When you live far away from a military base that has a commissary, you can feel like you are missing out on the benefit of commissary shopping. Whether you're a reserve, National Guard, retiree, or active duty family, the commissary is one of the benefits of military service and it's a bummer when you don't have the option to use that benefit.
The Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA) has a solution to your problem: Guard and Reserve sales. These sales, which I like to call Remote Location sales, bring commissary products and prices to military sites that are far from a regular commissary store. A sponsoring commissary coordinates the delivery of commissary products to a reserve base, armory, or other military location, and all eligible commissary shoppers are eligible to shop there. These sales might last one, two or three days, and usually have limited opening hours.
I've never lived far away from an actual commissary, so I've never been to one of these remote location sales. I'd love to hear all about them: what sort of variety of products they bring, do they bring a lot of things, does it include perishables, do the prices seem to line up with regular commissary prices (if you know.) I do about half my shopping at the commissary because I do find that many of their prices are better than prices at civilian grocery stores, so I'm very interested in whether these sales do provide the benefit that they are hoping to provide. If you go, let me know what you think!