable. But I've seen then have to toss plenty for that reason.
@@kingbenjai2685 I've worked for Walmart, Meijer, and Spartan Nash. All three companies will tell you during training and in all written materials/correspondence that every employee *must* rotate product when stocking, following FIFO protocols (first in, first out). However, in practice, every single one of my managers stopped me from rotating when they saw me doing it. The common sentiment these managers used every time was "products fly off the shelf too fast for it to matter / as soon as we run a sale on these items, the shelves will be empty / these products have an expiration date two years out" etc.
I should note that despite managers saying they'd only do this for nonperishables like canned or dried foods, underpaid and overworked employees applied that same lackadaisical attitude toward fresh products also. Can't even tell you how many times I saw someone putting lunch meat or dairy products in the cooler by simply shoving the older product to the back and putting the new load in front of it. Next time you stop into a Walmart, if you want to get grossed out, look toward the back of those cheese/lunchmeat coolers and see how much rotten stuff is back there, forgotten and ignored. It's a lot.
They say these things during your shift but of course they would never put any of this in writing because they would face actual repercussions for not following food safety protocols. I ignore them when they tell me not to rotate, because it's the right thing to do and I'm not getting paid more by cutting corners. I'm not getting out early, either, so I'm going to continue doing it the correct way despite the fact that it pisses off my bosses. Just typing that out sounds insane but this is my experience in grocery across all three companies. It's unreal, man. Getting yelled at for doing the job correctly...
I'd be willing to bet this isn't just happening in my local area either. It's probably (hopefully) less of an issue at small, locally-owned grocers... assuming there are any left. Big Box Grocery is pretty much all we have in my area.
I agree. It should be criminal, and companies should be held responsible since it's up to them to provide the employee with enough time and resources to do the job correctly. These problems aren't going to be fixed until we start holding the corporate overlords accountable.
@kingbenjai2685 fun fact, best buy dates are entirely optional, largely meaningless, and unregulated. Actual expiration dates are highly regulated and limited to items such as milk, eggs, dairy, baby formula, etc. Selling expired food is illegal. Selling food that is past it's best buy date is not.
Tip from seasoned sardine eater: sardines or any canned fish is best on saltines with a flavorful sauce like hot sauce or mustard. Eating just the fish itself is kinda gross.
ngl this sounds good 😍
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😭😭😭
Good luck!
I wish you the best, and a merry Christmas.
cool pfp, W scp-1471
good luck cuh godspeed
Dollar tree dinners has great videos on how to make meals with stuff from dollar general! I hope you’re doing well 😊
Pancake tip- wait until you see holes that stay open/don't get filled with batter immediately. Once you see a few of those pop up, THEN you can flip and there won't be nearly as much batter spilling everywhere and the pancake will be more solid. Medium heat, don't rush them :)
Fun fact! The Toast ‘Ems actually came out before Poptarts!
I'll bet I know how you know that 😉
It's just like Hydrox was first before Oreos.
Prime is a knock off of 3D Energy Liberty Pop
@@SuperTacoWafflesprime is made by the same company
@@sshimmy2258 I see what you mean that both are in the same umbrella. But 3D Energy was created by Christian Guzmán in August 2018. After that, Logan Paul and KSI created Prime in January 2022. They ripped off the design from Liberty Pop.
I love the way you made this “challenge video” not just a challenge but also extremely informative aswell. Alot of people might not know or understand what its like to shop at these places and why they are so unfortunately crucial to so many people
i just wanted to say as a hispanic person living in socal, you cooking the tortilla on the gas stove is literally what we do. so sad to hear not everyone knew that’s how you make them. if you don’t have a comal you just cook it with your hands and the flame. so many of the meals you made involving tortillas is what my family would eat before our financial situation improved. wonderful video and resourceful cooking!
I remember watching my mom and my aunt cook tortillas like that and I stood there staring. Mesmerized how they didn't burn themselves
I thought that’s how everyone cooked them but apparently it’s just a Hispanic thing😭
@@oliviawsome everyone in the know does this all you need is a stove burner and quick fingers .I'm white and surprised more non Hispanics don't do this
But can you do that on an electric stove?
Oddly enough, a Hispanic cashier at dollar tree ..who also sold plates, called me out thinking I was also Hispanic when I bought flour tortillas, told me my mom didn't teach me well, that j should get corn tortillas and ...cook them over the fire or in the skillet. When I tell you corn tortillas became my favorite food after that for a good minute, I mean it ...
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
Absolutely not. The salt content alone will destroy your dog's kidneys and kill them early. You're ignorant and a bad person.
