Grocery
12 Bulk Buys From Amazon Prime We Love to Stock Up On
Everything we need, right to our door.
With about 600 million products on offer in the U.S. alone—from breakfast sandwich makers to vacuum cleaners to gluten-free cake mix—it's no surprise that Amazon is our go-to for, well, everything. The wide availability of items, all in one place, makes it pretty hard to beat. And how about that two-day shipping?!
This is why Amazon Prime Pantry and AmazonFresh—its separate marketplaces for groceries and household products, in bulk and everyday sizes both—have been unbelievably useful to me (hi, it's your favorite New Yorker with serious grocery-shopping issues), as well as a number of my colleagues at Food52.
The concept is pretty simple: You order enough stuff to fill a "box" (the threshold for free shipping here is $35), and everything comes to your door just a couple days later. The items are steeply discounted to begin with, and there are constantly offers and coupons to lower the cost even more. It's that easy.
So, with such endless possibilities, what kind of things should you fill your box with? The Food52 team is here to help with some ideas. Read on for the 12 items from Amazon Prime Pantry that we swear by. You might even find yourself loading up a box of your own as you scroll through the list.
Liquid soap, in all forms, is an unexpected nemesis of mine. Heavy, leaky, and in oddly shaped packaging, it runs out far too quickly, forcing me to return to the store and face my fears much more often than I'd like to.
To combat this, I buy Method dish soap and Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day hand soap refills from Amazon Prime Pantry on the regular. The bulk refill containers allow me to top up my current dispensers for months on end. Plus, I can "set it and forget it," signing up for a repeat version of the same box at intervals that fit my household needs.
1. Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day Liquid Hand Soap Refill, 33 oz., basil
2. Method Dish Soap Refill, 36 oz., Lemon Mint
"My roommates and I always buy paper towels, TP, and dishwasher tabs on Amazon Prime Pantry. Having it sent straight to our home instead of getting it at Target and lugging it in an Uber is always a plus." —Rebekah Daniels, account manager
3. Bounty Select-a-Size Paper Towels, 6 double rolls
4. Quilted Northern Ultra Soft & Strong Toilet Paper, 12 double rolls
5. Tide Free and Gentle Laundry Detergent Pods, 72 count
6. Cascade ActionPacs Dishwasher Detergent, 60 count, Fresh Scent
"Same. I go for TP, dish soap, detergent, and trash bags." —Karen Levi, executive assistant
7. Glad Tall Kitchen Drawstring Trash Bags, 13 gallon, 90 count
"Prime Pantry is my go-to for bigger bulk items like toilet paper, tissues, and detergent. Also for boxes of cereal and snacks. Looking at my order history, Peanut M&Ms and pretzel twists make recurring appearances." —Joanna Sciarrino, executive editor
8. Kleenex Ultra Soft Tissues, Medium, 120 count (4-pack bundle)
9. M&M's Peanut Chocolate Candy, 11.4 oz.
10. Rold Gold Tiny Twists Pretzels, 16 oz.
"I once read a statistic that Korean people eat 168 bowls of instant ramen a year. Which…lines up with my habit of ordering those huge 20-pack cases of spicy Shin Ramyun." —Eric Kim, senior editor
11. NongShim Shin Ramyun Noodle Soup, 4.2 oz., 20-pack
"I buy cases of La Croix! Who can lug those even a few blocks? My favorite flavors are lime and lemon (I am boring)." —Victoria Maynard, director of finance
12. LaCroix Sparkling Water, 8 pack, lemon flavor
Written by: Brinda Ayer
Popular on Food52
19 Comments
iData Consultant
Is this article a paid testimonial? Is Food52 or the author, receiving any compensation for it from Amazon? If yes, Food52 and the author need to disclose that clearly and conspicuously per U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rules on testimonials and advertising.
I agree with other commenters who have discussed the adverse ecological impacts of Amazon's packaging. I also think a lot about the carbon footprint involved in getting all these boxes of things shipped to us, including basic things like paper towels and soap. The total environmental impacts between the packaging (throw away cartons, etc.) and delivery (carbon pollution) is staggering. Recycling the packaging helps some except that we now know that China, which took a huge amount of our "recycling" off the U.S.' hands, is not interested in taking our garbage anymore, including "recylables". It sounds like a lot of our recyclables are going into U.S. landfills at this time. That in itself is pretty shocking.
And then there are the other non- recyclables in the online supply delivery chain - those millions and millions of air pockets/bags generated every year and used as padding inside the delivery packages. There is no easy or convenient way to return these to Amazon or any other retailer for the air packs to be re-used.
I think it should be mandatory for Amazon and other online shippers to have convenient drop-off spots for consumers to return these air packs and online shippers like Amazon should be required to re-use them.
If we're concerned about the environment -and we really all should be- than we have to evaluate our buying habits and their environmental impact. Online purchasing provides major convenience and major, negative environmental impact, too. All of us who use Amazon and other online providers to have goods delivered to our doors, are responsible and own this.
Our household has cut way back on online purchases as a result. We shop a lot more locally. We also pay a lot more attention to products that use less packaging and more environmentally friendly packaging like paper rather than plastics.
Thankfully, our household lives 2 blocks away from an independent, family-owned grocery store where we shop for food and household items, a Trader Joe's 1 mile away for other items, and have a twice weekly farmers' market in our town where we often ride our bikes to buy food grown in our area. We try to shop carefully and mindfully, and we don't buy a lot of stuff. We try to shop local as much as possible - whether at our local bookstore, local baker, or other smaller merchants.
We've also taken other steps to be more "green", such as removing all our lawn 2 years ago and putting in a native plant garden. We do what we can, in our own way, to try to live in a more environmentally friendly manner. If we care about the planet, it's important that we each think about what we can do in our daily lives, to be good stewards of the "Blue Dot" that we live on.
Join The Conversation