If you're looking to save money on groceries — and let's be honest, who isn't these days? — there's an online grocery store that offers 40-70% off retail prices on big brands and new products with no membership fee required.
I've been a longtime customer of Martie — which Eater called "a high-end version of the Marshall's food aisle" — and I'm a convert because of the serious deals on some of my family's favorite brands, like Simple Mills muffin mixes, my son's beloved Mr. Beast bars, and even high-end clean beauty brands like True Botanicals.
What's the catch? The good news is there isn't one.
"We are the go-to destination for overstock everyday goods," Martie's CEO Louise Fritjofsson told me in an exclusive interview for The Cool Down. That means Martie works with brands to rescue and resell items that are still perfectly good — but might have had a packaging change, have a shelf-life of less than 12 months, be seasonally focused (think chocolate hearts on Feb. 15), or just might have been over-ordered.
Martie is then able to solve two problems at once: provide high-quality, healthy products at a steep discount to shoppers while also preventing the products from being sent to the landfill.
And here's a third benefit: Shopping at Martie.com is a great way to discover cool new products for you and your family. So I spoke to Fritjofsson about how to score the biggest deals.
🛒 How Martie works, plus amazing shopping hacks
Shopping on Martie's website and app is super simple, and unlike other online grocery platforms, there's no annual membership fee or complicated signup.
"We are fully accessible, no membership needed," Fritjofsson told me. "You can just come and get these amazing discounts and prices — no one can compete with our prices. … We price compare all of our items all the time and we make sure that we're always the cheapest one."
When Martie launched a little over three years ago, the team started with shelf-stable grocery products, but now they've expanded into beauty products, home goods, and pet items, in addition to everyday staples. You can shop by category (e.g., pantry, beauty, sweets, coffee, kids), or you can discover new brands through their popular Just Landed and Trending Deals sections.
"Many of our consumers actually come to Martie simply to discover new products," Fritjofsson explained. "We thought everyone would be driven by just the prices, because you save on average about $60 when you shop with Martie, but it's turning out to be this amazing way for people to try new brands and products without taking the plunge to pay full price."
TCD Picks » Martie
💡Martie makes it easy to find quality food at massive discounts while helping to fight food waste
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Not buying food I don't need 🧐 On my latest haul, I spent $130 stocking up on my favorite brands like Simple Mills (50% off), but I also tried a new mocktail brand called Recess and a clean beauty eye serum from EWG-verified True Botanicals for half the price.
Pro tip: Use the app to get notified about special bargains and flash sales. "Our core shoppers check every day because it's kind of like a game or a treasure hunt," Fritjofsson said. "We upload new items every morning. Checking it before noon is probably the best alternative because the hottest things will sell out before noon PT."
Martie has about 4,000 products and brands that it works with on an ongoing basis, from big names to new startups, and it uploads about 200 new products a week, Fritjofsson told me. That said, "once it's gone, it's gone. Martie's is a real FOMO experience. So if you see something that you want, you should shop sooner rather than later."
Products often stay on site for about 45 days, and while about 40% of their inventory comes back in stock at some point, that could be within a year's time frame. While inventory changes regularly, Martie always makes sure it's stocked in certain popular categories. "We will always have whole-bean coffee and we will have ground coffee and we will have kids snacks and nut butters," she said. "But if it's Santa Cruz nut butter or if it's Justin's, it kind of depends on who had overstock that week."
Top-selling products include Momofuku noodles, Smart Sweets candies, Fishwife tinned fish, and anything keto — like Kiss My Keto, jerky, and protein bars like Barebells and Nick's. Healthier cereals or granolas like Purely Elizabeth and Three Wishes are also popular, as are new beverage brands like Bawi and Gia.
What are Fritjofsson's favorites? Martie's coffee offerings are at the top of her list: "Coffee today is so expensive, so spending $12 instead of $24 is a huge deal if you drink coffee," she said, calling out 50% off on brands like Peace Coffee or La Colombe. She's also obsessed with Martie's new skincare items, including the Goop beauty products like eye creams and face serums that sell at 60%-70% off.
📈 How it started, how it's going
Fritjofsson's original mission was to "build a company that would make people healthier," she said. "That's a very strong driver for me as an entrepreneur."
The main problem she wanted to solve: "There are enough food companies for the 1% where ingredients are healthy, but the products are expensive," she said. "On the flip side, we have more than 40 million Americans that are food insecure that are struggling to put food on the table." She wanted Martie to make healthy food accessible for all, while also making a positive impact on the planet.
While at the time there was one company in Europe selling overstock groceries online, there was nothing comparable in the U.S., other than limited in-store offerings at discount stores like T.J. Maxx, Dollar Store, and Marshalls. Since founding Martie in 2021, her dream is for the brand to become a household name, taking inspiration from Ikea.
"We want to be accessible. We want to be seen as modern, fun, a treasure hunt," she said. "You step in for one thing, and you walk away with 20 [items], but you feel like you got a deal, and no one's ashamed to shop."
Martie started by reaching out to brands directly to invite them to the platform one by one, but now most of the team's buying is done through their own proprietary AI system to make sure they're getting the best inventory at the best prices.
"What we're actually succeeding in doing is building a brand that vendors and brand producers want to be associated with," she explains. "We're getting brands and vendors selling to us that have never before existed in a liquidation channel."
🥕 Not to mention … there's a lot less food waste
"Healthy food is really expensive most of the time, and food waste does not discriminate," Fritjofsson explained. "It doesn't matter if you're Frosted Flakes or if you're Purely Elizabeth, you will have overstock. It doesn't matter if you're healthy and you're bougie and expensive or if you're conventional and very cheap. Everyone in this industry has overstock."
Roughly 30-40% of America's food supply goes to waste, according to the USDA, but most products are perfectly fine to consume, Fritjofsson told me. When food waste goes to the landfill, it produces methane gas, an extremely problematic greenhouse gas that's rapidly warming our planet.
Martie reminds its customers — and vendors — about the impact of purchasing food and everyday items that would otherwise go to the landfill. The company reports it's saved over 5 million pounds of food from going to waste so far.
"We show you how many pounds of food you have saved from going to waste, and we show you how much money you're saving shopping with Martie," Fritjofsson said. "And we do a yearly report to our vendor partners where we say, 'Thank you for selling these items to us; this is how much we managed to save together this year.'"
For the Martie team, it's all about making it easy and rewarding for customers to shop on the site and app, while also doing good.
"We want to be the leading overstock store where you actually feel like you're winning. You're winning because the price is right, you're winning because you're doing something great for the environment by saving products from going to the landfill. And you're getting brands with high-quality, good ingredients at the best prices possible."
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