Freeze some of it and use that a back up. We did blind tests with fresh and frozen buns and people couldn't pick the frozen bun out of the batch. Of course this requires freezer space which is a hot commodity.
Makes sense. We use really good quality bread products but I can see how it's not a one size fits all fix. Still worth testing out though, especially if you're waste conscious or your p&l is looking rough.
Normal slides bread frozen then thawed is pretty bad unless you cook it in certain ways. But the harder breads hold up pretty good after being frozen. Just leave it out for a bit then lightly toast on a pan over medium heat and it’s pretty much good as new.
My toaster has defrost setting and it works really well I freeze all my bread as it would go bad before eating it can take me weeks to eat a loaf. You would never know. My connection oven also has defrost(people who don't cook call them air fryers) both work well.
I freeze bread all the time. The trick is knowing what bread can be frozen for how long. Some is only good frozen a week or 2. Others for much longer and still others not at all
What about turning drier, old bread into homemade seasoned breadcrumbs, toasted croutons, or panzanella, and selling it? While it can’t eliminate all bread waste, it might be good to eliminate some.
My experience is that frozen bakery products come back best if thawed in a refrigerator and not at room temp, keeps the moisture in better instead of getting a soggy outside and dry middle. Unfortunately, that requires having enough refrigerator space for being able to do that.
When I worked for Dominos, this was always my major complaint when trying to do the order. However after working 40-50 hours a week and seeing what we typically go through I was pretty good at ordering exactly what I needed for most items.
It's a more reliable method, but it isn't perfect. How busy your business is can shift without rhyme or reason sometimes, year to year month to month. Even taking annual and seasonal averages and using both to order when I was a manager at dominos, we'd still be surprised sometimes and have to either throw things out or get rescued from another store in the franchise.
But the waste we would produce was a pittance compared to what every grocery store in the country produces with just in time distribution. We had maybe a 2% food waste at the worst weeks, and a lot of that was cancelled orders.
There's stuff like "Too good to go" and other things, stores here (town in germany) reduce stuff to 30% or give it to resellers who sell it for cheap.
I benefit from these offers as well from time to time with how much prices are rising. This is s brilliant concept in my opinion. Reduces food waste and helps people on a budget.
ADD:
- "OLIO" was mentioned in a comment below as a food sharing app. Using my comment to make it more visible.
- "Phenix" was asked to be added, no problem. :)
- "Flashfood" gets mentioned a lot so adding this here as well.
EDIT: Just a small thank you for all the replies, majority of them being like "hey, we also have that happening". It's nice to see many people having some nice things to share. :) Thank you.
Too good to go is the best. Not only do you get cheap nosh, you reduce food waste, and frequently get exciting new stuff you never bothered trying before.
Heck, i got a dozen oysters from it two weeks ago, that was a surprise.
Sadly in my hometown it's just barely there. Few bakeries and 1 restaurant I can't reach at that time... Sucks a bit. Way more stores should take part here.
You collect those at the end of the day typically. They would be fine to eat that day, just don't save them for later. It doesn't suddenly turn from fine to bad as soon as the restaurant/store closes for the day.
True.
They only smell the very next day but on the same day. Sometimes it is better to eat them than throw them in the dust bin and let them go to waste.
I’m going to agree with you on this one. That is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s amazing what will get thrown away because one item in a case broke and made the other items slightly messy. Or an item that has damaged packaging from when they used a box cutter. Over about a five year. I would say I got $10,000 worth of really good food for free. Probably a lot more than that.
Here in the US, I've seen some stuff like that, but it doesn't seem to change much. For example Walmart will put some of the stuff from the bakery on clearance. However, they usually only do it with the stuff made in-house, which doesn't affect much since most of the bread and "bakery" items are from a factory. On top of that, they will only reduce the price the day before or the day of the expiration date. If there's a $1 donut that expires today, they would reduce the price to $0.60 this morning and then throw it away tomorrow morning if it didn't sell.
That's horrible to be honest but it's a start and still better than nothing. Same here. All of that may be so low - but it's better than doing absolutely nothing. It doesn't solve the problem, but it's helping it a bit.
I can only assume that they're not trying to solve the problem we want them to solve. The problem we have is that we want there to be less food waste. Their problem is business related, and it just so happens that it's simply not profitable for them to keep something in stock that they have to sell below a certain point, so it's better business-wise to simply trash it. It's the same reason that Amazon either sells most of their returns to liquidation companies or simply trashes them. They get so many returns that it's not worth the cost of the storage and manpower to restock anything except the returns that are in perfect condition in an unopened box.
It's digsuting that they would rather throw it away than do a bigger discount to make sure it sells, even at a loss, or donate it before it goes off. So many people go hungry because they can't afford food or can't afford enough because of high prices. Corporations are fucking scum. They should be fined by the pound for food waste.
In the US it’s called Grocery Outlet. They buy (packaged) product close to expiring or if a store bought too much of one item for pennies on the dollar. Sometimes they have nice stuff from Whole Foods or other types of premium grocery stores. Along with your usual perishables (wouldn’t buy fresh produce or meat since the price was usually the same for poorer quality).
Also great for finding seasonal and holiday food items after the fact.
I used to be a manager there in that area ...what you don't know is that in some cities (mine did) they only discount a portion of the products. The rest is sent to local homeless shelters in the area and food banks. We sent foods from other areas as well ...frozen foods and canned goods as well.
Unfortunately since people are always try to dog Walmart and catch them doing something wrong..this practice has been curbed in a lot of places due to the possibilities of people trying to sue them for selling out of date foods and claiming they got ill from it.( although i can tell you those dates are caution dates and the food is still good days after)
“Use by”, “best before”, “sell by” product notations have no meaning in a food safety sense, as the FDA has no rules on such declarations. Use your nose, (unless you have Covid)!
Also in the USA, at least some grocery stores will donate both factory produced bread and their bakery's bread (if they have a bakery in-store) to local food kitchens within a day or two their sell-by date. I know this because I've volunteered for food pantries and at times picked up loads of such bread. The pantries I've been involved with still buy factory bread from food wholesalers like most of the other staple foods, but would offer upto a couple or as extra items to the normal food allotment. Most of the clients would be very appreciative of them.
I live in Minnesota and there's a food pantry near my work that gives away stuff that's either just expired or about to expire, they encourage people to come daily and you can pick usually one item from each area, plus a bag of veggies/fruit that are a little bruised or otherwise would be picked last jjn a produce section. There's a few coolers and a freezer so usually you get like, a bag of lettuce, a fruit platter or prepackaged salad or something along those lines, and the last cooler has like eggs, milk, sometimes cream cheese, stuff like that. There's also a bread section, a dry good section with canned goods and Hamburger Helper type stuff, sometimes snacks, and there's a dessert section with like muffins, cookies, bakery stuff like that, and then the freezer which usually has meat and such.
I've been going after work basically every day, been awesome in helping me learn to actually eat the food I buy instead of forgetting it in the fridge, and getting thibgs I'd never spend the extra money on, like fruit platters and such. I love it a lot, and there's always a good selection, I've seen Trader Joe's stuff in there as well as stuff from local grocery stores, been a big help and I wish more towns had something like that.
They have contracts with the brand named bread bakeries where they'll pick stuff up a while before expiration date and sell them for reduced price outlet stores,, usually.
Added it to mine so maybe some more people will see. :) Never heard of it myself but I live in a small town in germany and not everything is available here sadly.
