Food: Shopping for Meat in Unusual Places

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Shopping for Meat in Unusual Places
Monday, June 12, 2006

By Christina VanGinkel

A knock on our door the other evening resulted in one unhappy sales representative and my husband and I wondering if the times have made such a complete turnaround to a time in the distant past. Before I go further with this story, let me tell you that I am aware of several companies that do still sell food door to door. Several of them have been around for many, many years. The majority of door-to-door sales of food items though, are not nearly as common as they once were. When I think of food sales at home, I think of the Jewel Tea man and the milkman. These no longer are available in our area, though I have heard of milk producers in some areas who have returned to this type of sales.

The most prominent food one in our area actually sells an assortment of everything from ice cream and other frozen confectionaries, to frozen pizzas and yes, meats. They come around once or twice a month, depending on how often you have requested they stop by. They have quite a steady business, in part due to the rural location we live in, and the fact that many of the products they carry cannot be found in the local stores. If you want certain items, they are about the only outlet that I am aware of.

With this in mind, both my husband and I were still unprepared for the knock that preceded a young man from trying to sell us two cases of frozen meat. He began his sales pitch by telling us that he had been in the area to make several deliveries (we never learned if this were true or not), and one of the deliveries had failed to materialize for reasons he did not try to explain. He then went on to relate the fact that his boss had informed him to stop at houses on his way back to the warehouse and to make a crazy deal or two and unload the boxes on some family who could really use the meat.

We live in rural Wisconsin, with beef and dairy cows at nearly every house around us. Even houses with just an acre or two often will have a cow or two fenced in the yard, obviously intended to be used to fill the freezer with come fall. Therefore, this young man was essentially trying to sell a couple of boxes of frozen meat in an area that would be akin to a sale representative trying to sell a bottle of saltwater in the middle of the ocean. That he succeeded still amazes me!

My husband listened to the young man's sales pitch, looked at the meat, and then sent him on his way after explaining to him that we had half a beef in our deep freeze already, so we really had no use for more. He tried in vain one more time to tell my husband that he only had two more boxes left, and as soon as these were gone, he could head home, apparently hoping a bit of sympathy would get my husband to hand over three hundred dollars a box. My husband can be a very sympathetic person, however, not where money is concerned, especially if it entails him spending it.

The young sales rep left, and unbeknownst to us, stopped next door at my in-laws. While they did not buy any, my husband's brother did, two boxes actually, as did another fellow that was with him. Where this sales rep had told us he only had two boxes left, once he had obviously willing customers, those two boxes magically multiplied.

Whether the meat is good or not remains to be seen. Though after my husband told his brother that when the sales rep was by us, he only had two boxes left, even if the meat is rancid, chances are we will never hear about it.

While I do not write this to imply that buying meat off a truck is a bad deal, I do think it should be gone about with caution. Dealing with a company that you know will stand by their product is uppermost in my list of suggestions. Something that costs three hundred dollars a box and stops in your driveway on their way through town just does not seem legitimate. If this chance avails itself to you, approach it cautiously and if something just does not seem to add up, send them packing, pun intended!

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