I'm theonly mf here that loves them lmaoo...Ofc with another meal not by itself
As a Jamaican, theyre an affordable breakfast "protein" and childhood staple. We slice and fry them, then cook them in ketchup (til the sugar starts to caramalize). 11/10.
I feel like our dogs deserve much better than that
@@lydialoud would i personally feed my dogs them? no. but like Zackary said, a lot of people literally don't have better options. they aren't any worse for your dog than beggin strips but they are cheaper, usually more high value for dogs, and generally more accessible. used in moderation with a dog without specific allergies or conditions, i promise the dog will be fine. you don't have to like it or do it for it to be an okay thing
My mom got food stamps and WIC when I was kid and when my sister was a kid. Watching this really brought my childhood back. Those canned peaches I LOVED. We would occasionally get the those bigger containers of ramen and teriyaki noodles. The flavor wasn’t bad. And oh my gosh Tony’s pizza was some of my favorite!! I’m 17 now and I’m much more fortunate now then I was for the first 15 years of my life but it’s never something I could take for granted!!
As someone who has lived off these chains for a good chunk of my life, including very recently, I appreciate you keeping an open mind when doing this challenge.
Man, I'm hesitant to listen to the algorithm because there's so much garbage peddling here but I'm glad I checked this out. What a respectful video and really entertaining. I can't wait to go check out more of your videos!
Same. If I didnt listen to the first 10 seconds I would have passed. Initially I thought oh swell another baffoon yter trying to belittle the poor folks by pretending to want to understand and relate to my people who have to live this on a daily basis. Most of these types of videos just piss me off. He seemed to at least have a direction and had good intentions.
Yes, but his comments on lawsuits is ridiculous. Walmart and other stores have similar issues. He just didn't bring them up.
"I did not like the shrimp"
Bro cooked those shrimp to pure rubber status, for sure. I never thought I'd feel bad for dollar store shrimp, but damn.
lmao definitely well done fr
Want to know what's rich? The fact so many of these dollar stores are in rural communities and they're literally surrounded by crop fields full of vegetables, but none are to be found inside that store.
Maybe all owned by big corps that ship all their produce to big processing plants to produced processed garbage. Instead of the surrounding community. Capitalism is so disgusting
True. Honestly if they can find a local farmer that's selling roadside produce that'd be great - take any opportunity to get fresh produce locally.
I think another sad thing, perhaps is some folks have lost the ability and/or time and resources for more scratch made cooking or access to have basic gardens to grow some of their own fruits or veggies.
So many of these cheap-fast-convience meals..but probably lacking much in the way of nutrients.
That's sorta the way with almost every single rural store in the western world.
The crops are all processed into corn syrup and soybean oil.
@@chestnut-v8h they are Dollar Stores, they still sell tons of things other than food. Cleaning supplies, organization stuff, birthday/party supplies, gardening stuff, dishes and kitchen supplies, soap and shampoo, toothpaste, office supplies. You don't just go there for food
Thanks for all the work you put in on this. So much research! Very well done!
Hello Dear__.... how are you doing today 🌹. how's your day going over there..🏵️🏵️🤗..?
One thunkful note you missed: there's a disproportionately large "classroom supply" section in Dollar Tree, because teachers are forced to buy supplies out of their own pockets and were buying crayons and stickers from the stationery aisle before Dollar Tree realized what they had on their hands and made a whole section. I'm not smart enough to articulate it but it feels skeevy.
My mom is a teacher, for every major holiday she gets school supplies, little toys, and sometimes candy from Dollar Tree to make goodie bags for her students, among other things. She saves her receipts for classroom purchases because the school helps cover expenses to some extent (I think it’s around $200 max yearly), though costs usually far exceed that.
@@ebbambI don't know what district she's in or grade or subject your mom teaches, but I do know that the teacher student ratio is super unbalanced at most schools, and I'm upset on her and her fellow teachers' behalf, because I doubt that $200 lasts the first semester
@ She works in the capitol city of my state, 2nd grade teacher. You’re right about the unbalanced student-teacher ratio, she usually has around 25 students I think, but more often than not she gets overflow from other classes (when other teachers are out, because the district apparently can’t hire substitutes), so that’s up to 30 kids in her class sometimes, usually the other kids aren’t even in the same grade. $200 is gone before the school year even starts sometimes, just buying things to prepare for it.
I think that's very smart of the dollar stores. They recognized a demand and provided an abundance of supply. The end result is that they get to make money, and the teachers get affordable and adequate supplies for their classrooms.
Hi. You wrote thunkful instead of thankful and it made me laugh when I was having a tough day. Thank you. Please don't change it.
