Costco is selling an entire year’s supply of food for $800. That’s only $67 a month. Made by a company called Shelf Reliance, it’s all freeze-dried or dehydrated and is primarily marketed as emergency food (10-20 year shelf life). However, it also claims to taste pretty good, and they suggest to use it in rotation as a regular meal supplement.
The THRIVE 1 Year Food Supply comes complete with 78 #10 cans ranging 5 food groups: grains, fruits, veggies, meats & beans and dairy. With over 4,700 servings and many foods with a shelf life of up to 20 years, this package will give you variety, nutrition, and peace of mind. In addition to the high quality foods this package provides, a wheat grinder is included.
* 1 Year Food Supply for 1 Person
* 6 Month Food Supply for 2 People
* 3 Month Food Supply for 4 People
* Shipment arrives in 14 separate boxes
* Freeze-dried products have up to a 20 year shelf life if unopened
* Dehydrated products have up to a 10 year shelf life if unopened
* Simple rehydration instructions, recipes, and helpful tips on each can
* 4723 total servings
* Seventy-eight #10 cans
* Wheat Grinder included
I could not find any good in-depth reviews of how this product actually tastes and/or looks when prepared. Anyone out there try it before?
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Living in hurricane country, I considered it as our stash, but opted to stock up on dry goods / canned goods that we normally would eat, have about a 2 year shelf life, and can be rotated out. My plan is to just check on the stock each spring or summer, and be good for the year.
Water is my bigger concern. I stock cases of bottled water from costco, and have a spare propane tank / turkey fryer to boil water, but hopefully it won’t come to that.
I looked into packages like this a year ago and as I recall you’re supposed to supplement them with a good amount of cooking oil as well, which goes bad a lot sooner than 10-20 years.
Remember the Golden Rule of Costco: They make their gold because they tempt you to buy WAY MORE than you will actually consume. Households in the US waste 14% of their groceries due to spoilage, poor planning, etc. (http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/Supply-Chain/Half-of-US-food-goes-to-waste), and that’s AFTER the shrinkage just getting the food shipped to the stores! If you wouldn’t eat this stuff in your regular food rotation, you won’t eat it even if the world is ending. I would say it would be better to rotate food stocks you already like and are comfortable with. If you were in a situation under stress of life and death, there’s no need to add to it with something unfamiliar. And if that never comes, you’ve just wasted $800 and added more garbage to the landfills. Lose-lose.
I forgot to add: don’t forget the overhead cost of maintaining this food supply. You’ll have to pay in terms of storage space — 78 x 10lb cans, gallon size each…one cubic foot is about 7.5 gallons, so it will take you over 10 cubic feet to store this! That’s a significant amount of space in your house you are sacrificing.
Perhaps it might be better to buy the “trial size” versions first to see if you would actually eat the stuff at all.
Charlie, (and anyone else), great idea. Just buy food (canned soup, Chef Boyardee, etc,) and rotate out every 6 months. I don’t know about anyone else, but I block out a Sun afternoon when I change my clocks to “take care of business” around the house, change the furnace filters, etc. This can be done as part of that.
As an aside, what do you do with the stuff you rotate out? Assuming its not expired, PLEASE consider giving it to a food bank. I volunteer at a food bank once a week, and these last few months have been extremely depressing. # of people served is way up and donations are way down. We will take everything as long as its not expired. And some Food Banks take expired food too. (I should clarify. We take it. We just don’t give it out)
@ Auntie-green: because of your comment, I just made a donation to my local food bank. Thank you for reminding us!
Wow, $800 for an entire year of food…this would be great if you wanted to be super frugal for a year. You could easily sock away a few hundered a month if you could stay on the “emergency food plan”
i think i would eat oatmeal for a year first.
cheaper, better for you, and likely tastes just as well.
a cup of grains and a cup of milk, bang, dinner.
throw in a banana and you have like 3 food groups right there.
I have used products from this company and find them satisfactory. When Mt. St. Helens erupted many years ago we used a lot of this type of food and were grateful for it. I supplement my freeze-dried with canned items and bulk products. I probably have the equivalent of their $800 kit in items that I have purchased individually and they mix into my year’s supply very well. I would consider it if I didn’t already have most of it. Their shelves are incredible, also.
Thought you might like to know that your link to the product is broken.
Beware. I ordered this item just before Costo stopped selling it. I received my order a couple days ago and will probably return it this week unless Coscto or Shelf Reliance can tell me what the total calorie count is (not available from Costco or Shelf Reliance web sites). My estimates from data available are that this “one year supply” provides less than 1,000 calories/day. This is less than a starvation diet.
FYI, 10 cubic feet is actually a very small amount of storage space.
I presume you’re imagining a cube that is 10 feet wide, 10 feet tall and 10 feet long. That is actually 1,000 cubic feet.
10 cubic feet could easily fit in an average sized pantry. A space that is two feet wide, one foot deep and five feet tall would hold that much.
If that’s too tall for your needs, a 2’x2’x2.5′ space would work too.
http://www.year-supply.com actually has better food and it’s cheaper per person.
I actually bought 2 of these kits. I wanted to get a head start on my food storage. Around that same time my wife and I actually became consultants for Shelf Reliance and we can give you even lower pricing,,,(and 10% in Free additional product)
We found that there was too much Bacon TVP in this package and a few too many eggs the shelf life on eggs is 5 years and there are about 246 eggs in 1 can thats 1476 eggs (and my wife dose not like eggs) but she loves to cook and bake with these eggs .
With that said this is actually a great package and has a lot of really great food we use on a regular basis. .
Hi David, is your offer still good? I am totally inexperienced at prepping, but regardless of your political views (which I don’t know) “the world” seems like it’s only going to become less stable, plus I live in California and the news that’s been buried under the daily headlines is that there’s been quite a bit of activity along the San Andreas. Also, I’m only about 1.5 miles from the coast. Anyway, I just heard about the Costco package the other day. The price has changed from $800 to $999.99 for “6,200 Total Servings 1 Year 1 Person Emergency Food Kit By Nutristore. Item #823297. Shipping & Handling Included.” (https://www.costco.com/6%2c200-Total-Servings-1-Year-1-Person-Emergency-Food-Kit-By-Nutristore%E2%84%A2.product.100085303.html) (you might have to log in to Costco.com to see the link — not sure why.) I would appreciate your thoughts on this if you’re available. Thanks!
Being a “Scotsman” and a New Englander I know about canned “things”! A Scotsman is not “cheap”. He is “frugal”…! There is a distinct difference. Most of these freeze dried and dehydrated packages are all right. You just need to pick and chose what you can use. All of them will work just fine if you combine them with other local purchased canned goods, etc. As for canned goods, those of us who have had to survive under circumstances less than perfect, have found out that unless the can or jar is bulged or leaking, the food is OK. Some of the nutrients may be gone, but you will be fed. Hey, go ahead and give me grief on this. I am talking to you, am I not?…so I guess I survived those situations. I am a former Marine, by the way.
The new price on the year supply is 1499! did the product get better of did they just spike the price?
Jeremiah, that is the effect of inflation. It is one of the reasons peppers seem to always have a bit more rainy day money than their contemporaries. Buy all the necessities you can as you find sales, prices only go up. its been true since 1913
Food in the larder is better than money in the ban!.
*bank
oh yeah, their stuff tastes pretty good too. My kids are addicted to the strawberries.