PITTSBURGH -- Thrifty grocery shoppers appear to have rediscovered a way to offset rising food prices.

If shoppers are willing to put up with a few defects and other flaws, they could save up to 60 percent on the bill.

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Stores like KML Salvage, located in the 1600 block of Smallman Street in Pittsburgh's Strip District, are basically grocery stores with no frills.

KML, with concrete floors, has shelves lined with all sorts of items, most of them with small flaws. But if you're very savvy about what you buy, the savings could be substantial.

KML offers contact lens solution in a crushed box at $2.99. Soon-to-expire salad dressing can be found for less than $2 and outdated taco shells in a mangled package go for about 70 cents.

For shoppers, it's more frugal than fussy and with rising food prices, the lure of salvage store bargains might be growing stronger.

In some parts of the state and country, their business is picking up.

"With prices of other things like gas and services going up, we have to conserve our money," said salvage store shopper Mica Young.

Many of the items you could find in the stores are discontinued, dented or expired, but that doesn’t mean they’re all that bad.

"You just have to be careful," said Sue Roberts of KML. "And we have the health inspector come in, and he tells us where the dents are allowed to be. Make sure they're not puffy. They're not on the seam. We always check everything before we put it out."

And you should check everything before eating it.

And if you're looking at an item that looks worse than it should, most salvage stores will let you open it to inspect the item inside to make sure it's intact and safe.

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