Shopping as a Vegan at: Dollar Tree

My Dollar Tree haul. I plan to review all of these in future posts!

Now I am not one to normally shop at dollar stores of any kind, but recently having come across a Choose Veg blog post pointing out the many vegan options to be found at Dollar Tree, I decided to check them out. So how did I make out at Dollar Tree? Let's find out!

First thing's first, here is Dollar Tree's website. Don't make the same mistake that I did and go to a store without a freezer section if you're actually trying to find many of the items on that blog post list. I ended up buying nothing at the first store I went to because I was mostly hoping to find the frozen goods. The second store I went to was a lot more successful in that regard.

First impressions were that I was very much in a dollar store. They had some cute fall & halloween decorations, but I declined to get any. If it wasn't for that blog list, I probably wouldn't even have looked at the food at all, honestly. I must admit that I don't think dollar store when it comes to finding unique vegan foodstuffs.

Referring to the Choose Veg list, I found and purchased all the frozen items plus a few others. Off the list, I found vegetable empanadas, spring rolls, and fingerling potatoes of all things. They had a variety of other vegan friendly freezer stuff like frozen veggies and fruit pops.

To be honest, I didn't really look for anything in the fridge section, I'm sure they had hummus but I can get hummus anywhere. I don't remember if they had anything else of interest there. I probably should've take pictures, but I feel awkward taking pics in stores.

For pantry basics, I saw the hot sauce but didn't really want it, and I noticed the ingredients mentioned natural butter flavor. Apparently natural butter flavor can actually be vegan, but until proven otherwise, I don't trust it. They had the soymilk there, but I prefer mine sugar free. I didn't look for the cake mix (I hate using cake mix), coconut milk (don't need any right now), and the red beans and rice (I actually wanted this but forgot to look, oops). I also found a take-out style box of pad thai that wasn't on the list.

I was pretty disappointed that they did not have the egg free noodles. When I lived in Florida, I could always find egg free noodles under their store brand and I made awesome gravy noodles with them. Now living in the Portland suburbs, I have yet to find any egg free noodles. Sigh. I have even thought about having some of my FL friends/family buy some from Publix to mail me. I also did not find the vegetable broth, though they had plenty of chicken & beef broth, ugh.

For snack items, I did find and purchase the oatmeal cream cookies, they look just like the Little Debbie versions I grew up with. They had a good variety of the fudge cookies, but I did not buy them because I'm pretty sure they're exactly the same as the store brand fudge cookies that I've found at many other places like Winco and Safeway. I found plenty of other interesting vegan snacks that I haven't had before so I opted to get those instead.

For off the list snacks, I got almond cookies, apple puffs, peanut chews (I've actually had this before, but haven't come across them in ages), and Jim Beam peanuts (lol). There were a bunch of other interesting looking vegan snacks that I'll have to go back for another time, I certainly have enough junk food cramming up my pantry as is!

I also want to mention that I've heard of others finding Just Mayo at Dollar Tree. I had no such luck at either of the locations I visited.

Overall, I don't care to shop in dollar stores. I honestly don't really feel like I'm necessarily getting a good deal on most things just because it's all $1. Everything tends to feel so cheap and not even worth a single dollar to me. Though I do think at least a few of the items were worth the buck, I haven't actually tried anything yet, so time will tell! Keep an eye out for my actual reviews on the goodies I picked up here!