Cadburys Shop at Outlet Village - out of date stock

13

Comments

  • jasons_2
    jasons_2 Posts: 190 Forumite
    I think the point may have been mislaid along the way-

    Use By is a legal requirement and by its definition- Use By means that the product integrity will be compromised if eaten after this date.
    Best Before means than the product will be at its best before this date, but can be consumed after but the product may not be as good.

    In theory there is nothing wrong with the product weeks after the BBE date, allthough as one poster mentioned- nuts can go rancid in chocolate and dont taste nice!

    Shops are well within their rights to sell product out of their BBE date...
  • Fenris
    Fenris Posts: 676 Forumite
    taxiphil wrote:
    Many foodstuffs like tinned vegetables and tinned fish are not safe (or pleasant) to eat four months after the Best Before date.

    I'm afraid I have to beg to differ with you here. I take your point, but I have to tell you that caned goods are perfectly useable four, eight, twelve months down the line so long as you make sure the tin's still intact and not rusted.

    My Mum had a cupboard full of army caned goods that my dad still had upon leaving the forces in 1981. We were still eating them 5 years on! Now, I realise that forces food differs slightly from the stuff you get in Tesco, but the packing process is much the same. Cans are sealed with a vacuum (not like a Hoover! lol!) and so long as the tin doesn't rust the food inside is good for ages!

    Best Before Dates are a guidline only and you have to use your own common sense as to wether or not you feel a foodstuff is fit to eat outside that date. When it comes to foods such as chocolate there's so much sugar in it I wonder if it'll ever go off! Chocolate that's gone white is also fine to eat as it's simply the milk solids seprating from the coco solids.

    As for Cadbury selling this chocolate that's a few months out of date I have to agree with other posters and say that, as they've obviously put notices up telling you it's out of date, I don't see the problem. If it was unsafe the local Food Agency would have been down on them like a ton of bricks. If you'd walked in there and bought some without them telling you you'd have a point, but as it is I really don't see the problem.
  • italiastar
    italiastar Posts: 1,448 Forumite
    gregg1 wrote:
    I really don't see the problem here - you don't have to buy it! A relative of mine works at cadbury and has access to their employee shop. A high percentage of the chocolate on sale in there is out of date sometimes by months and months and it tastes absolutely fine - I would hardly think a chocolate bar dated December 05 would taste stale. Its is only a best before date anyway, not a use by date.

    I would fully expect a cadbury factory shop to be selling some out of date chocolate - and would probably buy it!

    I think the point here is that it's OVERPRICED! - Everything has a price, but these so called outlet shops are selling the goods at a high price - I accept that you don't have to buy it, but many people who shop here wrongly think they're getting a bargain. Personally, the best cheap chocolate is Tesco's value - it's made in France and therefore real chocolate ! and more importantly - In date !
  • robby-01
    robby-01 Posts: 1,336 Forumite
    Taxiphil I owe you an apology.
    In your last post you asked me if I knew the difference between food and clothes and that night for my tea I had a really tough piece of steak .So tough in fact that i thought my good lady had given me the sole off one of my old running shoes and disguised it with a bit of peppercorn sauce.I managed to get through it but your comments had got me thinking.
    The next day I thought to myself "Perhaps taxi phil is right and I dont know the difference between clothes and food".So I went to cheshire oaks to find out.
    I parked up outside Next and went in .The choice was amazing, clothes of every style and colour you could imagine and in every size ever made,Except of course mine.Things started to get a bit rowdy in store as a group of eastern european looking gentlemen had begun fighting in the distressed denim section.I decided it was time to go.I made my choice and opted for a pair of beige chinos in size 56in waist 16in leg with pleats in the front which I picked up for the princley sum of 80 pence.
    Back in my car I got a plate from the boot and tucked in .I like to think I know my food but even when smothered in branston pickle these chinos were inedible,far to chewy and very dry although I do confess they did taste a bit like chicken.After ten minutes of chewing I gave up .Everything was ok chinos are definetely not food (whether they were ever clothes or not is a new debate and one for another time) importantly for me I thought I know the difference between food and clothes.
    I got out of the car and went to dispose of the chinos in a bin.As i went to deposit them a tramp stopped me and asked"have you done with them sir if so can I have em?"I wondered what he could want with a pair of chinos covered in branston especially as they had pleats in the front but i didnt need them anymore so I gave them to him."thanks ever so much sir" he said "I hate to see good food wasted"
    I was feeling pretty hungry by now and as I had given my lunch to a tramp I thought I had better get some more.Thinking back to the original thread I thought about the cadburys factory shop.I went in and with the money I saved on the knocked down chinos bought my self 50 cadburys creme eggs for £1.25 .A bargain.The only downside was that they had a best before date of 02/10/1468 .
    On the way back to the car I walked past the tramp who burped loudly and shouted "thankyou "
    I got in the car and opened my first egg.With your warning Taxiphil about out of date stock ringing in my ears I cautiously took a bite.I have eaten a few creme eggs in my time , this was the best yet, if anything time had improved it.By the time I reached egg number 30 things had started to change I felt ill ,I was sweating and thought I was going to be sick. By egg number 45 I was.I opened the car door and dropped the remaing 5 creme eggs on the car park.I felt like a chocolate version of cool hand luke.
    I was ill all the way home.
    So taxi phil you are right. Eating out of date chocolate can make you ill and for ever doughting that I apologise.
  • gregg1
    gregg1 Posts: 3,148
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    taxiphil wrote:
    Thanks for all the "if you don't like it, don't buy it" responses, which I feel missed the original point I was trying to make.