As a lover of Vienna sausages, I think if you'd bought the original instead of the chicken, they could have easily been a 2/10.
LOL! love your humor 😂
All of them are nasty I would gladly go hungry before I eat those nasty things
I call bs. 😂 Those little sausages have to be put on saltine crackers and is a meal for a king. We even made Vienna sausages and mustard sandwiches on white bread. 7/10 all day. Oh yeah and also have to drain them and rinse with water in the can.
or if he drained it at least. my sister rinses them too. but, vienna sausages are definitely an acquired taste
Drain then eat with hot sauce and/or mustard, with crackers 😋
I went into this video with basic expectations of it being a video showing what you ate at dollar tree for 10 days, but it was a lot more than that. Your great editing, great flow, and great research, made this a fantastic and yet informative watch. I will be subscribing ❤
I echo this. I the same exact way!
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.
Sadly that's how it tends to go, the originals probably were great and set out to do exactly what was advertised, but then greed steadily set in,
or maybe it was even the plan from the get go to choke out local business then start price gouging.
Well 99Cent store is not the same as Dollar Tree. They don't have much in common. Well nothing now that 99cent is gone.
@@LatitudeSky I did say dollar stores were better back in the day. At one point believe it or not dollar tree and the 99 cent store both only had items that cost 99 cents. And yes I know it doesn't exist anymore.
30:00 - You notice how it says Guacamole-style dip? That's probably a surefire sign that it's not even remotely close to guacamole.
Probably not real avocado, since avocado is really expensive
it's not. I paused to read the ingredients.
it's basically some tomato sauce and then vegetable oil and whatever else it needed to get the consistency close to the real deal and make it stable. it has flavoring and color, ofc, and a teeny tiny bit of dried avocado dust.
the ingredients that sound unfamiliar are stabilizers, basically to ensure it doesn't change color, taste, consistency and nutritional value until the best by date.
So it's vegetable oil disguised as mashed avocado
@@dappuruduck Not if you're closer to the southern border.
@@lainiwakura1776 I live in Montana and Avocados are a $1 each.
@@dopaminedrought395 Holy shit, that's vile... Imagine how many people eat that, and in amounts they'd eat avocado... No wonder so much of our country is sick constantly.
This is the perfect video for me to watch as I am about to move out of my parents house for the first time
zackary and Eddy Burback uploaded videos within 24 hours with each other was the best great gift for the holiday
haha same, I just finished Eddy's video
I'm going to go watch Eddy's video after I finish this one!
Eddy's vid is great.
Why do people care so much for the holidays?
Eddie sucks, his forced haha I'm cringe humor isn't for me. 10 minutes in the video he's standing in front of the restaurant saying "does it look like I'm holding it up" is that supposed to be funny?
Never buy anything perishable from a dollsr store. I used to work at one, people would let frozen sandwiches and lunchmeat sit out way too long then throw it in the fridges, that's probably why your fish n chips and other frozen meals tasted and smelt funky,, the workers are paid minimum wage and given like 10hrs a week nobody there is concerned about your food being safe
10 hours a week doesnt really seem that bad, it’s like an hour n a half a day, but i get where you’re coming from
@nev8867 i dont think they suggested a 10 hour work week being exhausting because its a long time to work, but rather because it's impossible to live off of that, which is exhausting on its own. If you're making even $15 an hour, 10 hours a week only gets you $150 a week, which is only $600 a month, before tax.
And since nobody can live on that, they probably have to commute to several different jobs to be able to afford to live, and usually none of your weekends are going to align, so you don't have a real day off.
You also dont qualify for FT benefits like health care with so few hours, so theres a whole other slew of issues stacked on there.
to be honest it sounds less like they don't care and more like they literally were not given enough time to make sure everything was in order. 10 hours is not enough time to get shit done, especially if there's only a few staff members. And not everyone can be doing shipment when it's there as people have to actually man the registers. It's absolutely a corporate not caring issue.
And the freezer/refrigerator section at the dollar store near me is usually out of order! I will not purchase any cold food from there!
Reminds me of when I worked at AM/PM as a teen. Usually one person works the register while another makes the cheap burgers and chicken sandwiches. After a few weeks of working there you know about how many of each you're likely to make in a shift.
That's when some guy who was never warned against thi, or forgot, will decide to save on trips to the freezer by grabbing that many packs of burgers and chicken patties all at once and taking them over to food prep area, where they sit and thaw during an 8 hour shift. Anything they don't use gets returned to the freezer.