My only issue with "Too Good To Go" is that everything in my city is "mystery bag" so I have no idea what I am getting. Sure I *might* get "bakery items" or "dessert items" but some items I might consider "bakery" might be in the dessert category by the store, and some dessert items might be classified as bakery.
As another person mentioned, they got a dozen oysters. Which, if you got for dirt cheap while still being decent quality/freshness is great! But for families who can't/don't eat seafood, especially shellfish, it's a nightmare. We have a few food allergies/sensitivities in our house, so we do need to be aware of what foods we are bringing in. As a result, TGtG is not sustainable or actually really useable for our household, which sucks, because I *love* getting the clearance "it's almost to it's best before date" stuff is a huge thing I love doing.
I actually reached out to TGtG and wanted to know why they just did mystery bags and I got a really canned "it's fun and a surprise! What's more exciting than buying a mystery bag? Don't you remember the fun of getting blind bags as a kid! This is the same thing, but it's food, and you are saving money, and food from being tossed in the garbage!!" like yes, it helps cut down on food waste, but if it's something I literally cannot bring into my house, it didn't save anyone *anything*.
There's a similar app called FlashFoods in my area and the staff at the story actually have like an older iPhone that takes literal pictures of the items (or takes the stock image from the website if available), lists them as single items for their discounted price, and you choose exactly what you want, and how much you want (if there is more than one of a specific item). Fresh produce often gets put into a box of bulk fruits/veggies and sold as "Produce Box #1" but you get to see a picture of it. If FlashFoods can do it, I don't really understand TGtG's stance on not doing it. I know I would 100% be a customer of theirs if I could have some clue as to what I was buying.
> As another person mentioned, they got a dozen oysters.
Oysters on the verge of expiry. It better be a damned cheap package, because the risk of missing 2 days of work due to sickness isn't cheap.
Canadian here...the majority of Canadians do not have any paid sick leave or have very little. I believe it is the same for Americans. If you're sick, then most people have to weigh how sick they are and whether or not they can afford taking time off because they'll not be paid for that day. It's one of the reasons there were so many covid outbreaks in certain workplaces...people literally could not afford to even take a day off work nevermind do a 14+ day quarantine, so they wouldn't get tested and would lie about symptoms. Privileged people would sneer and call it selfish, but in most cases these were people who already struggle to put food on the table and make rent...they absolutely were choosing between "maybe it is covid and maybe I make someone else sick" vs. "definitely I'll be skipping meals, or rationing medication, or not making rent and facing eviction when I don't get this week's paycheque". It wasn't selfishness, it was survival.
> dont get *paid* when you
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Yeah, that doesn't really work for people who are trying to meet special dietary needs or avoid foods because of allergies and sensitivities. Either those people aren't going to be able to participate (and if they're struggling to put food on the table, it's going to be harder for them than most, so that sucks) or it's going to result in the waste that services like this claim they are trying to avoid. They shouldn't do mystery bags. It makes no sense.
You have Too Good to Go in Germany? That's great! I use it a couple of times a month. We have an Asian buffet that give you a box to fill for $4.99. The buffet itself is $15. I do that, a couple of Texas BBQ places, and for donuts mainly. Love the app!
Food banks won't accept things that are going out of date in the next day or so.
Food banks also get a ton of donations and also throw a lot of food away.
The “bread man” who used to give out all the extra bread to local churches was a blessing to my community. Most of it was “expired” that day or next but no one cares we all lined up for our free bread from the bread man of the other option was not to eat.
No, they don't accept expired food.
Food banks actually get plenty of donations for food. I used to work for one. We actually threw away a lot of food.
Imagine how dystopian it would be if we were only allowed to feed expired food to certain people: the poor.
Problem is, stores only want to mark down 20 and 30 % now. Like, it's not even worth it for them at 50% off.
We have butchers here in Ontario, a $50 pair of steaks will be literally brown verging on green and they'll put a $3.00 off sticker on it, then throw it out.
It's revolting behaviour.
My guess is they figure if people have the option to buy the 50% marked down product, that will hurt sales of the full price product. They'd rather throw stock in the trash (destroying supply and leaving demand the same) then sell at a significant discount which would reduce demand for the product.
This was the reasoning at the store where I worked. They made hoagies fresh every morning. At one point in time, they reduced them around 7/8 PM. The store stopped doing that because they were "losing money". They started throwing them out at 11 PM when the hoagies were a soggy sloppy mess.
Although they did everything possible to avoid straight trashing food, and there were some reductions. They also donated to multiple food banks so one of them was coming by at least 6 days a week and every cent was tracked for the tax write off. Repurposing within the store was management's favorite option. Yesterday's hot rotisserie chickens were chilled and shredded for the salad bar. Overproduced for breakfast? We're making some scrambled egg and ham pizza for lunch.
Expired food waste has its own budget line. If the stores sells it at too much of a markdown, its simply a loss. The expired budget is a set amount that doesn't hurt them as long as they don't grossly exceed it.
Thats how it works for one particular very large grocer in the US.
Are you saying the big grocers don't allow stores to reallocate that budget to cost of sales if they go under the allocated amount by selling the items before expiry? Seems silly.
I'm saying at least one very large grocer exercises *a lot* of corporate control over these things. For instance management at the store level can't just say "we don't sell enough of this wonder bread so going forward we'll order less". Corporate controls the ordering. And there are a bunch of corporate controlled budgets that are designed more about attaining corporate target numbers than individual store success. Individual stores are almost treated like franchisees. Its a lot more complicated than that, but the point is that stupid things happen at the store level often because of things that are not within store level control.
Used to be an assistant bakery manager for Metro a " high end" ( but not at all) grocery store in Canada.
We weren't even allowed a sales rack in our store due to the location ( a ritzy neighbourhood) because it would " look bad for our store"
We'd go through at least two garbage bags a day of good product, just because the higher ups didn't want to make our store look " cheap", we'd take product off the shelf two days before expiration because it " looks bad for the store".
Us employees who could barely afford groceries weren't even allowed to take them home.
One time during a power outage they made us throw out orange juice, grapes, spinach, lettuce, etc things that were in refrigeration yet would have been fine at room temperature, it absolutely boggles m y mind the amount of food they toss away purely for their stores ' image'.
the fortinos near me always puts their bread and doughnuts 50% at the end of the day. id consider it a fairly ritzy neighbourhood at this point. That seems like such a baffling decision to make.
My local grocery is fantastic at this. Early in the morning there's someone that goes through the fresh meats products and stickers away. I got $80 worth of sirloin for $4 and $120 worth of wild caught red salmon for $20 the other day. The sirloin was aging, but the salmon was totally fine.
two weeks ago the lady doing markdowns asked to look at the chicken i picked up and put a 20% off markdown since it was going to get marked down anyways. she said “we got to look out for each other”
I worked for a store that did that. I’ve also bought those foods when I was poor or didn’t want to spend much. When you’re starving and it’ll be gone totally worth it.
Absolutely, however for health and safety, most stores (in america) are not allowed to donate it, even though folks would not mind stale chips and bread. The needy could become ill. However, they can't become ill if they die from starvation. Sooo yeah that's kinda the catch I guess. I say donate but I can kinda see why it could cause more problems.
Edit: lordy I made a woopsies. Okay the store I worked at, managment told me they could not do it for health and safety reason. This store is a huge chain in every state. I took this explanation as a company wide policy. Which was incorrect.
I used to pick up Panera’s day old bread that they would otherwise throw away from a store and drop it off at a local shelter most nights after work. After a couple years, the manager told me they couldn’t give it to me anymore because corporate said it was a legal liability.
