I’ve been shopping at my neighborhood grocery stor e since 2006: I bought Hot Pockets and Mountain Dew there as an 18 year old, and now my family lives just a mile away. Needless to say, I’ve gotten to know the staff.
One morning, when the store was slow, I stopped to chat with the general manager. I asked him where they kept the Kombucha. He walked me to a cooler in the back corner of the store. “We don’t sell much of this stuff,” he told me, pointing to the price sticker on the cooler shelf. I’d never noticed, but each price sticker in the store listed how many units of that item sold per week. Staple items like apples, milk, and chicken breast sold hundreds, while specialty items like kombucha sold just a few units a week (honestly, probably all me).
The same is true in the cleaning aisle. Recently, I asked the store’s grocery manager which cleaning products flew off the shelves most consistently, and he listed the usual suspects: Clorox bleach, PineSol, Comet. But some products, he told me, spiked certain times of the year—including one specialty cleaner that sits stagnant on the shelf from January through October, but sells out during the holiday months.
“We can’t keep this stuff on the shelves around Thanksgiving and Christmas,” the grocery manager told me, pointing to Wright’s Silver Cream . He said the store’s main clientele, the 65+ population from assisted living communities nearby, swore by this product for shining up flatware around the holidays, so of course, I had to do my research.
Apparently, Wright’s lends a long-lasting shine to silver and other metals, rejuvenating dull and tarnished pieces by polishing and removing tarnish. It doesn’t scratch, it’s free of ammonia (so it doesn’t stink), and it leaves a protective coating that prevents tarnish from forming.
Plus, you can use it on all types of metal—to clean both jewelry and serving pieces—including silver, silver plate, antique silver, pewter, chrome, and even porcelain. If you’re like me and you don’t have fine metals around, you can also use it to remove scratches on auto chrome, CDs and DVDs, and golf clubs. According to the instructions, it’s simple to use, too: Just apply it directly to the metal with the enclosed sponge, rinse, dry with a microfiber cloth, and buff!
I wasn’t surprised to see that Wright’s had near perfect ratings on Amazon —a 4.5-star average with more than 2,000 reviews. One happy reviewer swears by Wright’s for shining up a glass cooktop surface, while others rave about how easy it was to restore jewelry, sterling silver flatware, and even collectible coins.
One reviewer recommends using an old toothbrush for hard-to-reach corners and crevices. (Just make sure it’s a soft-bristled brush.) “This product will not over polish your silver like the liquid dip polish will,” the reviewer writes. “I’ve used this for years…even after trying new or more expensive polishes, I always come back to Wright’s!”
Safe to say, thanks to my friend at the grocery store and thousands of happy Amazon reviews, I’m convinced I need Wright’s in my life. Next on the list: Get some nicer silverware.
