The bin store price drop schedule, explained
Why a steep daily markdown works, how to pick your numbers, and what the schedule does to your restock day.
Every bin store runs some version of the same schedule. Restock day is the top price, and each day after that the price falls until the bins are nearly empty and the next truck arrives. Customers know the drill. The ones who want first pick pay $10. The ones who want a deal wait for $2.
It looks simple from the outside. Getting the numbers right is what separates a store that clears its bins from one that hauls half a pallet to the dumpster on Sunday night.
The standard ladder
Most stores start here or somewhere close:
| Day | Price |
|---|---|
| Restock day | $10 |
| Day 2 | $8 |
| Day 3 | $6 |
| Day 4 | $4 |
| Day 5 | $2 |
| Day 6 | $1 |
Then the store closes for a day to restock, and it starts over.
The shape matters more than the exact numbers. The drop is steep early, when the good stuff is still there, and flattens at the bottom, where you are clearing what nobody wanted.
Why the first day has to hurt a little
The $10 day is where your margin lives. Customers on restock day are paying for selection. They are buying the $40 retail items that will be gone by lunch, and at $10 you are still winning on those.
If your top price is too low, your best customers pay less than they would have, and you have nothing left to make up the gap on day five when everything is $2. If it is too high for your area, restock day is quiet and the good stuff sits until day two at $8, which is still fine.
When in doubt, start higher. Dropping the top price later is easy. Raising it after customers are used to the lower number is a fight.
Why the last day is not free
The temptation on the final day is to go to 50 cents or "fill a bag." Sometimes that is the right call, but be honest about what it does. Everything left on day six is either low value, damaged, or something your customers have already passed on four times. A $1 price still covers your labor to move it and keeps the customer expectation that everything in the store is worth at least a dollar.
If you consistently have a lot left on the last day, the problem is upstream. Either the pallets are weaker than you think, or the top price is scaring off the day one crowd.
How the schedule changes what you pull aside
The schedule only works if the bins are full of items that are worth $10 to someone on day one. A pallet with a $200 vacuum in it should not go in the bins. That vacuum sells for $80 on its own, and putting it in a $10 bin means your first customer gets a $70 gift.
Before restocking, run the manifest and pull anything above a threshold. A lot of stores use $20 retail as the line for a separate shelf and treat items between $8 and $20 as a judgment call. The rest goes in the bins. This is the single biggest lever on your weekly revenue and it costs you a couple of hours of sorting.
Matching the schedule to your truck
If you restock once a week, six price days and one closed day is natural. If you get two smaller trucks, some stores run two shorter ladders, say $7, $5, $3, $1, twice a week. Fewer steps means less time spent at the low prices where you are barely covering labor.
Watch what your bins look like at close each day. If they are empty by day four, you could be charging more at the top or getting more product. If they are still full on day five, the drop needs to be steeper or the pallets need to be better.
Run the numbers before you commit
The mistake is picking a schedule because another store uses it. Your pallet cost, your product mix, and your foot traffic are different. Before you set the ladder, take a real manifest and estimate what the bins are worth at each price point given how fast things actually sell in your store. If the manifest says most items retail under $12, a $10 opening price is a hard sell and you will do better starting at $7.
The stores that make money in this business treat the schedule as something to test and adjust, not as a rule. Change one number, watch a week, keep what worked.
If you would rather test a schedule on paper before you test it on customers, the free Manifest Analyzer takes a real manifest and your price ladder and estimates what the bins are worth at each step.