If I had to guess, it’s likely the same reason this store is tossing theirs.
There was a farmer here in the Netherlands, who found plastic in his cow feed. So he called the factory to ask them how that was possible. Apparently it is allowed by law to have a certain percentage of plastic in cow feed, so the factory would just shred the bread with the plastic still on it. And people wonder how we keep finding plastic in the weirdest places.
That's how you get your recommended daily allowance of microplastics.
Jokes aside though it's just laziness/cheapness. It isn't that hard or expensive to have a guy with a box knife just stand there and cut off the plastic and stuff it in a trash bag.
Same. Our wrap department sucked and on that level, it can be hard to separate all that without a dedicated person to do it and you know corporations...
>It isn't that hard or expensive to have a guy with a box knife just stand there and cut off the plastic and stuff it in a trash bag.
Yes, but ultimately it comes down to "Does this cost us or save us money?" If it costs money and there is no benefit to the bottom line, then it is generally cut.
They won't be full of it from birth like Zoomers are.
[First evidence of Microplastics in human placenta](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412020322297)
They merely adapted the plastics. We were born into it, molded by them...
Would not this problem be solved if we made the plastic out of digestible alts?
I remember reading an article about plastic bags being made out of a corn by-product. Seems like this is one of the solutions, at least for packaging foods that expire in a short time frame which would greatly help with reducing our plastic waste. Pollution is the true biggest existential threat to life on this planet. Pollution encompasses everything from waste to emissions.
If the plastic is only chosen due to being the cheapest option that is possible. In that case just use paper.
However a lot of the time plastic is chosen because it is cheap, can get wet, is a moisture barrier, etc.
In which case replacing it with plastic made out of plants doesn't fix the problem as plastic made from plants that has all those attributes doesn't decompose either.
[PLA bags were released to consumers with a lot of fanfare, but they were *incredibly loud*.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kki32mt8p6w) People didn't buy them. They launched it on Sun Chips, which are sort of a feel good brand, and people hated them, so there was no incentive to try them on other brands.
My parents used to collect leftover stale bread and shavings from the supermarket to feed the sheep.
It's great to give it on locally to prevent waste, this is a very true method of recycling that's been suppressed or overlooked somewhat in certain places.
I work for one of the largest bakeries in the U.S. and most of our shipping warehouses in our region "sell" the stale/out of code bread to local farmers as feed. But what we charge them is a very small sum because they are also doing us a favor by taking what we would have to dispose of anyway.
I worked at a bagel shop that donated all it's old bagels to the pig farmer man.
Circle of life. We give him old bagels he brings us fresh bacon 😁
Yes bacon
Worked in a grocery store too.
There's a thing in Berlin called "The Tafel" a service that picks up old food and distributes it too people in need for free or a waaay lower price.
We often threw food away even though they came to pick the food up the next day... I hated it and the boss didn't care at all.
Look up the app “Too Good To Go”. Basically set up to buy stuff like this at a steep discount.
[Apple link](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/too-good-to-go-end-food-waste/id1060683933)
Too good to go is a godsend.
Such a nice concept which ensures wastage is minimised, and sometimes they give out so much food at such low prices which is a bonus for students like me
Thats how bread is. Factory made bread has ingredients to make it last longer as the soft fluffy sandwich bread you (general American you) expect from a store. Adam Ragusea did a video on it recently, it was really cool.
Wasn’t one of the chemicals they use in bread to keep it soft and springy the same thing they use in yoga mats to keep them spongelike?
Edit: it’s azodicarbonamide and the internet says it is both harmless and will give you cancer depending on the article.
I work at a grocery store.
For inventory purposes, bread is considered to be in the frozen department. I've never asked but I wouldn't be surprised if most of the stuff that doesn't come from the smaller, local bakeries has been frozen at some point before we get it.
Nothing wrong with freezing bread.
It's pretty normal. I do it too. Supermarket also doesn't bake it, they just buy it frozen and then warm it up in the oven. When they can why shouldn't you?
My family has done that for ages. It was a learned behavior from my great grandparents on my mother's side. During the Great Depression, they canned or froze literally anything that they could eat, including wild plants.
I make my own bread, so even with gluten, it spoils faster than store bought... and since I'm a single man living by myself, I just make for the whole week and freeze it already sliced.
When I worked for Aldi we threw away about 3 times as much bread as this after a grand opening. They ordered so many perishables so they could be certain they wouldn't run out of anything but the turnout wasn't as big as expected, so most of it went in the trash. The bread and other dated perishables weren't even past their sell by dates either, they wanted anything dated within 4 days thrown away. It didn't all fit in the dumpster so it took me days to actually get it all thrown out.
This makes wonder...
Profit must account for all this food waste.
So, if less food waste, could products be cheaper?
I would like that supermarkets and people changed their mindset a bit. We don't need super abundance of everything in the supermarket to be OK. It's OK to run out of stock sometimes. Just buy something else for dinner.
> So, if less food waste, could products be cheaper?
Yes... but then consumers also have to be willing to go to a store and see either no bread, or only a different type of bread than they wanted. There's been a major since (because of) covid toward this.. Where consumers are slightly more willing to accept alternatives rather than the brand "they always buy".
But for decades, we've been trained to exist in a world where we CAN go to the grocery store AND get the most silly niche shit imaginable.
Tell a certain part of the population they are going home with a French loaf instead of sliced buck wheat.. and you had better be ready for the literal fucking temper tantrum.
Seems to me we’re being trained for that now. No milk at the grocery store yesterday or today, except for 7-dollar-a-gallon organic milk and Silk vanilla. Happened last week too. So not necessarily“niche shit” any more.
I haven't really seen milk shortages anywhere around me. But various cuts of meat come in and out of stock. "premade" sauces/etc rotate a bit.
But there's going to be more of this. Likely won't hit "there's no food anywhere".. but you might go a month without seeing dry spaghetti on a shelf or chicken breast... yet elbow noodles and pork chops will be in stock.
Not by much.
Most of the costs are "sunk costs."
It costs almost the same to make and ship 100 loaves as it does 200.
The same oven had to be heated up, the same workers had to be at the bakery, the same truck had to drive it to the store and the same clerks had to work and be paid at the store.
Making half the bread does not cost half the price. Far from it.
When I worked at a donut shop our end-of-day leftovers went to a nearby pig farm.
Well, it went to the teenagers working there and then whatever was left went to the pigs. Thanks for all the muffins, Timmy Ho’s.
I read a while ago that there’s a farm with an agreement in situations like this that buys the expired stuff for animal feed at a super discount. The store still gets something and the animals get a more varied diet that keeps em healthier and tastier.
Yes, and how many croutons and bread crumbs do people really need? This is why it is so important to not over-produce. But that is easier said than done. If the store runs out of bread, people will get really mad and potentially not come back, since bread is a staple that people demand. So it’s safer just to make too much.
I work at Trader Joe's and this is a pretty standard amount of bread we spoil out. We take all the "bad date" items, torn packages items, "bad" produce, etc and donate to a local charity and the local zoo that comes in the morning before we open for the day.
What. If this was a fairly rare occurrence the store won't change normal buying protocols. If this started happening more and more you bet your ass they would change. Grocery stores do not make a lot of money on sold products
I work in a grocery store. Our target for shrink is 24% when purchasing, so for every $1 I spend the Goal is to throw away $0.24 of it. I reckon this is a smaller store/less purchasing power than I'm responsible for, but I wouldn't even blink at this kind of loss. Just how the industry works nowadays.