New part time guy at the place I worked at got our food license yanked by the health dept by serving burgers that had actual mold growing on the patties, after God only knows how many shifts spent thawing and then being returned to the freezer to thaw again the next day.
Regardless of what it says on the packet, never microwave bread products. Always deconstruct the sandwich, microwave the filling and toast the bread in a toaster.
Those Jimmy Dean's sausage and cheese English muffins are so good when I cook the sausage in the microwave and put the muffins in the toaster. It is also one of the products that is name brand and CHEAPER to buy individually at Dollar Tree than getting the 4 pack for $6.99 at Target. I had a Sausage McMuffin from McDonald recently that is the exact same thing but not as good.
If you’ve got one of those microwave food covers, it helps to keep the water in your food. Usually, bread is alright when I use mine. Or if you don’t, something my family had done before is microwave the food with a glass of water too, it works.
Every frozen snack I just put in the microwave for a minute then slap it in the air fryer. Works everytime
@@Dreww-w6t
Same!
It's a bit of a baffling product. In the UK we have sausage rolls (sausage meat in a pastry stick), they're staple snacks and lunch items. Why would you ever use soggy microwave bread instead of pastry?
Hold on, I did not expect you to name the COUNTY I grew up in. You showed the Dollar Store IN MY OLD TOWN. anyways, great work on the videos, love em
I'm in one of those rural places where dollar stores dominate and are often the only option. I refuse to go there, but your experiment surprised me in terms of just how not-cheap the food is. I used to grab a bag of dried beans and a bag of rice and some frozen veggies and live off of that during hard times -- your experiment highlighted just how much more expensive food must be for people living out of their cars or homeless who don't have access to stoves, who can't take advantage of affordable food options like that. Not only was the food junk, it was pricey junk. Such a shame those stores take up so much space out here. Great video, subscribed.
You'd be surprised how many people also just don't know how to cook something as basic as rice and beans, and are intimidated or have some kind of mental block that stops them from ever trying to learn. I've had so many roommates who live off canned or microwavable crap or frozen pizzas and claim to be so broke. I've had literal years where my food budget was $30 a week and I made it work with a lot of dried beans, lentils, rice, and potatoes.
@@Alchemeleon i hear u...being able to cook is a blessing...i can make a lasagna for like 8bucks n feed me for 3 days
You’re probably not going to see this but you’re one of my favorite content creators and your videos feel so real and genuine content like this now a days feels really rare so every time you upload I’m immediately watching
That means a lot, thanks for watching!
he saw it
Nah@@Marcuskwok-hn5yi
he did, in fact, see it
Fun fact. Toast Em's actually came out before Poptarts so they are technically the off brand.
Actually while toastums came out commercially first, Pop-Tarts (or what would later be known as Pop-Tarts) we're being tested and shown off to see public responses before to see if it's a sellable product and the toastums designed a copycat before they did a full release
@@War7123That's super wrong and actually sorta the opposite.
Post(Toast'em) actually announced their product first which was originally called Country Squares but Kellogg (Pop-Tart) rushed out their product before Post made theirs and thrived. Post basically got left in the dust because of this, and sold their idea to another company later on when their product wasn't selling well.
TLDR, Pop-Tart's are the copy and Toast'em up's aren't as they were announced earlier.
You guys are forgetting Vanilla Jump-Ups which actually preceded both!
I enjoy the documentary approach to this, you just got another subscriber 🥳
That shrimp was so overcooked that you might end up getting sued by their grandshrimp.
As a European its so weird to see how US still doesn't have mandatory price per weight of contents on all product labels.
Its so useful for people, you can easily follow your costs of shopping and especially between different brands who try to fool people with packaging.
Do you want to know something whack? As a kid (home schooled for 3 years of that, this game starting between then) it was a game where I would calculate the price per weight when selecting goods off the shelf to find the best deal. At the checkout, I would provide my mother with the total, including tax (calculated in my head, and no we don't include the tax in the sticker
price). If I was right, I'd get to pick a candy bar for the trip. It's no shock us americans suck at cost evaluation, everything is so obfuscated.
walmart and amazon's online website both have this feature and it's so handy.
At least where I'm from, it does have them on the price, but not the product itself. Not sure if it varies by state law though
As an American, it's weird that all of you individual countries still aren't your own union yet you continue to compare your little countries to a country whose states could swallow yours and still have room. Weird.
A dark pattern is how Costco will have two items next to each other, one showing price per kilogram and the other price per 100 grams
To put a button on the grocery stores closing: most grocers make very little margin on fresh food. On some items, like milk, they often even take a loss. The grocer hopes that when you are in there on a milk run you will stop through and buy some of the much more profitable candy, canned goods, or non-food items, which is where most of the actual margin is made.
