The Profit Margin On Bottled Water Is Insane
B&W 2026 34/365
Okay, so today’s story is only tangentially related to the picture. This is an image of people in the checkout lines at our post commissary store here at Fort Huachuca. But then what kind of caught my eye is that SALE sign in the front.
40 bottles of water for $3.48
A few years back, when I was working at Sheppard AFB in north Texas, one of my additional duties was running our weather station’s snack bar/soda fund. We would sell things like sodas and snacks to workers in our office, and also pilots passing through. We used the funds to buy things like going away gifts when someone left, or for other morale boosting type activities.
As the guy who did the books for over a year, I remember that the majority of our profits came from one thing …
WATER
Back then that 40 pack was more like $2.48. We sold the bottles for $.50 each. So every case of water gave us a profit of $17.52 … and we went through 3-4 cases a week. The sodas on the other hand barely broke even, especially when you accounted for the inevitable pilferage rate. The water more than made up for it.
Knowing this, it drives me nuts when I see what people are willing to pay for a bottle of water in a gas station or convenience store.
This is not something I really worry about at my current work place. Don't mind those stains. Even filtered, the water apparently still has plenty of calcium in it. But it does taste good … and costs me nothing! 😎
Your turn:
What are some things you’ve noticed people pay way more than they probably should just for the sake of convenience?
Til next time,
Todd
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When I think back to the days before the internet, I get a bit nostalgic.
And when I think about how much we pay monthly for things we cannot touch, I get sad...so does my wallet.
So I had actually thought about this recently as we just came back from Cancun a couple of weeks ago. And they always say don't drink the water. Which we didn't, and we bought bottled water. I don't recall what we paid for some of it, but we did make a Walmart run and bought some there. I did think what a giant waste it was of all those plastic bottles if you times the number of what we used and all the other tourists are using.