The first thing I notice when I step inside the Bimbo Bakeries outlet in South San Francisco is the noise.
As employees load to-go boxes with baked goods and wheel carts from cluttered stock rooms, big rigs pull out of the nearby factory parking lot, disappearing onto the highway. As one person after another brings their items to the counter, workers practically slam the cash register drawer with glee.
This is one of the few remaining bakery thrift stores in California, and I’m on the hunt for the ideal sandwich bread and have nothing but $4 in my pocket — and something tells me that I’ve come to the right place. After all, I’m used to sifting through the aisles at Grocery Outlet , a cheap, albeit chaotic, supermarket where organic specialities such as manuka honey, garlic-infused goat cheese and truffle oil remain affordable despite soaring food prices .
Once ubiquitous throughout California from the 1970s to the 1990s, bakery thrift stores have been feeding families at a discount for generations and seem to represent a bygone era of consumer culture. Often several days old or returned from local market shelves, all-American brands like Weber’s White Bread retailed for $1.99 but cost only 61 cents at one of these fabled outlets, while 7-Grain, Better Way and Millbrook loaves were just under a dollar…