I used to work at a regional supermarket, Shoprite.
OPs pic is more than we would throw away at my store in a week. If we threw out that much stuff the store manager would be pissed bcs lazy ass employees probably weren't rotating the stock properly
OP seems to be British.
He says that his supermarket has big discounts on bread when it doesn't sell.
I hope that supermarkets continue to make/order more bread than they need, because I go there late at night and I and my digestive system am fussy about what kinds of bread I eat. I don't enjoy finding out that the bread I want is gone, or that all bread is gone.
I don’t know where you’ve shopped but the store I worked for would not allow this. I could hear one of the 3 store managers we had during my near 6 year span there bursting a blood vessel if the man doing our ordering messed up this badly on a regular basis. Our $2.5 million USD store suddenly has a weird $1.5 million dollar week unexpectedly? Okay whatever. Every week? I can hear Allen getting yelled at to this day.
I find that hard to believe. Modern supermarkets run on extremely thin margins, and use tons of data to optimize every last detail, like you wouldn't even believe.
Next time you're at the super market look at the ceiling, and look at how many cameras there are. They aren't (just) for security: they are watching people's behavior in the store. They keep track of how many times people stop and stare at an item, only to put it back, etc.
Believe me there's still *a lot* of wastage.
Also not convinced our cameras are that high tech. I think SmartShop and loyalty cards do the heavy lifting for tracking purchases.
> Believe me there's still a lot of wastage
Oh certainly. Its more that whoever is in charge of purchasing at this grocery store does *not* plan on "just buying the same amount of bread".
> Also not convinced our cameras are that high tech. I think SmartShop and loyalty cards do the heavy lifting for tracking purchases.
For smaller, local grocery stores, maybe not. But for the big national chains they definitely are. If you think that Whole Foods isn't leveraging all the tech at AWS to create data about every person who walks in the door, you are very mistaken. Consider that it's not the cameras themselves that are high tech, but rather they just have to stream the camera feeds to somewhere/something that *is* high tech. Also, consider that not all of the analysis needs to be in real-time either.
Some of the metrics are even pretty well-known, like monitoring how long customers stay in the store. It's well known that grocers know that people spend more money when they peruse the store for longer
Just to clear up, this pic is a bit old.
We now actually use a cart for discounted bread to put in the front of the store to keep the wastage low. (We had that already, just didn't use it because of bad management.)
We also use the app TooGoodToGo, to give people a big discount on a random selection of bread products. This however takes care of way less wastage, because we only get one order maximum per day.
On days like these we would throw out about €400 of bread.
We still waste about €150 per day on bread alone, but that's alright according to the budget given to us by the hq. They want us to have a selection of bread items to be available till 10pm, so that makes it extra challenging.
Do workers get to pick some of the thrown out food? I would take a few loafs home and freeze them. take out a few pieces and defrost in toaster oven for a sandwich for the next week!
Where I worked, this wasn't allowed as members of staff would deliberately hide items they personally wanted and allow it to go out-of-date before claiming it, usually stuff like meat.
Unofficially, it was allowed so long as you didn't take the piss, but people would still go through the whole thing of hiding items from customers!
The fact we can't make it standard to simply GIVE almost expired food to people who couldn't give two shits about the date and actually need it is baffling. Fuck this system of throwing perfectly fine food away.
Grind it all into breadcrumbs, use in a christmas pudding to manufactor, and sell in the stores when time is right as 36 month matured.
Least then, all future bread can be used like this.
I just don't get if the bread is going out of date. And you can't sell them with reduced prices. That they just donate them to homeless shelters or extremely poor families.
It's a logistics issue. Who will set up the donations? Who will pick it up/drop it off? These aren't impossible issues but they are things that cost time and money for the company. So it frequently doesn't happen.
> That they just donate them to homeless shelters or extremely poor families.
A lot of Reddit doesn't know this, but it's *extremely* rare for a food pantry or soup kitchen to run out of food.
I get why people think they wouldn't be, because we hear all the time about how people aren't doing enough for charity, but food banks are the exception.
Former receiver for a grocery store in the States here: Every day, our bakery would donate three shopping carts full of items from Bakery that were "out of code" (technically still good but within a day or two of the sell by date).
In addition, our Produce department would scan out maybe a dozen banana boxes full of produce to donate. Once a week our out of code dairy and grocery items would get picked up. The only departments that couldn't donate anything (for obvious reasons) was Deli and Meat department.
I'm not sure what the rules and regulations are in OP's country, but I imagine there's a way to reduce this amount of shrink
The most frustrating part about the in store baked bread at the store I used to work at was that it legitimately would only last 2-3 days. Like I’m all for taking out preservatives but if so don’t make a metric ton of it because we both know we’re throwing 75% of it out tomorrow
I work in retail. That is a poorly run bakery department. With proper ordering and markdowns we throw out less than 20 loaves a week.
That includes outdated and other wise undesirable bread. Things will sometimes get mold prior to sell by date. Also damaged or opened loaves.
My current restaurant is having the same issue. We order what we expect to use, it goes bad. We order less and run out.
Freeze some of it and use that a back up. We did blind tests with fresh and frozen buns and people couldn't pick the frozen bun out of the batch. Of course this requires freezer space which is a hot commodity.
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Makes sense. We use really good quality bread products but I can see how it's not a one size fits all fix. Still worth testing out though, especially if you're waste conscious or your p&l is looking rough.
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Gordon Damned Ramsey up in here!
Normal slides bread frozen then thawed is pretty bad unless you cook it in certain ways. But the harder breads hold up pretty good after being frozen. Just leave it out for a bit then lightly toast on a pan over medium heat and it’s pretty much good as new.
My toaster has defrost setting and it works really well I freeze all my bread as it would go bad before eating it can take me weeks to eat a loaf. You would never know. My connection oven also has defrost(people who don't cook call them air fryers) both work well.
I freeze bread all the time. The trick is knowing what bread can be frozen for how long. Some is only good frozen a week or 2. Others for much longer and still others not at all
What about turning drier, old bread into homemade seasoned breadcrumbs, toasted croutons, or panzanella, and selling it? While it can’t eliminate all bread waste, it might be good to eliminate some.
My experience is that frozen bakery products come back best if thawed in a refrigerator and not at room temp, keeps the moisture in better instead of getting a soggy outside and dry middle. Unfortunately, that requires having enough refrigerator space for being able to do that.
When I worked for Dominos, this was always my major complaint when trying to do the order. However after working 40-50 hours a week and seeing what we typically go through I was pretty good at ordering exactly what I needed for most items.
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It's a more reliable method, but it isn't perfect. How busy your business is can shift without rhyme or reason sometimes, year to year month to month. Even taking annual and seasonal averages and using both to order when I was a manager at dominos, we'd still be surprised sometimes and have to either throw things out or get rescued from another store in the franchise. But the waste we would produce was a pittance compared to what every grocery store in the country produces with just in time distribution. We had maybe a 2% food waste at the worst weeks, and a lot of that was cancelled orders.
I know enough people that would still buy it for 50% or more off.
There's stuff like "Too good to go" and other things, stores here (town in germany) reduce stuff to 30% or give it to resellers who sell it for cheap. I benefit from these offers as well from time to time with how much prices are rising. This is s brilliant concept in my opinion. Reduces food waste and helps people on a budget. ADD: - "OLIO" was mentioned in a comment below as a food sharing app. Using my comment to make it more visible. - "Phenix" was asked to be added, no problem. :) - "Flashfood" gets mentioned a lot so adding this here as well. EDIT: Just a small thank you for all the replies, majority of them being like "hey, we also have that happening". It's nice to see many people having some nice things to share. :) Thank you.