So that 3% decline in sales that is taken by the dollar store is actually often a much, much larger portion of the profits of the grocer and is why the grocer closes. It's not JUST the "lower prices" of the dollar store
Can we also talk about the fact that we can’t afford to shop at the regular stores in town. Especially the small family run stores since they have to raise their prices higher than even the mainstream grocery stores. This is also my problem when I’m shopping for non-food items.
Just subbed because of this video. First video I've seen of yours and have to say, there's no wonder as to why you have a quarter of a million subs and counting!! Great job brother! Stay honest and keep integrity. It shows thru ur content.
I love when silly videos turn into masterpieces that educate me about massive societal issues i had no ideas existed. 10/10, instant subscribe
As someone who grew up really poor, I recognized a lot of brands in this video, like Hunts sauce and Tony's frozen pizza.
The secret to Hunts sauce is you need to get either the herb or original flavor (not meat), add white sugar, oregano, and a little garlic powder, then cook it down for a few minutes.
Also, you want to fry those Vienna sausages by rolling them around in a hot frying pan to make them less mushy
@@AnonymousJohnAutobon Putting something in a "frying" pan doesn't mean you "fried it". Frying involves oil. All you did was pan sear.
as someone who really likes hunts sauce i'll try this :) thanks for the tip
@@AnonymousJohnAutobon dude I love Tony’s pizza for a cheap quick snack and I add olive oil on top and Italian seasoning . It’s good!
@@Dyanosisso technical.... You obviously understood without expectations...
**says he has to be careful with the frozen pizzas to stay in budget**
idk, if we pretend it's healthy and ignore his decisions and rules, 25 frozen pizzas would likely last 10 days
That's 2.5 pizzas a day. Each pizza is 1,360 calories. So that gives you 3,400 calories a day for 10 days.
@@BlushinGunthanks for doing the math on the calories. Protein shakes and frozen pizza 3 times a day to bulk. Done deal
The nearest grocery store is 2 miles away from me. In that same radius is 1 dollar tree, 3 family dollars and 4 dollar generals. Even if you have the capability to get to the grocery store, the shear mass quantity of dollar stores makes you consider "why would i go all the way over there when this is right here?" Each time you pass one.
My hometown just got a dollar tree a few years ago before that it was gas station food or a 20 minute drive to the closest non branded grocery store, 45 minutes for food lion, an hour for Walmart
@@connorallen1683dollar stores do that on purpose to prey on people in food deserts
Additionally because most of the money apart from employee pay is taken out of the local economy meaning there is no velocity of money. I.e. you have $1 you give that to a baker, who uses that dollar to get more flour and it goes on and on. This is a very recent phenomenon due to the proliferation of national and international chains. There were places in the USA in the late 1800s early 1900s where $1 would stay in the local economy for an average of a year and ciculate 25 times. In low income neighbourhoods today 1 dollar stays in the lcoal economy 32 minutes and does not circulate once. It just goes to national and multinationals.
Fuck
may i ask where that statistic on a dollar staying in the local economy only 32 minutes comes from? I'm curious about that and I'd love to read more about it
Give me a link to the journal
Source please! I'd love to read more about this!
Source please
Rebecca from Dollar Tree Dinners has an excellent channel which informs about the options for living off this kind of food. I'm not from the US but her videos are so interesting to me. Your video is the other side of that
It is really interesting because I have never seen food in the dollar stores. I have Dollar tree and Dollar General around where I live but the most food I have seen are snacks and pop, one has a small freezer with ice cream.
@@nibblitman The one near my home sells canned and frozen foods, but I never really tried them
@@lilcotorro I mean canned food is canned food generally as long as it isn’t expired it will probably be, fine but not great.
I used to watch Frugal Fit Mom on here and she's good too.
I was about to day her name. She is so sweet and imaginative. She look to make healty meals.
You did a great job trying all the options at the dollar tree!
Hello Ashley.... how are you doing today 🌹. how's your day going over there..🏵️🏵️🤗..?
For future reference, shrimp cooks very quickly. If you're doing a stir fry style, you're better off removing the peels and cooking them raw in the pan instead of boiling them first so they don't get overdone and turn hard and rubbery.
First time watching you. This video was well edited, not over-done. And the presentation kept me interested with how clear spoken you are. Well done 👏 10/10
Another one for the best hits!! Showing the scam of dollar stores makes it even more upsetting when you see just how aggressively they try to corner lower income areas. Food deserts break my heart, used to work for a conservation nonprofit that targeted food deserts in AL. One of our biggest programs was developing and supporting community gardens while equipping the communities with the resources and knowledge to utilize it.