    If there were lumps of radioactive plutonium on sale to kids you could just as well say "if you don't like it, don't buy it" - but just because I'm not buying it doesn't mean I'm not entitled to be concerned at the behaviour of a retailer who may be acting irresponsibly.

    I take the word of people who've tried it that this chocolate may be perfectly fine for months or even years after its Best Before date has expired - but that wasn't really my point.

    My point was how are consumers supposed to know which foods are and which foods aren't acceptable to eat after their Best Before date? Many foodstuffs like tinned vegetables and tinned fish are not safe (or pleasant) to eat four months after the Best Before date.

    Consumers are not experts in food science. The Best Before date system is there to give consumers a reasonable idea of the approximate lifespan of a product. If a retailer is allowed to sell goods in May 06 that expired in Dec 05, then confidence in the whole Best Before date system is undermined and the whole system is thrown into disarray.

    If this chocolate tastes as good as new, then that's fine by me - but why not print Jun 06 instead of Dec 05 on the packet in the first place, and then it won't erode public confidence in Best Before dates.

    correct me if I am wrong but I thought in your OP you were asking "is it right to sell something four months past the best before date" - I was merely answering that question to the best of my knowledge which is in the case of chocolate it is fine.


    So say they put Jun 06 on the bar instead of Dec 05 - what happens at the end of June 06 when they still have chocolate bars left? They are still going to sell them off cheap surely? Or am I being thick (don't all rush at once!).
  • I think alot or the majority of the general public need to understand what a Best Before Date is, and not assume that once the BBE date is reached that this product would self destruct in ones hand!

    Chocolate and Sugar product can last up to 12 months after their BBE because of their sugar content. Taxiphil, you need to chose your words carefully as you mentioned that 'most' of the chocolate in the Cadbury Factory Shop was passed its BBE date, look again my friend, as the Cadbury Factory Shop will never have more than 10% of its overall stock passed its BBE date out on sale.

    Yes your right, before the Cadbury Factory Shops were set up (not by Cadbury I have to say, but by a family business) all 'waste' product went into landfill or fed to cows etc. Having these goods sold through an outlet cuts down what goes into land fill by a considerable amount.

    These days you will only ever find a ver very small handful of product that is passed its BBE date inside these stores, as the Cadbury Factory Shop has grown considerably over the years and is now able to offer even better offers which reduces the need to sell products passed their BBE date. The stores themselves never 'buy in' product that has passed its BBE date, it goes to the stores with at least 4 months date left on them. And nowadays you will find alot of product inside the Cadbury Factory Shop is not sold anywhere else. Now and again the large supermarkets do get in some better deals but thats only because they don't make any profit on them, what they do is increase about 20 items around their stores by about 2p, which will compensate for the losses made through selling cheap chocolate.