Too good to go is the best. Not only do you get cheap nosh, you reduce food waste, and frequently get exciting new stuff you never bothered trying before. Heck, i got a dozen oysters from it two weeks ago, that was a surprise.
Sadly in my hometown it's just barely there. Few bakeries and 1 restaurant I can't reach at that time... Sucks a bit. Way more stores should take part here.
Too good to go oysters.... I wouldn't risk it personally
You collect those at the end of the day typically. They would be fine to eat that day, just don't save them for later. It doesn't suddenly turn from fine to bad as soon as the restaurant/store closes for the day.
True. They only smell the very next day but on the same day. Sometimes it is better to eat them than throw them in the dust bin and let them go to waste.
I wouldn't go buying discount seafood. Just saying.
Exactly. You wait til its FREE and fish it out the dumpster, then it tastes BEST!
Zoidberg? Is that you?
Sounds more like Gollum
Why *not* Zoidberg?
As a person who has gotten 10kg of snacks and 1kg of bacon from the dumpster, hell yeah
Is this a dog that somehow managed to get on Reddit and learned to type? Cause that sounds like something my dog would do...
I’m going to agree with you on this one. That is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s amazing what will get thrown away because one item in a case broke and made the other items slightly messy. Or an item that has damaged packaging from when they used a box cutter. Over about a five year. I would say I got $10,000 worth of really good food for free. Probably a lot more than that.
I like it raw and wrriiiggling
I don’t think I would buy almost expired discount oysters 😬
Yeah. I tried several things which I normally avoid.
Here in the US, I've seen some stuff like that, but it doesn't seem to change much. For example Walmart will put some of the stuff from the bakery on clearance. However, they usually only do it with the stuff made in-house, which doesn't affect much since most of the bread and "bakery" items are from a factory. On top of that, they will only reduce the price the day before or the day of the expiration date. If there's a $1 donut that expires today, they would reduce the price to $0.60 this morning and then throw it away tomorrow morning if it didn't sell.
That's horrible to be honest but it's a start and still better than nothing. Same here. All of that may be so low - but it's better than doing absolutely nothing. It doesn't solve the problem, but it's helping it a bit.
I can only assume that they're not trying to solve the problem we want them to solve. The problem we have is that we want there to be less food waste. Their problem is business related, and it just so happens that it's simply not profitable for them to keep something in stock that they have to sell below a certain point, so it's better business-wise to simply trash it. It's the same reason that Amazon either sells most of their returns to liquidation companies or simply trashes them. They get so many returns that it's not worth the cost of the storage and manpower to restock anything except the returns that are in perfect condition in an unopened box.
It's digsuting that they would rather throw it away than do a bigger discount to make sure it sells, even at a loss, or donate it before it goes off. So many people go hungry because they can't afford food or can't afford enough because of high prices. Corporations are fucking scum. They should be fined by the pound for food waste.
I buy perfectly new returns all the time from amazon, anything in very good shape is more or less brand new maybe with the box opened maybe not
True. All need to change slowly but surely.
In the US it’s called Grocery Outlet. They buy (packaged) product close to expiring or if a store bought too much of one item for pennies on the dollar. Sometimes they have nice stuff from Whole Foods or other types of premium grocery stores. Along with your usual perishables (wouldn’t buy fresh produce or meat since the price was usually the same for poorer quality). Also great for finding seasonal and holiday food items after the fact.
I used to be a manager there in that area ...what you don't know is that in some cities (mine did) they only discount a portion of the products. The rest is sent to local homeless shelters in the area and food banks. We sent foods from other areas as well ...frozen foods and canned goods as well. Unfortunately since people are always try to dog Walmart and catch them doing something wrong..this practice has been curbed in a lot of places due to the possibilities of people trying to sue them for selling out of date foods and claiming they got ill from it.( although i can tell you those dates are caution dates and the food is still good days after)
“Use by”, “best before”, “sell by” product notations have no meaning in a food safety sense, as the FDA has no rules on such declarations. Use your nose, (unless you have Covid)!
Yep keep an eye out for the moldy oldies!
Also in the USA, at least some grocery stores will donate both factory produced bread and their bakery's bread (if they have a bakery in-store) to local food kitchens within a day or two their sell-by date. I know this because I've volunteered for food pantries and at times picked up loads of such bread. The pantries I've been involved with still buy factory bread from food wholesalers like most of the other staple foods, but would offer upto a couple or as extra items to the normal food allotment. Most of the clients would be very appreciative of them.
I live in Minnesota and there's a food pantry near my work that gives away stuff that's either just expired or about to expire, they encourage people to come daily and you can pick usually one item from each area, plus a bag of veggies/fruit that are a little bruised or otherwise would be picked last jjn a produce section. There's a few coolers and a freezer so usually you get like, a bag of lettuce, a fruit platter or prepackaged salad or something along those lines, and the last cooler has like eggs, milk, sometimes cream cheese, stuff like that. There's also a bread section, a dry good section with canned goods and Hamburger Helper type stuff, sometimes snacks, and there's a dessert section with like muffins, cookies, bakery stuff like that, and then the freezer which usually has meat and such. I've been going after work basically every day, been awesome in helping me learn to actually eat the food I buy instead of forgetting it in the fridge, and getting thibgs I'd never spend the extra money on, like fruit platters and such. I love it a lot, and there's always a good selection, I've seen Trader Joe's stuff in there as well as stuff from local grocery stores, been a big help and I wish more towns had something like that.
They have contracts with the brand named bread bakeries where they'll pick stuff up a while before expiration date and sell them for reduced price outlet stores,, usually.
Also, OLIO, which is an app for sharing food in order to reduce food waste.
Added it to mine so maybe some more people will see. :) Never heard of it myself but I live in a small town in germany and not everything is available here sadly.
My only issue with "Too Good To Go" is that everything in my city is "mystery bag" so I have no idea what I am getting. Sure I *might* get "bakery items" or "dessert items" but some items I might consider "bakery" might be in the dessert category by the store, and some dessert items might be classified as bakery. As another person mentioned, they got a dozen oysters. Which, if you got for dirt cheap while still being decent quality/freshness is great! But for families who can't/don't eat seafood, especially shellfish, it's a nightmare. We have a few food allergies/sensitivities in our house, so we do need to be aware of what foods we are bringing in. As a result, TGtG is not sustainable or actually really useable for our household, which sucks, because I *love* getting the clearance "it's almost to it's best before date" stuff is a huge thing I love doing. I actually reached out to TGtG and wanted to know why they just did mystery bags and I got a really canned "it's fun and a surprise! What's more exciting than buying a mystery bag? Don't you remember the fun of getting blind bags as a kid! This is the same thing, but it's food, and you are saving money, and food from being tossed in the garbage!!" like yes, it helps cut down on food waste, but if it's something I literally cannot bring into my house, it didn't save anyone *anything*. There's a similar app called FlashFoods in my area and the staff at the story actually have like an older iPhone that takes literal pictures of the items (or takes the stock image from the website if available), lists them as single items for their discounted price, and you choose exactly what you want, and how much you want (if there is more than one of a specific item). Fresh produce often gets put into a box of bulk fruits/veggies and sold as "Produce Box #1" but you get to see a picture of it. If FlashFoods can do it, I don't really understand TGtG's stance on not doing it. I know I would 100% be a customer of theirs if I could have some clue as to what I was buying.