Since you showed there are better deals to be had at Walmart, maybe you could explore just how healthy you can eat on a similar budget.
Keep up the great work, Zack!
I bet your parent did that not you knew Kaileigh donner too ? She stole my fourth birthday completely like all my presents too plus some
Didn’t even open them cried and went to my room
No trouble just depressed
"RFK is so gonna ban whatever I just ate" is such a good line.
I also appreciate the "DONT FORGET IT"
and the desk slowly rising up to meet you
your editing is great :)
You know it's true
Fight back
All of you keep hiding behind your own fears
We all know this world is going to shit we need to help fix it
Vienna sausage is what I used to eat when times were bad in the 2000s. You’re not supposed to eat em outta the can- they’re made to lightly fry for 30 or so seconds after slicing. Good with rice or in an omelette- bad alone but good with stuff and made to last a while(why you had that icky juice) and at a poverty price(1$ per can at Walmart up to five years ago)
I dislike those sausages immensely during college. thought I could get a quick protein fix but horrible. until I met one guy who cooked them up for me once time. changed my mind about them after that.
you dont eat them out the can? i just rinsed them and ate them lol
@@strawssssslol faxx and with some hot suace
@@strawsssssi didn’t even rinse them ☠️
@@strawsssssmy late dad would eat then straight out of the can. We grew up extremely poor so that was our go to snack. Now I can’t look at them without gagging. Idk if it’s bc it’s part of the few memories I have with him or how often we ate them lol
never seen this guy till this video,usually i dont stick around for this type of content but this guy honestly has a good carisma about him and honestly made me laugh alittle, like when he was eating the pretzels and randomly out of no where points at a thing of wood and goes thought that was a person with a change of music and then goes right back to what he was doing before,i 100% pressed that like and subscribe button
4:41 The quiet giggle behind the camera was so wholesome
Another milk substitute for boxed Mac and cheese or instant mashed potatoes is unflavored powdered coffee creamer. You add the required amount of water that the milk in the recipe calls for say a quarter cup and then sprinkle in 2 tablespoons of so of powdered coffee creamer and stir. It will taste like you made it with milk. The powdered coffee creamer seems to last forever if it’s stored correctly.
Also flavor your own coffee by crushing your own hard candy and adding it to hot coffee and stir. Tastes just as good for pennies. My favorite is werther’s coffee caramel candies.
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
i dont know how "poor people" eat a 7 dollar box of fishticks(18 count) from the dollar store. its just a convenience store; not meant to acquire cheap food. when you're actually poor you either go to a food pantry of get on gov assistance. if you have too much pride for that, you'll eat rice and beans for a month straight. this was just some silly video of him eating random crap food.
@@samwaldorf8777 I think you missed his entire, and much more complex than "crap food", point.
@@m.g.7475 no i didnt miss his point. i was pointing out that he started with a false premise. i always eat extremely "cheap" food. i buy meat in bulk, rice in bulk, bags of beans in bulk, et cetera. if i divide it by the week, my wife and i eat for about $10 a week. we'll make a pot of chili and eat on it for a week and a half. we'll make 5lbs of stuffed cabbages, 5lbs of chicken enchiladas, a large pot of beans and keep cooking rice until the beans are gone - with a side of chicken or pork. you can find everything you need at a walmart. EVERYONE can make it to a walmart. MY point, again, was that a dollar store isnt a place to buy "budget food", it is *only meant for convenience* , like the crappy food at gas stations. meaning, his whole video was pointless.
@@samwaldorf8777 Oh. You have the time and energy to cook, and the money to buy in bulk. AND you have access to a WalMart. How very nice for you. You missed the point. And then you missed it even worse. Brava.
@@m.g.7475 i cook once every week or 2 weeks. not 3 times a day, everyday, like he did in this video.
As a hispanic, it is very common to toast tortillas on an open flame and usually that just means the stove. Its also done with banana leaves as prep for certain dishes
Same with dried cuttlefish for me
The trick of cheap mac n cheese if you don't have milk or butter is to leave a little of the water in the pan so the cheese powder can dissolve. I grew up in extreme poverty and even had stretches of bad struggle times in my adulthood so I figured out that trick.
yeah i was staring like just cuz u don't have milk doesn't mean you can't add water... just dissolve the powder and if it's too thin boil off the water till the texture is right 🥲
I use water because its how i did it when i was poor growing up. Now i mianly do it because I never have milk on hand because i don't drink or use it for anything
Works great for people with a low lactose tolerance too.
