: supermarkets sell tons of stuff, especially food, but I’m pretty sure that not all the food is bought before it expires, so what do they do with possibly tones of expired food?
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Used to work at a large grocery store and there was like $100,000 worth of food waste a month. Maybe more. It was just thrown away.
Theres a restaurant near me that makes all of it food from the food that the supermarket next door cant sell.
In most places even if the food isn’t expired they still cant sell to customers so they sell/give to nearby restaurants
They throw it away, which sucks. That said, it’s costly to stock but not sell food, so they optimize inventory to minimize waste.
I volunteer at a food bank and we get a lot of food from local groceries. Fresh food (fruits, veggies, bread) we estimate just by looking. We usually receive those that look a little different, but are still completely okay to be consumed. We donate leftover bread to the local farms. Dairy is usually donated 1/2 days before expiring and given out immediately. Meat needs to be frozen on the expiration date latest, and can then still be given out up until two months later. Most dry foods (pasta, herbs, crisps, crackers, cereals) and things like soup & peanut butter can be given out until 1 year after the expiration date. So even though I believe a lot of food is wasted in groceries, some may still be consumed safely up until one year after the expiring date.
A lot of food at a food shelter is technically “expired”.
But only for a few days so I don’t think its that unhealthy.
I think some supermarket do donate their old stock.
For example: I know a baker that gives away his bread of the last day or two.
I imagine this varies by chain, state, location, etc. I work in a big chain store in a major city. When our food expires, we sort it. Things that are shelf stable (canned/boxed food), frozen/freezable (meat), or just a little rough looking (bruised apples, torn or dented packages) get donated to our local foodbank, who do pickups near-daily. Food that is deemed unfit for human consumption (way past expiration date, allowed to reach dangerous temps, moldy) are composted. Most food in packages tends to end up the trash if things are too busy in the store to otherwise sort it out, and anything that’s been recalled has to be put in the trash regardless of what it is.
We also try to mark down items before they expire to encourage them to sell faster, giving more time for items that move slower (a few months for shelf-stable, a few weeks for drinks/dressings, a few days for perishable).
In addition to all the other good answers, while there is waste and food that gets donated, supermarkets also minimize that by utilizing what’s called [“Just in Time” delivery,](https://medium.com/lifes-a-picnic/just-in-time-supply-chain-guaranteeing-freshness-and-minimising-waste-b21bd416b131) where they try to order exactly enough of each product that it runs out just as the new stock arrives.
They also reduce waste by turning about-to-expire products into new products – that raw chicken that is expiring tomorrow can get cooked into a “fresh store-made rotisserie chicken” or chicken tenders that can be put out for another few days. The steak that turned a little brown gets chopped up, marinated, and sold on a skewer as “ready-to-grill kebobs.” The bread nobody bought gets turned into croutons, the onions and peppers that are starting to degrade get the brown bits cut off and chopped up into pre-diced veggies, and so on.
I work at a supermarket in the netherlands and everything that we throw away goes back to a distribution centre where they pick out stuff where dog food can be made out off. For example pieces off ham can end up in dogfood but things like drinks not. Everything that doesn’t end up as dogfood is trown away.
At the UK market i worked at most of it got sent to be composted. It used to be sent to pig farms for food decades ago but there’s a fear it could spread diseases to the pigs doing that.
I worked for a subsidiary of Kroger for 6 years.
First, it’s marked down to get a little money out of it.
Second, if it’s still safe and within guidelines it’s donated to local food banks.
Third, some but not most is composted.
Finally, it’s dumpster time. It is a hard line between wasting food and getting people sick. Personally I would prefer to throw it away than get someone sick. That being said, I did throw away 92 gallons of organic milk in one day. That bothered me a lot.
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