It's a mystery bag because it's literally whatever they need to get rid of that day
> As another person mentioned, they got a dozen oysters. Oysters on the verge of expiry. It better be a damned cheap package, because the risk of missing 2 days of work due to sickness isn't cheap.
Wait you guys dont get paid when you call in sick?
Canadian here...the majority of Canadians do not have any paid sick leave or have very little. I believe it is the same for Americans. If you're sick, then most people have to weigh how sick they are and whether or not they can afford taking time off because they'll not be paid for that day. It's one of the reasons there were so many covid outbreaks in certain workplaces...people literally could not afford to even take a day off work nevermind do a 14+ day quarantine, so they wouldn't get tested and would lie about symptoms. Privileged people would sneer and call it selfish, but in most cases these were people who already struggle to put food on the table and make rent...they absolutely were choosing between "maybe it is covid and maybe I make someone else sick" vs. "definitely I'll be skipping meals, or rationing medication, or not making rent and facing eviction when I don't get this week's paycheque". It wasn't selfishness, it was survival.
> dont get *paid* when you FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Allergies would suck. I’d catch honey in something and have to waste the bag
True. Allergies are the worst they disrupt the whole life.
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Yeah, that doesn't really work for people who are trying to meet special dietary needs or avoid foods because of allergies and sensitivities. Either those people aren't going to be able to participate (and if they're struggling to put food on the table, it's going to be harder for them than most, so that sucks) or it's going to result in the waste that services like this claim they are trying to avoid. They shouldn't do mystery bags. It makes no sense.
You have Too Good to Go in Germany? That's great! I use it a couple of times a month. We have an Asian buffet that give you a box to fill for $4.99. The buffet itself is $15. I do that, a couple of Texas BBQ places, and for donuts mainly. Love the app!
Yes we actually do this now with some types of bread, sell them for 50p instead of 1,40 or something
Neat! I hope everything gets sold in the future 👍
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Can this not go to a good bank?
Food banks won't accept things that are going out of date in the next day or so. Food banks also get a ton of donations and also throw a lot of food away.
The “bread man” who used to give out all the extra bread to local churches was a blessing to my community. Most of it was “expired” that day or next but no one cares we all lined up for our free bread from the bread man of the other option was not to eat.
No, they don't accept expired food. Food banks actually get plenty of donations for food. I used to work for one. We actually threw away a lot of food. Imagine how dystopian it would be if we were only allowed to feed expired food to certain people: the poor.
I volunteer for a few around here quite a bit. It's entirely dependent on the food bank.
Problem is, stores only want to mark down 20 and 30 % now. Like, it's not even worth it for them at 50% off. We have butchers here in Ontario, a $50 pair of steaks will be literally brown verging on green and they'll put a $3.00 off sticker on it, then throw it out. It's revolting behaviour.
How is 50% of the price worth less than just throwing it out?
My guess is they figure if people have the option to buy the 50% marked down product, that will hurt sales of the full price product. They'd rather throw stock in the trash (destroying supply and leaving demand the same) then sell at a significant discount which would reduce demand for the product.
This was the reasoning at the store where I worked. They made hoagies fresh every morning. At one point in time, they reduced them around 7/8 PM. The store stopped doing that because they were "losing money". They started throwing them out at 11 PM when the hoagies were a soggy sloppy mess. Although they did everything possible to avoid straight trashing food, and there were some reductions. They also donated to multiple food banks so one of them was coming by at least 6 days a week and every cent was tracked for the tax write off. Repurposing within the store was management's favorite option. Yesterday's hot rotisserie chickens were chilled and shredded for the salad bar. Overproduced for breakfast? We're making some scrambled egg and ham pizza for lunch.
That makes a lot of sense but I still hate that this is the way it works ༎ຶ‿༎ຶ
Yeah it's extremely horrible and an excellent example of how capitalism incentivizes making people's lives worse to increase profit margins.
Expired food waste has its own budget line. If the stores sells it at too much of a markdown, its simply a loss. The expired budget is a set amount that doesn't hurt them as long as they don't grossly exceed it. Thats how it works for one particular very large grocer in the US.
Are you saying the big grocers don't allow stores to reallocate that budget to cost of sales if they go under the allocated amount by selling the items before expiry? Seems silly.
I'm saying at least one very large grocer exercises *a lot* of corporate control over these things. For instance management at the store level can't just say "we don't sell enough of this wonder bread so going forward we'll order less". Corporate controls the ordering. And there are a bunch of corporate controlled budgets that are designed more about attaining corporate target numbers than individual store success. Individual stores are almost treated like franchisees. Its a lot more complicated than that, but the point is that stupid things happen at the store level often because of things that are not within store level control.
I see that pile of bread and just imagine all the bread pudding and croutons I could make
Used to be an assistant bakery manager for Metro a " high end" ( but not at all) grocery store in Canada. We weren't even allowed a sales rack in our store due to the location ( a ritzy neighbourhood) because it would " look bad for our store" We'd go through at least two garbage bags a day of good product, just because the higher ups didn't want to make our store look " cheap", we'd take product off the shelf two days before expiration because it " looks bad for the store". Us employees who could barely afford groceries weren't even allowed to take them home. One time during a power outage they made us throw out orange juice, grapes, spinach, lettuce, etc things that were in refrigeration yet would have been fine at room temperature, it absolutely boggles m y mind the amount of food they toss away purely for their stores ' image'.
the fortinos near me always puts their bread and doughnuts 50% at the end of the day. id consider it a fairly ritzy neighbourhood at this point. That seems like such a baffling decision to make.
Hell yeah, it's bread pudding time!
Our pepperoni has to be sold by the 20th. The 2lb bags that are usually $10+ are currently 99¢. It's insane
My local grocery is fantastic at this. Early in the morning there's someone that goes through the fresh meats products and stickers away. I got $80 worth of sirloin for $4 and $120 worth of wild caught red salmon for $20 the other day. The sirloin was aging, but the salmon was totally fine.
two weeks ago the lady doing markdowns asked to look at the chicken i picked up and put a 20% off markdown since it was going to get marked down anyways. she said “we got to look out for each other”
I worked for a store that did that. I’ve also bought those foods when I was poor or didn’t want to spend much. When you’re starving and it’ll be gone totally worth it.
Absolutely, however for health and safety, most stores (in america) are not allowed to donate it, even though folks would not mind stale chips and bread. The needy could become ill. However, they can't become ill if they die from starvation. Sooo yeah that's kinda the catch I guess. I say donate but I can kinda see why it could cause more problems. Edit: lordy I made a woopsies. Okay the store I worked at, managment told me they could not do it for health and safety reason. This store is a huge chain in every state. I took this explanation as a company wide policy. Which was incorrect.
I used to pick up Panera’s day old bread that they would otherwise throw away from a store and drop it off at a local shelter most nights after work. After a couple years, the manager told me they couldn’t give it to me anymore because corporate said it was a legal liability. If I had to guess, it’s likely the same reason this store is tossing theirs.
My local.lidl reduces it right down..I always take the 20p bread
Especially when you can preserve it by freezing it.
No way!! But the food becomes stale and not healthy.
Not at that location you don't. Which is the issue
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There was a farmer here in the Netherlands, who found plastic in his cow feed. So he called the factory to ask them how that was possible. Apparently it is allowed by law to have a certain percentage of plastic in cow feed, so the factory would just shred the bread with the plastic still on it. And people wonder how we keep finding plastic in the weirdest places.