I use a dollop of sour cream to replace the milk in box Mac if I need to ration my milk
You could even use the water in the tuna can instead of tossing it.
Pour the juice out the viennas if you dont like it, or eat the regular ones, they have about 50 flavors and are pretty much spam.
Ps, try cooking them
Pss, no disrespect is meant out this comment it is just advice from someone who loves viennnas
was just bawling my eyes out over a bunch of different things, this video helped me calm down and was very entertaining. if you can make a sad man stop crying you know your good at making videos. 10/10
Thank you for this. I shop at Dollar tree a lot, wasn’t even realizing the marketing tactics & how it’s not really cheap. A lot of great points were made.
I never realized that to other people there’s a strong and very noticeable after taste or rotten food in it because it’s so normal to us.
Another thing that I think is really inportant is that most of the people who are buying from here are not only low income but also have bigger families. In our home there are 6 people who need to eat including a cat, so if we want Mac and cheese that night, it can take 3 to 4 boxes, which is also costing more money.
Sometimes my mother doesn’t have money left after rent so I step in and get groceries but at dollar tree because it’s the cheapest. We were eating small easy frozen foods for a while not caring what we were eating because we couldn’t afford too.
Unfortunately, that is the reality for many families. That’s why I try to feed homeless people when I can because I know that if I was ever homeless, I would want someone to help me, but I understand why some can’t help, because if they did, then they would go hungry themselves.
It’s sad that “foodstamps” is treated as a “shall not be named” thing, when the cost of food is slowly climbing and climbing and the low income or drowning and drowning. Mental health is severely affected and holidays are sad.
This year it’s just my 14 year old sister, my mother and I (I’m 18). There is no father and our brothers are still in foster care, we cannot open all our presents this year on Christmas morning because we can’t afford them until taxes (for my mom) or payday (for me). We decided to thrift this year because we can’t afford to get a bunch of new stuff.
I could go on and on and on with the trouble we’ve had. We can’t even drink the tap water because it has brain eating bacteria and makes us sick, so we are forced to pay 3 dollars to buy docks of water.
This was a very important and needed social experiment, im sorry you had to eat all this nasty stuff but it was incredible for you to bring light to the horrors and reality some of us have to go through. Thank you. I hope less people will look at us funny when we don’t have the nicer things in life and aren’t able to afford $200-$400 a month on groceries or luxuries.
Water wise, is boiling not possible? You chould try some distillation maybe.
If you have a nice pot, a lid and a bowl you can distill your own water.
if you're hurting that bag go to a food pantry. dollar stores are just for convenience; which is why they are always located at certain intervals between larger chains and usually in more rural locations, or within walking distance of extremely dense populations centers.
@@samwaldorf8777 this is the second time ive seen you comment this, but not everyone has access to a food pantry. even if they have access, some people dont have access to transportation to get to them. food pantries often run out of supply too early, or give barely anything.
@@dandarcy2539 are you speaking from experience?
This was actually very entertaining to watch. Awesome video 👍🏻
The dedication of not even using salt he didn't buy during the challenge is reason enough for Zach's deserving more subs! 🙌😭💕
But everything else had so much salt he probably saved his heart from exploding
This makes me incredibly thankful that I lived near a Grocery Outlet through my University days. While they don't always have a consistent stock, I could always get cheaper fruits/veggies on my stingy budget (and sometimes some really good stuff too). Having to live with going to a worse version of that, with mostly highly processed crap, sounds awful.
Grocery outlet is great
As someone who has to live like this it's almost sad to see this grown man enforcing my childhood complaints. "Grandma the carrots are brown" "that's just what it looks like when you cook it"
As a former employee of the Dollar Tree, we were worked hard for 9.00 (2024) an hour.
I super appreciate you approaching this challenge from the perspective of someone who sometimes needs a store like this to afford food. While I am fortunately no longer in that position, I definitely spent my days looking for deals at the Dollar Tree just to get meals for the week in the past. One trick I remember was fondling the bags of frozen chicken patties because even though they were only supposed to have 4 inside, sometimes they would have 5. One time I even found one with 6 inside, you can imagine my excitement, lol. Anyways, killer video!
In the UK, shelf price tags & websites have cost per kg.
e.g. "£0.60/kg" for budget spaghetti, "£1/kg" for a standard brand and "£2.40/kg" for a premium brand.
It's a legal requirement to help shopper determine actual value & not be tricked by "X% MORE FREE" packaging.
In most places in the US, they are legally required to list either prince by ounce/pound or price by unit, with unit typically being for small things ala chocolate bars or something along those lines. However some states don't care all that much and basicallly just let companies do whatever they want.
