Start Your Engines: The Daytona Mega Begins

We headed to Kroger this morning for what I was scared would be the first of MANY trips during this Mega sale. I only had two items on my list, the problem was I needed a LOT of those items.

Gatorade G2 - .69 after MEGA discount
Campbell's Chunky soup bowls - $1.29 after MEGA discount

I have coupons that discount the soup another .50/bowl = .79

I had two major questions/ worries going in.  Was it true that Catalinas would print for an additional $3 off your next order (on top of taking $3 off your current order) when you buy 10 participating items.  AND, if I bought multiples of 10 would I get more than one Catalina coupon.

The answer to both question is YES!

On our first transaction we purchased 14 bowls of soup (because that was all the coupons I had today, more should arrive in the mail tomorrow) and 6 Gatorade.  Luck was on my side. Just as we we were heading to walk down to the Gatorade aisle I saw a guy stocking an endcap and asked if he just happened to be the grocery manager.  HE WAS!  I'd asked on WeUseCoupons.com how to go about doing a special order at Kroger and didn't get a lot of response but one person did tell me that at their store they'd been instructed to find the manager of the dept you wanted to do a special order in and put the order in with him.  So, that's what I did.  I let him know I wanted 100 bowls of soup.  I know that seems like a LOT, but my logic is that the last time we found this stuff on a Mega sale (getting it for around .75/bowl) was in Oct or Nov of last year.  That was 4 to 5 months ago.  I decided it was in our best interest to try to put together about a 6 month stock of soup, just in case.  This is what Paul eats for lunch every day and by doing so he's realized that it's saving us both a ton of money (rather than eating out of his envelope every day).

So here's what we have so far:

Transaction 1:
14 Soups @ $1.59 each
6 Gatorades @ .99 each
1 100ct box of Kroger Green Tea @ $3.59
1 Huntsville Times newspaper @ $1.50
-(7) .50/2 Campbell's Chunky Soup Qs (doubled)
= $28.23
- $6 Mega Savings
= $22.23 (after tax)
(received 2 coupons for $3 off on next order)

Transaction 2:
20 Gatorades @ .99
= $19.80 + tax
- $6 Mega Savings
=$14.90 (after tax)
(received 2 coupons for $3 off on next order)

I'm saving the catalinas to use when I go back for the big special order of 100 soups.  Right now I'm thinking we will do two transactions of 50 soups each, and save all the catalinas from today's purchases and from that first transaction to bring the second order down as low as possible.  However, I may do more transactions if the cashier doesn't mind so that the OOP on these orders is lower and I'm left with fewer catalinas to use later.  If I do two transactions, the first will come to about $40+tax and the second will be about $13 (and leave with another $15 in coupons to use later.