How do supermarkets like Costco and Wegmans deal with food products that have quicker than normal expiry to prevent as much waste as possible? An example is Wegmans producing pizza dough for customers, but also making their own pizza throughout the day to sell hot by the slice or pie, and cold whole pizzas they sell to customers to be heated up at home. *Not to mention the variety of dough they offer—white, wheat, gluten free; and the pizza varieties on those dough types.*
I know as a society we have a terrible issue with food waste, but how do supermarkets calculate their sales to production ratio enough to make a profit with so many different items expiring on different days?
In: 3
They have tons of historical data. They track how much food they sell on any given day every single day. From that, you can estimate how much food you will sell _tomorrow_ and prepare that amount.
They also correct throughout the day. If one particular food item isn’t selling as well as you projected it would, you simply make less of it in the next batch. Since the raw ingredients typically have shelf lives of several days, making adjustments like this is relatively easy – you just cook less today and use it tomorrow.
In the case of your pizza example, dough can be frozen for days at a time and thawed fairly quickly. If I’m not selling as much pizza as I thought, I simply thaw less dough and use it tomorrow; if I’m selling more, I thaw more.
There will always be some waste, but places that prepare food cut as much food waste as possible, as waste is directly subtracted from their profits.
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