‘Get the bacon!’ What it’s like to win a shopping spree

But which items? And how to grab as many as she could in such a short time?

It turns out, a successful three-minute shopping spree takes hours of preparation.

It started with picking the store to do it in. Cave had the option of picking any Tops store, and she chose one in the City of Tonawanda because it was smaller. A smaller store meant less ground to cover – and that items would be closer together – during her three-minute dash.

Then came the strategizing over what items to target. At the top of her list was an expensive one – a $70 pop-up tent – along with pricier items like family-sized packages of meat and batteries. The rules of the shopping spree limited her to just three of any particular item, so Cave couldn’t just fill her cart with all the steak she could grab in three minutes.

And then there was the planning. What was the best route to go from one item to the next? And which ones should be first and which ones should she save for last? That took several trips to the store to map out in the days leading up to the spree, which she and her husband, Josh, won with a $350 silent auction bid at a People Inc. fundraiser.

“I’m very nervous. Very nervous,” Cave said before her mad dash began.

Cave picked the Tops store at 890 Young St. in the City of Tonawanda because she’s familiar with it and because it has a more dense, compact layout than other nearby stores.

“I thought, to get from the front to the back, it’d be quicker, because you have to come back within three minutes, or anything that’s in the cart if you’re at the back of the store isn’t valid anymore,” she said. “It’s not like the old school Supermarket Sweep TV show, where the timer buzzed and whatever you had, you have.”

Cave planned to target as many big-ticket items as she could, including that gazebo pop-up tent she planned to use for watching her son’s little league baseball games with family.

“My kid’s a baseball player, so we need more for our tent city,” she said.

She walked through the store with her husband last week on a reconnaissance mission, then went home and mapped out a plan of attack. She returned to study the store again on Saturday, then took another few laps Monday morning before the spree began, taking notes on her phone.

“I told my family, ‘They’re gonna think I’m crazy. I need to wear a wig. They’re gonna recognize me,’ “ she said.

Alcohol and gift cards were off limits, and she was restricted to three of any item – so, three jars of peanut butter, not three jars of each brand of peanut butter.

Her mother, Carol Lovullo, who pushed the cart, was not allowed to grab any merchandise. Tops spokesperson Andy Brocato, who ran the event, introduced her to her “bodyguards” – personnel who would be standing by for safety, since the spree took place during business hours while other customers were shopping. Lovullo insisted she could fend for herself.

“Don’t worry, I’m from the West Side,” she said.

At the last minute, Cave decided to switch up her strategy and start at a different aisle more toward the middle of the store.

Her body seemed to vibrate as she and her mom prepared for takeoff at the starting line.

“I’m gonna throw up,” she joked. “Have you ever had anyone pass out before?”

Carts – full ones could be exchanged for empty ones at the front of the store – were lined up behind them.

Brocato made an announcement over the loudspeaker that the shopping spree was about to begin, and told shoppers to “take a step back” and cheer on the contestants.

“OK, let’s rock and roll,” said David Christopher, the store manager.

After a countdown, they were off.

Cave homed in immediately, grabbing boxes of Red Bull and batteries, and quickly dropping them into the cart as Lovullo hustled along. She cleared more items from the front of the store, then sprinted down aisle 3 toward the butcher section, where she stocked up on bulk-sized packages of chicken and beef.

“Get the bacon!” her friends and family shouted. “Yeah, bacon, bacon, bacon!”

As the seconds ticked by in a frenzy, Cave returned one full cart after another, including one towering with toilet paper and Bounty paper towels.

“She did her homework, I’ll give her that,” someone in the crowd said, as Cave zeroed in on the tampons, crouching down and tossing pink boxes into the cart.

Cave collected giant bags of paper plates and red Solo cups (“She has an in-ground pool and does a lot of entertaining,” her mom would later say.)

“Wow, she’s getting a lot!” one customer marveled.

Spectators tried to keep up, moving from aisle to aisle for the best view.

“Keep going! More, more, more!” family friend Dolores Joseph urged.

Briefly, Cave and Lovullo got separated in the medicine aisles.

“Where are you?” Lovullo shouted.

The pair got separated again toward the end of the spree. When Cave couldn’t find her mom, she grabbed the giant gazebo tent she’d had her eye on and hoofed it as fast as she could back to the register. As she was on her way, Brocato announced over the intercom that they had 15 seconds left and started counting down.

“I knew time was running out so I just started to haul it as fast as I still could at that point,” Cave said.

Safely back at the register in time, both Cave and Lovullo plopped down on the ground, panting to catch their breath. Brocato handed them each a bottle of water from the coolers next to the checkout.

“My heart is beating out of my chest,” Lovullo said.

A passing customer asked, “Did you leave me anything?”

“Got any oxygen?” Lovullo said, before walking over to the pharmacy to take her blood pressure in the automated machine.

Cave didn’t make it to the soap aisle, where she had hoped to pick up some laundry detergent. She regretted not taking her mother along on any of her store walk-throughs, which she thought might have prevented them from getting separated from each other. But she was pleased with her haul.

“It was pretty good,” she said. “It definitely went a lot faster than I thought.”

They sipped their water and tried to recover from the nerve-racking, three-minute dash while Brocato and a cashier rang up the three carts full of groceries and packed them into red reusable Tops bags.

Beep! A jug of olive oil for $45. Beep! A $45 package of steaks. Beep, beep, beep! Three boxes of Tim Hortons coffee for another $45 apiece.

“$650 and growing!” Brocato reported to crowds that had gathered around the register, bagging a jug of vegetable oil and boxes of garbage bags.

Cave exhaled as she realized she had more than broken even, and the register was still chiming.

When all was said and done, the duo had racked up $1,238 in their spree – that’s $1,102 after Bonus Card savings.

Brocato presented her with a copy of her receipt.

“Here you go, you can frame that if you want,” he said.

As Cave, Lovullo and their friends and family pushed the carts out to their truck and began loading it, Christopher began to settle back down to business as usual.

“It was really intense. It went by real quick, so I was kind of unsure of how it was going to go,” the store manager said. “But she had a really good plan, and it was cool to watch her executing it.”