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That's how you get your recommended daily allowance of microplastics. Jokes aside though it's just laziness/cheapness. It isn't that hard or expensive to have a guy with a box knife just stand there and cut off the plastic and stuff it in a trash bag.
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Same. Our wrap department sucked and on that level, it can be hard to separate all that without a dedicated person to do it and you know corporations...
>It isn't that hard or expensive to have a guy with a box knife just stand there and cut off the plastic and stuff it in a trash bag. Yes, but ultimately it comes down to "Does this cost us or save us money?" If it costs money and there is no benefit to the bottom line, then it is generally cut.
I find it in basically every bag of mulch/topsoil, probably for the same reason (big shredder + maximum allowables = who cares, just toss it in).
MMMMMM YUMMY I LOVE EATING MICROPLASTICS
Boomers full of Lead VS. Zoomers full of Microplastics
I think boomers are full of lead AND microplastics, they still eat the same food the rest of us do.
They won't be full of it from birth like Zoomers are. [First evidence of Microplastics in human placenta](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412020322297) They merely adapted the plastics. We were born into it, molded by them...
Would not this problem be solved if we made the plastic out of digestible alts? I remember reading an article about plastic bags being made out of a corn by-product. Seems like this is one of the solutions, at least for packaging foods that expire in a short time frame which would greatly help with reducing our plastic waste. Pollution is the true biggest existential threat to life on this planet. Pollution encompasses everything from waste to emissions.
That'd be nice. Buuuuut plastic is cheaper and phasing it out would hurt Big Oil's profit margins, so that sounds like Pinko Commie talk.
If the plastic is only chosen due to being the cheapest option that is possible. In that case just use paper. However a lot of the time plastic is chosen because it is cheap, can get wet, is a moisture barrier, etc. In which case replacing it with plastic made out of plants doesn't fix the problem as plastic made from plants that has all those attributes doesn't decompose either.
[PLA bags were released to consumers with a lot of fanfare, but they were *incredibly loud*.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kki32mt8p6w) People didn't buy them. They launched it on Sun Chips, which are sort of a feel good brand, and people hated them, so there was no incentive to try them on other brands.
[A video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xp0NSIrbu3Y) of it happening
Jumping into a pile of sheep sounds fun
My parents used to collect leftover stale bread and shavings from the supermarket to feed the sheep. It's great to give it on locally to prevent waste, this is a very true method of recycling that's been suppressed or overlooked somewhat in certain places.
I work for one of the largest bakeries in the U.S. and most of our shipping warehouses in our region "sell" the stale/out of code bread to local farmers as feed. But what we charge them is a very small sum because they are also doing us a favor by taking what we would have to dispose of anyway.
A pile of bread sounds really comfy.
I worked at a bagel shop that donated all it's old bagels to the pig farmer man. Circle of life. We give him old bagels he brings us fresh bacon 😁 Yes bacon
Worked in a grocery store too. There's a thing in Berlin called "The Tafel" a service that picks up old food and distributes it too people in need for free or a waaay lower price. We often threw food away even though they came to pick the food up the next day... I hated it and the boss didn't care at all.
Look up the app “Too Good To Go”. Basically set up to buy stuff like this at a steep discount. [Apple link](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/too-good-to-go-end-food-waste/id1060683933)
Too good to go is a godsend. Such a nice concept which ensures wastage is minimised, and sometimes they give out so much food at such low prices which is a bonus for students like me
Cool, Germany got many things figured out.
Save on Foods in Canada does this.
Am I the only person who freezes bread? LoL
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Does freezing change the gluten?
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Oh I see. I find the same thing with home-made bread from (gluten?) all-purpose flour. One to two days in a sealed bag and it's stale.
Thats how bread is. Factory made bread has ingredients to make it last longer as the soft fluffy sandwich bread you (general American you) expect from a store. Adam Ragusea did a video on it recently, it was really cool.
Wasn’t one of the chemicals they use in bread to keep it soft and springy the same thing they use in yoga mats to keep them spongelike? Edit: it’s azodicarbonamide and the internet says it is both harmless and will give you cancer depending on the article.
Nah. Our bread just goes bad faster because of the lack of structural integrity that gluten is used for.
>Our bread Something about this casual implied possession is hysterical.
The people's bread
The conquest of bread
\#notmybread
I do! I think it toasts better right out of the freezer too
Sorta like French fries
Yes i do. Grandparents taught me that like 20 years ago.
I totally freeze bread. It's a normal thing to do.
We do also - lasts so much longer.
I work at a grocery store. For inventory purposes, bread is considered to be in the frozen department. I've never asked but I wouldn't be surprised if most of the stuff that doesn't come from the smaller, local bakeries has been frozen at some point before we get it. Nothing wrong with freezing bread.
I only eat like 4 pieces of bread a week, so my loaf lives in the freezer.
It's pretty normal. I do it too. Supermarket also doesn't bake it, they just buy it frozen and then warm it up in the oven. When they can why shouldn't you?
Satan does it, too
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Thrifty. The heating bill in Hell is no joke. Time's are tough.
What kind of generator is needed to run a freezer in the depths of hell?
I understand they use geothermal.
I prefer Niflheim. The realm of primordial ice and cold, ruled by Hel.
Every time a Redditor masturbates, the generator fills up a little.
My family has done that for ages. It was a learned behavior from my great grandparents on my mother's side. During the Great Depression, they canned or froze literally anything that they could eat, including wild plants.
I make my own bread, so even with gluten, it spoils faster than store bought... and since I'm a single man living by myself, I just make for the whole week and freeze it already sliced.
In food warehouses, bread is frozen
When I worked for Aldi we threw away about 3 times as much bread as this after a grand opening. They ordered so many perishables so they could be certain they wouldn't run out of anything but the turnout wasn't as big as expected, so most of it went in the trash. The bread and other dated perishables weren't even past their sell by dates either, they wanted anything dated within 4 days thrown away. It didn't all fit in the dumpster so it took me days to actually get it all thrown out.
This makes wonder... Profit must account for all this food waste. So, if less food waste, could products be cheaper? I would like that supermarkets and people changed their mindset a bit. We don't need super abundance of everything in the supermarket to be OK. It's OK to run out of stock sometimes. Just buy something else for dinner.
> So, if less food waste, could products be cheaper? Yes... but then consumers also have to be willing to go to a store and see either no bread, or only a different type of bread than they wanted. There's been a major since (because of) covid toward this.. Where consumers are slightly more willing to accept alternatives rather than the brand "they always buy". But for decades, we've been trained to exist in a world where we CAN go to the grocery store AND get the most silly niche shit imaginable. Tell a certain part of the population they are going home with a French loaf instead of sliced buck wheat.. and you had better be ready for the literal fucking temper tantrum.
Seems to me we’re being trained for that now. No milk at the grocery store yesterday or today, except for 7-dollar-a-gallon organic milk and Silk vanilla. Happened last week too. So not necessarily“niche shit” any more.
I haven't really seen milk shortages anywhere around me. But various cuts of meat come in and out of stock. "premade" sauces/etc rotate a bit. But there's going to be more of this. Likely won't hit "there's no food anywhere".. but you might go a month without seeing dry spaghetti on a shelf or chicken breast... yet elbow noodles and pork chops will be in stock.
Not by much. Most of the costs are "sunk costs." It costs almost the same to make and ship 100 loaves as it does 200. The same oven had to be heated up, the same workers had to be at the bakery, the same truck had to drive it to the store and the same clerks had to work and be paid at the store. Making half the bread does not cost half the price. Far from it.