There are loopholes and other such tomfoolery that companies use sometimes, but broadly speaking that's the gist of it.
@@wan9840 Good to know 👍 I'm not sure if it's the kind of thing that can be made a federal law, but it should be.
But like you say, there are loopholes regardless. I loophole I've noticed in the UK is that the shopkeepers can't always keep up with product changes. e.g. a food product decreases in size, but the price doesn't change & the packaging barely changes; the shopkeepers don't notice and the £/kg isn't adjusted on the shelf.
I know at least one store Walmart does it and they show the price per ounce. It’s very useful sometimes too. Smaller packages is cheaper than one large package when it comes to the price by weight.
Dollar stores sit in that grey area where they're not really a supermarket even though people use them as a supermarket. They're are classified as a variety store, which usually means they don't need to follow the rules that a supermarket needs to follow.
I'm sure if you go to poundland they don't have the food marked as price per kilogramme or price per 100 g. Because they don't have to.
@@SunshineArt Interesting theory. I walk past a Poundland on the way to work, so I'll check tomorrow 👍
Update: Every item of food & drink in Poundland had both the price (£) and price per weight (£/100g) on the shelves. I expect they're subject to the same laws as other UK supermarkets.
Ever since their quarter price increase in all their stores, I will say the quality of dollar tree has skyrocketed, ESPECIALLY if your dollar tree has a fridge/freezer section
I wouldn’t paint with such a broad brush. There are SIX Dollar Tree’s in my area and none are ever stocked nor free the sane things
I made this comment before finishing the full video oops
I survived off oatmeal and peanut butter for months absolutely had no choice was broken and homeless and addicted to drugs so that's all I could get without stealing it.
Bless ya man Ive been there myself, addicted after a on the job accident.
You chose your cheap foods well. Oatmeal gets boring but is great. Peanut butter is the best predictor of whether an Antarctic expedition will succeed or fail. The more peanut butter they bring, the more likely they are to survive and succeed in horrific conditions.
@EfficientRVer instant mashed potatoes even with out milk etc contain everything needed to support human life. You may even live longer than someone who's eats other things as there is evidence mono-meals take up less biological resources and induce less stress on the body, just not mentaly tho.
I survived eating Dollar Tree food when my brother purposely got evicted out of his apartment and I ended up homeless, literally just by myself in Florida. I’m grateful for those meals that I’ve eaten from DT ❤
Glad to finally see Western Pennsylvania finally get the RUclips commentary coverage it deserves.
really appreciate how you balance a fun "challenge" with real facts and a throughput narrative that tells a larger story
Your videos are always so thorough and informative but still funny and entertaining. I imagine a great deal of work goes into creating them, especially the longer ones. Just want to say good job, and keep it up! Your videos are a diamond in the rough.
I feel like Zachary is most genuine in this eating from dollar tree video compared to other creators I see.
I always feel like they don’t really eat and live off that daily especially when they are bringing in the views.
But what do I know back to Zachery’s channel.
Proof that think pieces don't have to punch down or be sensationalised to be thoughtful and funny. Love your videos!
ive been doing this for 17 years scrub
FAX
I really like these kind of videos that you do, which focus on elements of life in the US Heartland. You take things to the a degree that's wacky for most, though many are forced or choose to live that way too, and you manage to do it all in a way that's respectful of everybody and takes things seriously.
i really enjoy these kinds of videos for a variety of reasons, but the biggest one is i live in the same area as you and it's helped my view of the valley, especially as an 'outsider' to the area.
I have seen your videos before and OMG! YOU WENT TO MY LOCAL DOLLAR GENERAL! I felt so seen. Now I am watching the rest of the video!
Find him.
You’re a local. Find his house and say hi.
What city is this in because those lake views were awesome
thats so cool lol
@@tribequest9 I just realized I can dox someone so I am just going to say that I believe he is traveling between Lancaster and Berks County (even maybe towards Allentown) to really cover the area which is about an hour apart.
The narrative pacing on your video essays are masterwork, can't wait for the next one!
32:42 "luigi was right" gonna get you put on a watchlist lmao
"In mario" is the new "in minecraft"
"Who's-a next?"
Luigi mangioni, right?
Never seen a man eat more burnt tortillas in my life.
Rural mexicans from the south eat burnt tortillas like crazy
33:14 those are totally normal! The skin is always there, and sometimes even the "bones," all of which are definitely meant to be eaten!
It was one of the more palatable things he tried and he acted like he was risking his life over that fish. Very silly
Canned fish are very good. And smoked even better.