    At the end of the day The Cadbury Factory Shop is still a business like any other which extortionate overheads. Third world countries would never pull their face at product that has passed its BBE date by more than 5 months so why should the British? the trouble with this society is there are far too many greedy and snobbish people who don't understand basic common sense. No one is going to force you to purchase these products and the stores wouldn't sell these products if they thought for one minute that the public were at risk. Trading Standards set the rules, and The CAdbury Factory Shop sticks by them. These shops in all the years they have been going, have never ever had any become ill from eating their product.

    And it goes with out saying, that if these people who moan about product going passed its BBE date and they won't eat it, I bet my bottom dollar that they would eat the stuff if it was given away free!

    There's my rant over!

    QUOTE=taxiphil;discussion/194671]On a trip to Cheshire Oaks Designer Outlet yesterday, I popped into the Cadburys Factory Shop and noticed that the majority of stock on sale was past its Best Before date.

    Most things on sale had a Best Before date of February 2006, but I was particularly concerned that the Dairy Milk with Mint Chips bars had a Best Before date of December 2005!

    Now, I know it's not illegal to sell food that's past its Best Before date, and to be fair there were disclaimers on the shelf warning customers of this, but does anyone agree with me that selling a chocolate bar over four months past its Best Before date is really pushing it too far?

    To add insult to injury they weren't incredibly cheap at 20p each (5 for £1). I'd expect a more generous discount if they expect me to eat a stale-tasting chocolate bar.

    I've seen foods on sale in places like Home Bargains which are maybe a few weeks past their Best Before date, or sometimes up to two months at the very most, but I've never seen anything on this scale before.

    It now seems obvious that Cadburys have only set up these Factory Shops so they can wring some money out of stock which is so old that no other retailer will touch it with a bargepole. I suppose they used to throw this stock in a landfill site before someone had the brainwave of flogging it direct to the public under the pretence that it's a bargain!

    I think this sort of practice goes against the spirit of these so-called "Factory Shops", as it's been a very long time since any of that chocolate saw the inside of a factory.[/QUOTE]
  • italiastar wrote: »
    I think the point here is that it's OVERPRICED! - Everything has a price, but these so called outlet shops are selling the goods at a high price - I accept that you don't have to buy it, but many people who shop here wrongly think they're getting a bargain. Personally, the best cheap chocolate is Tesco's value - it's made in France and therefore real chocolate ! and more importantly - In date !

    It is not OVERPRICED as you put it! Look harder and you will see that when a product in these stores has passed its BBE date the store reduces the retail price even further than what it was before.

    As for Tesco Value chocolate, you obviously don't share the passion for chocolate like many Brits. Cadbury Chocolate is a British National Institution and we should ALL be supporting our home grown businesses, especially as now the UK economy is in such a mess.

    By the way, REAL chocolate doesn't come from France! REAL chocolate comes from the Cocoa Beans of Ghana, South America, India etc!
  • taxiphil wrote: »
    It just seems very contradictory to me. If it doesn't deteriorate in taste or in terms of food safety, why not extend the Best Before date by six months when it is printed on to the pack? They can't have it both ways.

    I just feel that four months past the BB is very old and if this is deemed acceptable practice, where do we draw the line? Five months? Six months? Seven? Doesn't it make a mockery of having Best Before dates in the first place?


    your right, it does make a mockery of having BBE dates, this is where this stupid government are currently shaking up the whole dating system. At present when a date is printed on a product, Chocolate in this case, the Factory, BY LAW, must print a date that is 12 months from the day it is packaged - this is a reason only some nitwit in the FSA or other governing body would be able to give an answer to. At the end of the day, its up to us all to use our common sense, no point complaining about it, life is too short, make the most of what you have, and if it means eating chocolate that has passed its Best Before End date by more than 5 months then go for it! It ain't gonna kill anyone! Use your own judgement.
  • HurdyGurdy
    HurdyGurdy Posts: 987
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    Is it just my imagination, or is there a spate of necroposting going on in these forums at the moment? This thread is three and a half years old!!
  • Jakg
    Jakg Posts: 2,265
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    moonrakerz wrote: »
    If Volvic bottled water has been filtered through volcanic rock for millions of years, why does it need to be dated ???
    They put this on because while the water is fine, they can't guarantee the plastic wont have an effect. This way if anything happens after it's been stored for 30 years they can not be held responsible.

    Chocolate doesn't go bad, bits just go white (which looks bad but it's not), which is probably the reason for the BB date.
    Nothing I say represents any past, present or future employer.
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