Sainsburys throwing it all away.

money21

i have seen tesco taking the wrapper of with todays date and wrapping them up again with the date for the following day. Very cheeky i think

Idiophreak

paadzer wrote: »

How daft, why don't they just reduce the bread in price by 90% to save waste and make some money?

I think it's because, counter-intuitive as it might seem, they'd actually make less money doing that.

Playing devil's advocate - people need to eat. If you discount the stuff today, they'll buy it at half price, or less, or whatever. If you don't discount the stuff and just throw it out - they'll buy at full price tomorrow.

Reductions enable people to buy stuff cheap - supermarkets don't want that, they want people to pay full price.

I also think the staffing costs involved in the reduction process are higher than you might think. When I used to work meat+fish at Sainsbury's, about half a closing shift was taken up trying to sell through reductions.

I can remember one time we had some big packs of cod on BOGOF (something like £8 each iirc) - and I'd marked them down to 50p each. I spent about an hour wandering around the store trying to get people to buy the things - and explaining to them all that the BOGOF would still apply - ie they'd end up knocking £7 off the cost of their shopping if they took a couple....and people still wouldn't buy the things. At the end of the hour I remember standing and thinking "not worth it".

mymerrywidow

my big sainsburys gives the stuff to the local zoo.

Middy

Idiophreak wrote: »

I think it's because, counter-intuitive as it might seem, they'd actually make less money doing that.

Playing devil's advocate - people need to eat. If you discount the stuff today, they'll buy it at half price, or less, or whatever. If you don't discount the stuff and just throw it out - they'll buy at full price tomorrow.

Reductions enable people to buy stuff cheap - supermarkets don't want that, they want people to pay full price.

I also think the staffing costs involved in the reduction process are higher than you might think. When I used to work meat+fish at Sainsbury's, about half a closing shift was taken up trying to sell through reductions.

I can remember one time we had some big packs of cod on BOGOF (something like £8 each iirc) - and I'd marked them down to 50p each. I spent about an hour wandering around the store trying to get people to buy the things - and explaining to them all that the BOGOF would still apply - ie they'd end up knocking £7 off the cost of their shopping if they took a couple....and people still wouldn't buy the things. At the end of the hour I remember standing and thinking "not worth it".

The late, late reductions are based on:
. Whoever is the evening manager
. How much stuff there is

If there are loads of bakery stuff - the manager puts all of the reduced on a bakery rack on wheels and takes to the front of the store as the bakery is right in the opposite corner - so makes customers that just pop in for milk, cigs to see what we are selling cheap.

DCFC79

SeriouslyStressed wrote: »

Hi, not sure if this is the correct thread, but is anyone else here sick of seeing shop staff throw produce out?

Last night for example, 9.15pm ( store closes at 10pm ) they where bin bagging the entire fresh baked bread stands! 45 mins of shopper time remaining, people still in the store buying goods, and the staff are bagging what could have been marked down and sold?

Also, last night spotted at 9.18pm, THIRTY FIVE packets of Bernard Mathews turkey slices on the yellow label chiller shelves marked from £2 a pack down to £1.34 a pack.... at 9.18pm! eh? Clearly nobody was buying them at that price ( all shelf packs still full ) and from experience I now know they don't mark down again beyond 9.00pm, they just start scanning it off and bin bagging the reduced stuff at 9.30pm ( with a half hour of retail time in which they COULD sell it remaining )

So getting my goat this week, are .. binning food that could have been marked down and sold, but instead they just bin it at full price; bin bagging the reduced items when there's plenty of store open time remaining, and finally not reducing the reduced items to the extent it would be more likely to sell off in the first place! grrr.

I know some product lines are slow and the manager does this to make sure he gets less stock in future from central warehouse, but the turkey slices are just this example; throughout the past two weeks I've seen all manner of stock binned early, and likely down to there not being a decent enough incentive for shoppers to purchase it.

Our local Sainsbury store is a newly built and opened SuperStore in Cumbria.

It goes to some kind of incinerator that burns any food waste and its then converted to energy to power warehouses etc so it is put to use.

geordie_joe

FatVonD wrote: »

I see your point but, while I was getting some real bargains at my local Sainsbury I was also putting other full-priced items into my basket at the same time.

Mr S assumes you will put more full priced items in your basket if there are no bargains.

FatVonD wrote: »

Now the reductions have all but disappeared I shop elsewhere.

But most shoppers won't and they won't mind losing a bargain hunter.

FatVonD wrote: »

Dedicated bargain hunters won't ever be doing their whole shop at Sainsburys full price but the chance of a bargain got me through the doors which is surely what they want?

Not when you are only going in for the bargains. They want people to go in and buy their whole weeks/months shopping in there regardless. Those people who known certain items might be cheaper in another store, but think it's not worth going from store to store to get them.

That's why their advertising concentrates on telling people their "whole basket" will work out cheaper in their store.

They don't make much profit from people who go from store to store cherry picking the best bargains.

Idiophreak

FatVonD wrote: »

I see your point but, while I was getting some real bargains at my local Sainsbury I was also putting other full-priced items into my basket at the same time

Increasingly, I think this isn't necessarily the case.

Sadly, between the recession and sites like this, there's now a whole bunch of "professionals" that go in every night to follow the girl with the reduction gun and *just* pick up the bargains...

blackandwhitebunny

Our local Sainsburys reduces most items a lot to get rid of them, the fruit and veg always go down to 20p or 25p and most of the meat goes to half price at around 5pm and then goes down at least twice more so its very seldom that there's any left after about 8pm. the chilled and bread also keep going down as it gets later. I've never seen them throw anything away but I'm seldom there after 8pm, I have often seen completely cleared reduction areas. I guess it depends on the manager and the actual store.

Middy

Though I am fed up of seeing dips in the reduction fridge section.

Helix

SeriouslyStressed wrote: »

They could at least, at a bare minimum.. only bag up AFTER the store has closed it's doors for the evening. I've seen them bagging up plenty of times now to know it doesn't take them very long at all, so to maximise any sales, and maximise the produce on offer to the public, it really ought to be left on the shelves until after the store closes. Putting the reduced items chiller unit closer to the checkouts instead of at the back of the store would also make alot of sense! ( to me at least )

You have no idea what needs to be done after the store closes. I used to work in Sainsburys at there is a lot of paper work that has to be done, to go with the items being disposed of so that the items are written off correctly. Our store generally only had one person that could do disposals at store closing time.