Meet the Fastest Grocery Bagger in the Country

Trevor DeForest is America’s best grocery bagger and beat out 22 other competitive baggers to win $10,000 at the National Grocers Association 2018 Best Bagger Championship.

“To describe it would be like, ok, so you’re the customer of the store, and you’ve got one of the fastest baggers in the country. And these people, like, that’s all they do is they want to just bag really fast, and bag well, and they take it really seriously for about a minute, and then after that they have a blast with it,” he said.

There were 35-40 items to bag in the race for grocer glory, but the competition isn’t just about speed. The judges also look at technique, weight distribution, and style. Weight distribution is the toughest and most important category, but DeForest aced it.
“You gotten have the sides built, and then you kind of fill in the cans in the middle and make sure the bread is on top so it doesn’t get crushed,” he explained.

DeForest is the assistant manager at the Fareway Food Stores in Maquoketa, Iowa. He started bagging groceries at age 14. The best bagger contest started in 1987 to recognize great supermarket employees. This year, 600-8000 people cheered on the baggers.