Great 'supermarket staff tell us your reduction policies' hunt

pipk62

paulwf wrote: »

I work for a supermarket but they don't dye their food. Therefore I have some ideas on why some *may* do it but it is just conjecture, not fact.

Firstly you need to know what food is in the bin. It isn't just food that is nearly out of date, there may be damaged, contaminated, mouldy or open items, and more seriously items that are "product restricted" i.e. items that are not allowed on sale due to quality issues which may be very minor or very serious. Basically not all the food is fit to eat, and even what is just regular date expired food may have been out of the fridge for several hours, which can be an issue in the summer (which is why freegans tend to be mainly vegan and just take the bread and veg which won't go off in the heat).

Secondly you need to know what may happen to food that is taken from bins. It may be sold on...and yes I have heard of a rogue charity collector doing this, it isn't just conjecture. When sold on and still in supermarket packaging that creates issues for the supermarket, both food safety and profit protection.

I'm not saying I agree with the amount of food shops waste, just that when you deal with the scale of supermarkets you need to think through the whole process very carefully. When I go to my local wholefood co-operative they just give out of date food to the regulars as a little reward, but it doesn't work like that with major retailers.

If a supermarket opens 24 hours a day and only removes food at 10pm what happens to the food then when a charity collector would only have 2 hours to collect and distribute it? Is there a local charity near every supermarket with a refridgerated van and kitchen ready to collect the food and cook it every day? Can the charity afford to bin the excess food...shop waste is very random, perhaps 100 of one item so you can't always use it in one day.

It really requires working out at council and government level, and now waste is costing so much to dispose of maybe retailers will get together, but as our council can't even manage something as simple as collecting glass bottles for recycling I somehow doubt it will happen any time soon.

I know a freegan, and he eats very well, but he has a good advantage, well 2 actually.
He trained both as a chef and a butcher, therefore he knows how to check foods for freshness, or disease which isn't reliant on poking it, and he also only eats meat that he can guarantee safe, very rare from a skip, instead most of his meat is roadkill.

Now, don't go thinking squashed rabbit (although I have had rabbit from him) or badger, being in the country think of venison and pheasant - there's an ancient law which allows a person other than the person that killed the 'game' to collect it legally, that means if YOU hit a deer, you cant have it, but the driver behind can - He knows his stuff, and says its easy to see infected meat when you start cutting.

Going back to shops bleaching and dyeing, In USA there's a big organisation called "Feeding America" which collects foods, sometimes from stores and processes them for redistribution to the poor http://feedingamerica.org/

EDIT: There is an organisation doing the same in UK too... http://www.fareshare.org.uk/

pipk62

Beenie wrote: »

where are you shopping?? the reductions in my local stores are usually cheap sausage rolls, unappetising looking cuts of greying meat, damaged cream cakes, suspect fish and the very occasional carton of organic milk. if i did buy any of this stuff, i'd save at most £2 on my total bill and the waste of valuable time makes it not worth the bother.

you can keep your bills down anyway by buying fresh goods and actually making something (e.g. proper pizza is laughably cheap, as is home-made hummous, custard, pastry, oven chips, cakes, bread etc. i'd rather spend time doing that than hanging around the reduction cabinet.

I too have been to shops that were selling very unappetising stuff, One in particular comes to mind; expensive items reduced fractionally, meat that was discoloured, cloudy eyed fish, smashed cakes and stale bread.
I complained to one of the managers, who said "there is nothing I can do, we'll throw it away if nobody buys it"

I dealt with this quite effectively (never be afraid of contacting head office!) and the attitude changed, now they reduce the cost more, and keep a close eye on whether the food appears inedible.

As for making your own food, couldn't agree more, but I often use reduced 'meals' in other homemade meals, For instance Asda often reduce their curried meats in sauce, and if I have a half-finished home made vegetable soup, I'll throw in the meat and sauce, and voila! I now have a tasty meaty curry soup.

amus

pipk62 wrote: »

I too have been to shops that were selling very unappetising stuff, One in particular comes to mind; expensive items reduced fractionally, meat that was discoloured, cloudy eyed fish, smashed cakes and stale bread.
I complained to one of the managers, who said "there is nothing I can do, we'll throw it away if nobody buys it"

I dealt with this quite effectively (never be afraid of contacting head office!) and the attitude changed, now they reduce the cost more, and keep a close eye on whether the food appears inedible.

As for making your own food, couldn't agree more, but I often use reduced 'meals' in other homemade meals, For instance Asda often reduce their curried meats in sauce, and if I have a half-finished home made vegetable soup, I'll throw in the meat and sauce, and voila! I now have a tasty meaty curry soup.

Ive lost count of the number of times Ive seen meat with that green tinge in the reduction section of supermarkets, seriously, who would ever buy that unless for an animal!!!

Barneysmom

amus wrote: »

Ive lost count of the number of times Ive seen meat with that green tinge in the reduction section of supermarkets, seriously, who would ever buy that unless for an animal!!!

Not me, I wouldn't give my dogs bad meat

Desperate_Housewife_2-2

does anyone know where the aldi make up comes from I heard it was made by loreal or some such company?

zenseeker

Desperate_Housewife wrote: »

does anyone know where the aldi make up comes from I heard it was made by loreal or some such company?

What the hell does that have to do with this thread?

jenniewb

Barneysmom wrote: »

Not me, I wouldn't give my dogs bad meat

judging on vets bills, I doubt anyone would!

I see people buying it though, normally those who greedily grab everything from the shelf without even looking at it. Lessons being learnt I hope!

andy12345

I believe, from observation at my local tesco supermarket that "good" reductions are becoming a thing of the past.

At 730/8pm approx, there is always a message over tannoy "all multi-training staff please come to the checkouts"
For this reason, there seem to be very little 8pm reductions and the values are rarely hitting 50%, let alone 75%.

This has been in place for about 6 months. Also, staff just for reduction work are few and far between after 8pm approx.
The reductions are still of a reasonable quality, but the %'s are generally rubbish.
This policy has certainly reduced the customer stampede/riot/world war, so it's good for tesco staff, who don't have to suffer footprint covered clothing/agrophobia issues.

About a month ago I was totally gutted, because there were about 4 whole shelves of nice stuff at 25% off, but no less. I waited till about 10pm, lo and behold still nothing..... That was wasted, literally and disgracefully. I don't care if I get none of it, but to throw it is criminal.

pipk62

Last week my local Asda's were reducing foods as normal, there were a lot of pizzas and expensive meals which were reduced to 50%.
The pizzas weren't too bad cost wise, but the meals were still quite high.
I picked them up anyway, carried on with my shopping and realised I was meant to get banana's (for banana cake), so went back to the fruit aisle, which is where the eat today shelf is.

And I noticed a shop assistant reducing, so asked her if she would reduce my 'expensive' meals.
She said she couldn't as I had already had them in my basket.
To which I said politely, Ok, fine, and put them all (including the pizzas) back on the shelf, and picked up the same ones that she had reduced.
She said that I couldn't do that, so I pointed out that I haven't entered into any contract to buy anything in this basket until I put it onto the conveyor, which is then the point of contract (Something I learnt at a Business Link course).

Thing is there was only one other person there, no stampede, so why did she think she had suddenly become Asda's own Police force? Why didn't she just reduce the 2 items I asked her about?
It makes no difference does it?

charlie-chan

I work on a deli counter for Mr T and we either reduce stuff throughout the day or in the evening.

The girl on stock control takes all the stock out in the back to reduce as the reduction regulars just hover and act quite rude towards her now.