How much food goes to waste at your store every year? And could poor expiration date management be to blame?
CPG products in the US usually carry one of three different types of expiration date:
Crucially, none of these expiration dates (apart from the ones on infant formula) are directly linked to food or product safety.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), you can still safely eat and drink products that have gone beyond their expiration date, as long as there isn’t any odor, flavor, or texture to suggest that the product has gone bad.
Expiration dates are simply recommendations for when the food or beverage should be sold or eaten.
The problem with this? Many consumers take expiration dates at their word. They throw away out-of-date products because they’re worried that they have the potential to make them sick.
Educating consumers is clearly important. But what can retailers do to better manage expiration dates — and why is it important?
Food waste is a huge problem across the world. Ready for some scary stats?
Food waste is bad for the environment too. The vast majority of food production involves the use of resources and the production of both carbon emissions and waste materials.
It’s also morally hard to stomach when so many Americans are going hungry.
Throw in the economic cost of such wastefulness and we have a big food waste issue on our hands.
Good expiration date management doesn’t solve the whole problem. But it can help to reduce waste at the retailer end (by selling products when they’re at their peak) and at the consumer end (by offering them products that still have a lot of life left in them).
FEFO stands for "first expired, first out". That means products with the earliest expiration dates get sent out — and hopefully sold — first.
It’s not to be confused with FIFO, which stands for “first in, first out” as this method doesn’t take expiry dates into consideration.
The FEFO method is particularly useful for short shelf-life items.
Properly implemented, FEFO reduces the amount of food that expires sitting on a grocery store shelf or in a supply chain warehouse, which means less food waste and increased profit.
Universal product codes (UPC) are the barcodes used on the majority of CPG products.
A UPC allows scanners to quickly pull up a product price when a customer comes to the checkout. But these codes contain more than just price information.
They can give details on the product manufacturer, country of origin, date of manufacture, and expiry date.
Information-rich UPCs, and analysis of the data they provide, can help store owners manage their inventory more efficiently, preventing waste in the process.
Managing expiration dates means managing every link in your supply chain. You need to know that food products travel from the manufacturer to your grocery store shelves with minimal delay.
Using the right kind of supplier will help you to get products onto shelves in good time.
For example, distributors that offer direct store delivery (DSD) are great for perishable items.
They can transport goods straight from the manufacturer to an individual store with no need for warehousing. They can also help to track, manage, and replace inventory at the rate you require.
Want to work with a DSD supplier? Get in touch with Buffalo Market to find out about the range of planet-friendly products we offer to retailers.
Demand for certain products rises and falls throughout the course of a year.
When do you ever sell more pumpkins than you do in October? Or more burgers and buns than you do in the summer BBQ season?
Tracking these seasonal sales patterns — and referencing them year on year — helps you to plan ahead and order in appropriate quantities.
Get it right and you can stock shelves with the products consumers want, when they want them, meaning less goes to waste.
It may be simple, but this expiration date management method is still up there with the best.
With the help of expiration date tech and your grocery store team, you can offer soon-to-expire products at discounted rates.
You may not make as much profit on the product as you’d like, but you do make some, and crucially, you avoid perfectly good food going to waste.
Manually checking expiration dates is a cumbersome process and one that’s prone to error. But with the right technology, you can collect accurate and incredibly useful expiration date data in real time.
Inventory tech helps you to better manage all of the processes listed above. And, if you’re really prepared to invest, you can find tech that will integrate with all aspects of your operations.
Even if you can only stretch to inventory software, you can still use expiration date data to manage your inventory more effectively.
You can also analyze your expiry date management over time, finding ways to further improve your process.
Buffalo Market is a leading distributor of purpose-driven food and beverage brands. With our DSD service, we can help you manage expiration dates, getting food to you when it’s at its fresh and tasty best. Get in touch to find out more!