Bulk Barn

I love Bulk Barn with all my heart. My only beef with the company is that they don’t have a location close (i.e. within 20 minutes) of my neighbourhood.
I come from the east coast where Bulk Barn has been an established company for along time. When I first moved to Alberta 6 years ago, I was quite sad to find no Bulk Barns in the whole province. Here we are today, though, and the company has set up shop around the province.
Bulk Barn is a bulk foods store with an additional varied selection of specialty food products (mainly in the categories of «health» and «baking»). I like Bulk Barn for the wide selection of nuts and candy. At the store, you’ll find both generic and brand name products at decent prices.
Check out the company’s website for a full product listing. As well, you can often find a coupon for $ 3 of $ 10 purchase. I will note that not all Bulk Barns are equal. For example, the location in the NE by Sunridge is small and doesn’t have a full product offering. Others are bigger with a wider selection.

I have a love-​hate relationship with this place!
I love it, because they have so much good stuff and a lot of baking supplies that you often don’t get at the regular grocery stores. And because it is bulk you can get just the amount you need!
I hate it because I always buy much more than I wanted and then I munch right through it, like right now… aaand empty.
I love it because they have 3 Crown tee (for a very low price) which is produced by a company in a tiny town in East Frisia, Germany where I grew up. I was so happy to see that!
I hate it, because I always feel like sticking my hand into the bins to grab a small piece and try it, but I am not allowed to, it sucks! (yes, I understand why and it’s probably a good thing otherwise families would go there for lunch, but still, it’s so tempting)
So the hating part is obviously my personal problem, that aside I love this place :)

I am having a lot of fun exploring what Calgary has to offer on all fronts, and Bulk Barn is definitely one of my new favorite places. A couple of people have mentioned that there is only one location, which isn’t true anymore. There are two in South East and one in North East. Therefore, you now have 3 great options for quality bulk goods in the city. I am reviewing the one in SE (on MacLeod) so I hope people notice there are more around the city.
Ok, so this is a store in an old-​fashioned dry goods store. This is the sort of place where you can find pretty much anything non-​perishable that you would find a grocery store. This includes (but definitely not limited to!): coffee, tea, pasta, rice, candy, flour, spices, granola, grain, and even dog food! It was very hard for me to walk into that store and not walk out with one of everything.
Instead, I loaded up on my spices, got coffee, flour, sugar, cocoa power, granola, and an wasabi pea snack mix. I spent less than $ 30 on all of those things. Absolutely amazing. Even the bulk sections of Community Natural Foods, Planet Organic, or Co-​op cannot compete with that. The ingredients are quality and the prices are amazing. They even have name-​brand stuff like Kellogs cereal if you need it.
The spice and tea collection was sizable. They didn’t have the obscure spices, but they did sell spanish saffron in small packets and there were many different varieties of tea (from green to black to oolong) so i can’t complain. Like I said, I loaded up on my spices for a fraction of what I would pay ANYWHERE else.
The only thing is that you pack all of these items into plastic bags and tie them off. You need to have a cabinet full of glass jars to make good use of this stuff at your house. IF you don’t, I would stop by at the Dollarama (which has spice containers 3 for $ 1). The dollar store also has other, larger containers for cheap ($ 1.5 — $ 3 depending on the size). Also, don’t forget that after you transfer all your newly purchased yummy goods to your containers that the plastic bags can be recycled with the bags at your favorite normal grocery store. :-)

I am in love with Bulk Barn. It’s not that it’s always cheaper than other places for the same product, as some may think due to the tacky signage they have, but they literally have EVERYTHING in bulk form. It’s great for someone like me who only wants a couple tablespoons of curry or cumin or star anise. They have a decent selection of organic and non gmo products. They also have tips on how to prepare some of the items, which helps when it comes to using lesser know product. They carry quite a few brands or foods, like cassava chips and Alter Ego chocolate, that are otherwise hard to find. It’s a bit of a right squeeze inside, so the isles can’t accommodate too many people but that doesn’t bother me personally.

It seems to me that this would be an odd location for a Bulk Barn. This location has been restaurants until now. Santa Fe Grill was here for years, followed by a Greek place.
Either way, this Bulk Barn serves up what you expect. It seems a little smaller than most locations but I don’t notice anything missing. They have everything and then some.
For those that have never been to a Bulk Barn, they do have «extras» that don’t come in bulk. They sell candy forms to go with the melts they sell, many baking supply items like cupcake papers, muffin tins, and cake decorating items. At the cash register you can find individually wrapped goods which mostly consists of candy, but does include stuff like real vanilla beans.