Ready Store Review

The Ready Store is an emergency preparedness and food storage manufacturer. They have been in business for 16 years and carry a wide variety of products. They have mainly been an online retailer but in 2011 they opened a retail store in Draper, Utah. The company was family owned and operated until July 2017 when it was sold to the owners of Freeze Dry Foods who also owns the Food Insurance and Daily Bread brands. So how is the company now in 2018? Ready our Ready Store review below to find out!

Aside from selling emergency preparedness items on their website, the Ready Store also cans their own food product line under the Saratoga Farms brand as well as offers Food Insurance and Daily Bread brands of food storage. The Saratoga Famrs product line encompass’ just-add water meals, freeze-dried ingredients, and dry/dehydrated ingredients.

The Ready Store differs from some of its competitors in that they offer a lot of different sales on a regular basis (daily, weekly, and monthly Ready Store sales) instead of just monthly discounts like most others. There is never a dull moment on their site.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

A company is only is as good as the service they provide, that is why we look at service first when reviewing a company. Over the past 8 years Shawn and I have ordered from The Ready Store on numerous occasions and have had good experiences when dealing with their customer service representatives. That includes contacting them via email, phone, and the handy online chat feature. Each time we have had a product question or something regarding a recent order we have been helped fast and courteously.

While we have not had an issue that required a return, I feel very confident we will be taken care of, if you read their return policy it is more than fair.

PRICING

With a little patience you can get some of the best prices you will see online. If you buy an item that isn’t on sale it will be close to some of the lowest prices online but often it will be a little more. When I asked a rep about that with regards to a #10 can of freeze-dried Strawberries their response was that since they don’t source food ingredients from China that sometimes their food pricing is a little more than competitors that go overseas for food items. Something that is fine by me.

Aside from constant food storage sales and promotions, they also have a customer loyalty reward system called ReadyRewards. Think frequent flyer miles and you will get the idea. Every dollar spent is converted into a point and you can cash in your points later for discounts on orders. You must use points within 1 year of receiving them.

While product prices are important, shipping costs can also add up so they are important to investigate. The Ready Store has a reasonable shipping tier price system similar to Emergency Essentials where orders up to $100 cost $6, orders between 100 and 150 cost $9, and lastly orders over $150 are $12.

FOOD STORAGE

The Ready Store carries three brands of food storage; Mountain House, their own Saratoga Farms product line that is put into cans and buckets, and lastly EasyPREP which is the food in pouches which are then placed in buckets. Unlike some companies that only carry their own brand or only carry Mountain House, The Ready Store carries both which is a nice option to have when shopping for food storage. Those two brands cover pretty much all that you will need. The only area where you will be left wanting is dehydrated vegetables and fruits as they only carry their freeze-dried counterparts. [UPDATE: The Ready Store is now carrying a variety of dehydrated fruits and veggies].

You also get a wide variety of packaging options. Mountain House can be purchased in pouches and #10 cans and you can buy Saratoga Farms in #10 cans, mylar pouches, 6 can samplers called ReadyPacks as well as 45 day, 3 month, 6 month, and 12 month food storage kits for adults. They also package some traditional food storage items in 6 gallon buckets which that call ValueBuckets.

They have something for everyone and their prices on bundled purchases are some of the best online, even when not on sale. They also have a queue/auto-ship system called ReadyQueue Thrive where you can place items in your wishlist and have items sent out monthly depending on how much you want to spend. We’ve used it for a couple months and it worked as expected. If we knew we needed a ton of things from them it would be worth setting up and staying on.

PRODUCT SELECTION

Outside of your typical food storage products mentioned above, The Ready Store also carries MREs, water storage, survival kits, and emergency supplies such as cooking items, food processing, and shelter. The wide variety of products means you could spend some serious time on their site looking at all sorts of prepper items that can help you get prepared. In fact the site has over 1000 items, that is one of the larger online stores we have come across to date.

Also, something we notice quite early on when conducting our Ready Store review was the site layout helps one easily navigate the large amount of products, we will get into more detail about website usability in the website section below but The Ready Store is either #1 or #2 when it comes to a nice easy-to-use website.

PRODUCT QUALITY

Shawn and I have purchased from The Ready Store for a while now and have tried several of the food items and found them to be of very good quality. We were fortunate to live near their retail store for 8 years so we went on several occasions to what they call their demo kitchen. We’ve tried a lot of things we never thought we’d like (freeze dried pomegranate yogurt comes to mind) but I would imagine the not so amazing items they probably don’t have people sample.

While the food storage items tasted very good there are some items we would steer you away from. Their lower priced 72 hour kits (their Basic line) are mostly comprised of lower quality items. While this isn’t unique to the Ready Store, I’d rather build my own by purchasing higher quality items separately and putting together my own kit. Most non-food items like their outdoor gear are name brand items (Gerber, MSR, UST. etc) you will recognize and can trust and from our experience have withstood our trips into the outdoors.

WEBSITE

The Ready Store website is one of our favorites, if not the top one in the industry. Something we noticed very early on in our Ready Store review. The home page has the main categories along the top, when hovered over sub-categories appear and you can jump into a variety of more specific product categories. No matter where you are on the site this navigation bar is always there so it is easy to get to where you want to go.

The website is responsive in design, that is a web/internet technology term for meaning the website will adjust its layout as you use it with devices with different screen sizes (phone vs tablet vs monitor).


The Ready Store’s product pages are on of our favorites as seen below. The amount of information, specs, customer reviews, additional photos, videos, and other resources relevant to the product is just so much better than the majority of their competitors. It reminds me of an established outdoor retailer website like REI or BackCountry.com. What this means for you is you can come to a page and get a wealth of information on the product and often see it in action via videos and up close in hi-resolution images.

Another hi tech feature of the website we mentioned above is the ReadyQ, an automated shipping option. If you have lots of items on your wishlist but only want to spend a certain amount each month you can add all of the items to your queue and set how much you want sent to you at whichever interval is best for you. This will make budgeters super happy.

Lastly, a recent addition most people won’t know about but is cool is the Ready Store website is now entirely on HTTPS. This means the site is secure and protected on all pages. Most webstores have shopping carts that are HTTPS and the rest of the site is HTTP. Having the entire site protected and secure makes me feel even more secure.

Our only complaints is the search function which doesn’t work as well as it should.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

The Ready Store also prides itself on education. The website has a deep level of product information but they also have the Ready Blog where you will find hundreds of articles that are informative and relevant to the person getting prepared. One of if not the best company blogs in the industry.

One of our favorite resources is their YouTube channel. They have hundreds of videos to watch and learn from as well.

As we have reviewed many different food storage companies, something we’ve come to value is when a company can offer a good product at a decent price but one that also gives back through education and other useful resources.

OVERALL SCORE

The Ready Store is a reliable company that will help your family get prepared. We have found their service, products, and education to be top notch which squarely puts them in the top of emergency preparedness and food storage suppliers. From their wide variety of products and easy to maneuver site you can efficiently shop for items and get some of the best prices around.

As always feel free to post your experiences or questions below. This concludes our Ready Store review!

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