How for Just a Dollar

Over the 4th of July weekend, Menards sold me this bag of yum for a buck:

Just 1 dollar.

Consider all the costs that went into this product.

At a minimum:

- paying suppliers for all the flours, grains, meals, etc. in the Chex, the pretzels, etc.

- manufacturing/production costs

- packaging costs

- freight costs to get the product to Menards

- Menards' costs involved in getting the product to the shelf

Doing some thinking about this, 2 observations come to mind.

1) With all those listed costs (plus others that I've no doubt missed) how can Menards make any money off of selling this bag to me for $1?  It is hard to believe that there is any margin left "on the bone" at a buck a bag.

Granted, I know General Mills sells Menards enormous volumes of product -- and with volume comes discounts.  But even with that taken into consideration, I just do not see how this wasn't a net loss for them.  (NOTE: the Menards non-sale price of the product: $1.98)

2) How INCREDIBLY fortunate we are in America to have such a diversity of low-cost foods.

By "diversity", I'm not just referring to the fact that there were 8 types of Chex Mix being sold by Menards.  I'm talking about the fact that breakfast food/cereal pretty much takes up an entire aisle at our/your local grocery store.  And the chips / snack foods aisle too.  There are 6 varieties of Cheerios.  There are 8+ varieties of Doritos.  Down the canned fruit aisle, there are no fewer than 5 labels selling us pineapple.  But not only can we choose our label, we can choose our "style": chunks, crushed, rings, reduced calorie, etc.

And continuing the topic of "diversity", we have endless choice in the options available for where to buy food:  

Aldi or Whole Foods or Kroger or Schnucks or Piggly Wiggly or Wal-Mart or Hy-vee or Menards

And on and on and on.

With so many folks in so many parts of the world having little/no selection as to what they will eat, WE MUST NEVER TAKE FOR GRANTED HOW BLESSED WE ARE, FOLKS.

But how many of us do.

How many of us take time to think about our grocery stores as a blessing rather than a chore, an item on our to-do list, an entitlement?

Abundant food.

Food choices.

Cheap food.

Thoughts from a bag of Chex Mix.

Out for now.......

Matt