Only the Amish Offer Better Prices Than Costco

Centreville — The Amish are everywhere in southern Michigan. They ride buggies and bicycles. They own stores and have farms. But it’s not like Shipshewana in Indiana, where there’s a full day’s worth of “Amish” experiences.

You have to stray a bit from downtown Centreville, Michigan’s Amish capital, to find Yoder’s Country Market, offering baked goods and hot food. Yoder’s is a destination in its own right.

According to locals, Yoder’s put the McDonald’s next door out of business. When I went in the late morning this summer, it was packed with people. All the donuts were gone, so I picked out some cinnamon rolls and chocolate chip cookies.

But when I got to the checkout, I saw that I could pay with my card using a tap reader. There were fluorescent lights, automatic doors, TV menus over the meat counter. It’s impressive—and the food was delicious—but it’s fake Amish.

For the real Amish experience, drive five minutes to Miller’s Discount Store on Truckenmiller Road. It’s out in the fields. Cars park in front, and there are hitch posts for horses around the side.

Young bonneted women work as clerks. The young girl bagging the merchandise tries to figure me out, almost gawking.

Here there are no lights except for the translucent holes in the roof and the unlit gas lamps placed around the aisles. The refrigerators run on natural gas.

There are no TVs. Bargain bins with handwritten signs line the outside of the store. They are filled with name-brand cereal, fruit snacks, drink mixes, coffee pods, and candy, but there’s a catch: It’s almost all close-dated or past its prime.

Besides the baked goods up front (two dozen oatmeal cookies for $3—basically robbery), the aisles are lined with bulk food products in bags or clear, plastic containers: flour, salt, spices, flavorings, sugar, oil, candy, grains.

Here, MSG goes by the moniker “Accent,” as if to soften the chemical-sounding name of the savory molecular compound. I also got citric acid for iced tea—no lemons required for a bit of tanginess.

Junk food, specialty ingredients—it’s all here in the dim aisles.

I take my selections to the front and stand in line at the counter. There are no conveyor belts or chip readers: payment is cash or check. A sign asks customers not to write checks that will bounce—they still have enough from last year.

I started coming here with my dad as a teen. My father, an avid bargain hunter, would buy Keurig coffee pods by the box that were years out of date, cereal boxes just past their prime, shelves full of off-brand condiments, and exotic ramen.

It was on these visits to Miller’s that I was first exposed to the Amish. I saw how they eschew the comforts of modernity I took for granted.

What would it be like to tend horses and live an agrarian life in a tight-knit community based around the tenets of your faith?

Seeing bearded or bonneted counter-culturists casually shopping for their weekly groceries at their local store on a weekday sticks in your mind the whole way home.

Miller’s Discount Store and the other off-the-map places like it are collision zones between cultures, where modernity and those opposed to it come together authentically over food and commerce.

In the end, we’re not that different from each other. We all want to worship unhindered, live good lives, and buy chocolate-covered nuts at a reasonable price.

Amish authenticity thrives away from modernity. So make the drive to Miller’s Discount Store. Contemplate a life that’s completely different from your own and get close enough to really feel its rough contours.

Watch for buggies, bring an open mind—and don’t forget the cash.