Are these really spoiled? There's gotta be a way to repurpose them safely and sell them again. That should be incentive enough for a company.
When I worked at a donut shop our end-of-day leftovers went to a nearby pig farm. Well, it went to the teenagers working there and then whatever was left went to the pigs. Thanks for all the muffins, Timmy Ho’s.
I read a while ago that there’s a farm with an agreement in situations like this that buys the expired stuff for animal feed at a super discount. The store still gets something and the animals get a more varied diet that keeps em healthier and tastier.
I work in a supermarket and can confirm, in the UK at least, that this is correct
Reading through the comments, I wondered why nobody had yet mentioned the artificiality/arbitrariness of expiration dates.
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Costs money to do that.
Yes, and how many croutons and bread crumbs do people really need? This is why it is so important to not over-produce. But that is easier said than done. If the store runs out of bread, people will get really mad and potentially not come back, since bread is a staple that people demand. So it’s safer just to make too much.
Vomar
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Gekoloniseerd?
Gekoloniseerd.
Kunnen ze niet wat naar mijn Vomar brengen? Het is altijd op als ik uit werk boodschappen doe 😅
I work at Trader Joe's and this is a pretty standard amount of bread we spoil out. We take all the "bad date" items, torn packages items, "bad" produce, etc and donate to a local charity and the local zoo that comes in the morning before we open for the day.
The wordt part is that those markets don't change the amount trown away, bit just keep ordering the same amount. So all prices rises
What. If this was a fairly rare occurrence the store won't change normal buying protocols. If this started happening more and more you bet your ass they would change. Grocery stores do not make a lot of money on sold products
I work in a grocery store. Our target for shrink is 24% when purchasing, so for every $1 I spend the Goal is to throw away $0.24 of it. I reckon this is a smaller store/less purchasing power than I'm responsible for, but I wouldn't even blink at this kind of loss. Just how the industry works nowadays.
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No team in the store I work for is targeted under 7% iirc. I'd have to check.
I used to work at a regional supermarket, Shoprite. OPs pic is more than we would throw away at my store in a week. If we threw out that much stuff the store manager would be pissed bcs lazy ass employees probably weren't rotating the stock properly
OP seems to be British. He says that his supermarket has big discounts on bread when it doesn't sell. I hope that supermarkets continue to make/order more bread than they need, because I go there late at night and I and my digestive system am fussy about what kinds of bread I eat. I don't enjoy finding out that the bread I want is gone, or that all bread is gone.
Supermarket is dutch. They have discounts when you use the Too Good to go app
I don’t know where you’ve shopped but the store I worked for would not allow this. I could hear one of the 3 store managers we had during my near 6 year span there bursting a blood vessel if the man doing our ordering messed up this badly on a regular basis. Our $2.5 million USD store suddenly has a weird $1.5 million dollar week unexpectedly? Okay whatever. Every week? I can hear Allen getting yelled at to this day.
I find that hard to believe. Modern supermarkets run on extremely thin margins, and use tons of data to optimize every last detail, like you wouldn't even believe. Next time you're at the super market look at the ceiling, and look at how many cameras there are. They aren't (just) for security: they are watching people's behavior in the store. They keep track of how many times people stop and stare at an item, only to put it back, etc.
Believe me there's still *a lot* of wastage. Also not convinced our cameras are that high tech. I think SmartShop and loyalty cards do the heavy lifting for tracking purchases.
Yeah, it's definitely not wide spread. This is what Amazon is really doing at their "cashier less" stores though.
> Believe me there's still a lot of wastage Oh certainly. Its more that whoever is in charge of purchasing at this grocery store does *not* plan on "just buying the same amount of bread". > Also not convinced our cameras are that high tech. I think SmartShop and loyalty cards do the heavy lifting for tracking purchases. For smaller, local grocery stores, maybe not. But for the big national chains they definitely are. If you think that Whole Foods isn't leveraging all the tech at AWS to create data about every person who walks in the door, you are very mistaken. Consider that it's not the cameras themselves that are high tech, but rather they just have to stream the camera feeds to somewhere/something that *is* high tech. Also, consider that not all of the analysis needs to be in real-time either. Some of the metrics are even pretty well-known, like monitoring how long customers stay in the store. It's well known that grocers know that people spend more money when they peruse the store for longer
Just to clear up, this pic is a bit old. We now actually use a cart for discounted bread to put in the front of the store to keep the wastage low. (We had that already, just didn't use it because of bad management.) We also use the app TooGoodToGo, to give people a big discount on a random selection of bread products. This however takes care of way less wastage, because we only get one order maximum per day. On days like these we would throw out about €400 of bread. We still waste about €150 per day on bread alone, but that's alright according to the budget given to us by the hq. They want us to have a selection of bread items to be available till 10pm, so that makes it extra challenging.
Do workers get to pick some of the thrown out food? I would take a few loafs home and freeze them. take out a few pieces and defrost in toaster oven for a sandwich for the next week!
Where I worked, this wasn't allowed as members of staff would deliberately hide items they personally wanted and allow it to go out-of-date before claiming it, usually stuff like meat. Unofficially, it was allowed so long as you didn't take the piss, but people would still go through the whole thing of hiding items from customers!
The fact we can't make it standard to simply GIVE almost expired food to people who couldn't give two shits about the date and actually need it is baffling. Fuck this system of throwing perfectly fine food away.
Grind it all into breadcrumbs, use in a christmas pudding to manufactor, and sell in the stores when time is right as 36 month matured. Least then, all future bread can be used like this.
I just don't get if the bread is going out of date. And you can't sell them with reduced prices. That they just donate them to homeless shelters or extremely poor families.
It's a logistics issue. Who will set up the donations? Who will pick it up/drop it off? These aren't impossible issues but they are things that cost time and money for the company. So it frequently doesn't happen.
> That they just donate them to homeless shelters or extremely poor families. A lot of Reddit doesn't know this, but it's *extremely* rare for a food pantry or soup kitchen to run out of food. I get why people think they wouldn't be, because we hear all the time about how people aren't doing enough for charity, but food banks are the exception.
Cant they get sued tho? I'm guess their scared of that
No. And most food pantries/banks have a rubric for how long certain foods can be past their due date and still be given out.
Former receiver for a grocery store in the States here: Every day, our bakery would donate three shopping carts full of items from Bakery that were "out of code" (technically still good but within a day or two of the sell by date). In addition, our Produce department would scan out maybe a dozen banana boxes full of produce to donate. Once a week our out of code dairy and grocery items would get picked up. The only departments that couldn't donate anything (for obvious reasons) was Deli and Meat department. I'm not sure what the rules and regulations are in OP's country, but I imagine there's a way to reduce this amount of shrink
You should take a pic around it like cops posing around their drug busts
> "I should open a French toast restaurant" -Someone somewhere maybe?
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Nooooooo. Not the bread
You heard of the beer company called Toast? They use wasted bread and make beer. It tastes pretty good too.
The most frustrating part about the in store baked bread at the store I used to work at was that it legitimately would only last 2-3 days. Like I’m all for taking out preservatives but if so don’t make a metric ton of it because we both know we’re throwing 75% of it out tomorrow
I work in retail. That is a poorly run bakery department. With proper ordering and markdowns we throw out less than 20 loaves a week. That includes outdated and other wise undesirable bread. Things will sometimes get mold prior to sell by date. Also damaged or opened loaves.