by The Riff-Raff Element » Sun Dec 16, 2012 8:54 am
In France we have a chain of "shops" called Noz which are a bit like this.
They're generally situated in unheated, previously disused, warehouses in quarters of towns where people would steal your hubcaps if cars still had hubcaps. They sell a most extraordinary selection of bankrupt stock, stuff that is on short date, new lines from big manufacturers that just didn't take off (mayonnaise with chocolate chips, etc) and surplus from suppliers who pre-empted a big order from the supermarkets that didn't materialise.
At the moment, T***o branded wrapping paper at 90 cents for 5m is on offer: some manufacturer somewhere printed it up for them and the chain decided it didn't need it after all, so Noz took it off their hands. They source from all over Europe so we get a far better selection of Italian sauces, Spanish wine and German groceries than anywhere else locally. I love it - you never know what is going to be on the, well, I'd say shelves, but they're more like pallets stacked on empty plastic buckets from the food industry.
It's almost a form of recycling - a lot of the stuff would be going into a skip if Noz didn't exist.