Tesco not allowing 1p items to be sold

anewman

username wrote: »

I'm surprised M&S don't reduce anything before close as other supermarkets do.

M&S want to present themselves as a premium outlet for food and drink. Reducing things near date with label would probably reek of cheap supermarkets not good for the rich people. But it is surprising they do do BOGOF and half price occasionally but won't reduce near date produce I admit. Maybe they are also concerned about bringing the wrong sort of clientelle into the store (i.e. those poor people wanting to by up the cheap posh stuff just before close.)

ti1980

Just thought I would set the record straight on a couple of M&S points for anyone that cares.

I am not someones first cousin twice removed who once heard a rumour and neither did I hear this from my neighbours best friends wife.
I am a shop assistant that works at M&S and have done for over 6 years now.

M&S used to reduce loads of stuff before the close of day but what happened was that people would complain that items had not been reduced enough, the person/people that were doing the reducing on the shopfloor would get hounded by people wanting those items and no one wanted to do the job because of the hassle they got.
It takes a lot of time to reduce items, seemingly a lot more time than the money they recouped back from it.

Some stores have various local charities that come and take some of the products that are near the end of their shelf life. One problem with this is that often the charities just didn't turn up. I have witnessed this first hand several times as I used to do the late night and would be one of a few people waiting for a charity to turn up and collect food, past the time that I should have finished work, and not heard anything from them, not even a courtesy call to say they can't make it that night.

Some things that are 'best before' as opposed to 'use by' would be sorted and staff would get to buy this at low prices.

Things that are 'use by' and are not going to charity and are not sold to staff would get blue dye on them so that people don't pick them out of the skip and potentially make themselves ill.

Hope this helps a bit.