Great 'supermarket staff tell us your reduction policies' hunt

spudfish

this might get quite a long post, i was a major bargain hunter when i worked at ASDA until late 2006.

I was at a liverpool one, but i think the system is similar everywhere.

Fresh meat, milk, processed foods (eg cheese, processed meat, non frozen ready meals).Markdowns are usually taken off the shelves the night before their expiry date (so 9th will come off on the night of the 8th), however, during seasonal times, eg xmas and easter, they have massive build-ups of stock, and will reduce stuff a few days in advance.
Markdown times.
generally, the first markdown takes place around or before 9.30-12 midday. this is about 1/3 off i think.
the second markdown, depending on the amount left in the markdown fridge, is 6pm. i think its about half the marked-down price. this is the most popular time for markings down, anything marked down before 6pm wont go down as much, as the system doesnt allow it.
third markdown, if neccessary. WARNING - usually just crap left at this time! 9pm. However! it all goes down to 10p, so if you have pets, come at this time for cheap meat for treats etc.

Bread (brought in - hovis etc)
usually, we would take off bread on the morning. the tag you see has two dates generally. and a figure in brackets, eg (7). so if you see on the 3rd that bread marked 10th (7) is reduced, this is because it has to be taken off 7 days before the marked date. so it should still be fresh for another 7 days!
Markdown times.
for some reason, it was 2pm at our shop (the excuse was it wouldnt go on the system before this time).
i think its a 1/3 off again. depending on how much there is, it will get knocked down again around 5-6pm, and at 8pm to 10p etc.
bread doesnt tend to sell so quickly when its reduced, as people think it will go off soon.
But you generally should get at least two days use. more than enough time in a house of three or more.

Frozen Goods
its rare for frozen goods to be reduced, because once defrosted, its illegal to sell it, and they have very long dates, so they tend to sell.

other stuff.
BOGOF offers are generally cancelled when reduced, one story i recall from my time in Sainbury's before they changed the policy was a guy who came to the till with loads of bogof offer stuff that was reduced, and the shop ended up owing HIM ten quid. so he got a bottle of whiskey free. Supermarkets are good at spotting loopholes alas.

new lines.
new lines usually sell pathetically. Go Cook, a whole range of semi-prepaired fresh foods (unfreezable) were introduced in asda ages ago. the food was fantastic, but stupidly expsenive, so none of it sold. until it was reduced from £9 to 20p. and it is gorgeous food! so dont be scared to try new things.

Meat Health.
Grey/green/brown meat that should not be that colour (to check, look at the stuff that isnt reduced) is not a good purchase. if unsure, dont bother!

When looking for stuff that will last a few days, dont forget that its every supermarket's policy (and law) to put stuff with expiry dates further away towards the back, and the stuff that will go off sooner to the first.

and finally (until i remember something else)
staff at my place used to HATE marking stuff down (apart from me, because i did my shopping as i marked down, ah the joys of the pricing gun!).
Why?
Because a million annoying, often scabby, usually insane people would bug us when we were trying to mark things down. we have other things to do. please let us do our job and go. we'll get to that product in your hand in a minute. stick it under my nose and you will only succeed in annoying me further. please dont complain when i dont knock it down to a penny at midday. and dont throw it under my nose again for a new price.

sorry about that!

happy bargain hunting. any other questions about the big A, just ask

KatKatDan

I worked for Tesco for three years and am glad to be rid of them but that's not what this post is about.... I also spent a short amount of time doing a temp. job at Sainsbury's.

At Tesco the night before people are supposed to go round and scan stock so that a list is produced to give an idea of items going out of date soon. The reduction of prices would start mid morning and during Monday - Thursday would be up to a maximum of 30%. On Friday - Sunday the maximum would be about 15%. At Sainsburys they have people called Code controllers whose sole aim in life is to go round reducing items so whatever time they start their shift is when they would start reductions. Tesco are more likely to have a specific area where reductions are put, but Sainsburys will mix them in with the usual items on the shelf so you will need to have a bit of a 'dig'.

The final reductions are normally about 9pm at Tesco as night staff do not do any reductions - they have far too much to do as it is and generally work harder than day staff. Yes I have done both so I can legitimately say that!

At Tesco anyone who has a log in for the hand held devices that are used can do reductions. At Sainsburys it is the Code controllers.

Yes you can do reductions if a customer asks, but only if you have a log in or if there are any spare machines. Tesco seemed to have an amazing knack at never having enough machines to do reductions with. Also any that were there were always being used by the stock controllers for their 'counts'... mmm handly that... no machines left to do reductions for customers..... I wonder what effect that has on the profits.....!?

It doesn't vary in a 24 hour store because night staff do not do any reductions. They won't have log ins and in my experience probably wouldn't even know where the machines were kept in order to do it.

Any useful tips...
At Christmas and Easter time (especially Christmas) there is so much stock delivered that it is usually not possible to move in the fridges in the warehouse. The night staff are supposed to work all items in the backup before then doing the new delivery. However this is impossible so have a dig around at the back of the fresh food fridges and see what you can find. You will probably find out of date items as well as the general practice is to stuff the shelves so full that it is not possible to rotate all the stock.

Alot of stock never gets onto the shelves as it goes out of date in the warehouse fridges so lobby your local stores to stop being so wasteful with a resource that can be quite expensive. A lot of Tesco managers are quite arrogant but also fairly incompetent so if you go in knowing your facts and challenge them in a polite way they may well be forced to back down. The most important thing is don't accept the rubbish that pours out of their mouths...

Happy shopping....

lexy_n

Hi! I work in the George Clothing department in Asda. We have reductions every Tuesday which in theory are activated on the computer system from midnight. Usually the colleagues on the first shift of the day will begin to put sale tickets on the items but they should go through the tills at the sale price even without them.:j

ptyks

crazy_guy wrote: »

MSE_Martin wrote: »

=[*]And any other useful tips …[/LIST]
Wait till an hour or so before the closure of the store, everything will be reduced to 10p - as another poster mentioned, be nice! People who were geniunely nice i wacked the price right down (within reason of course)..... if you demand a reduction...forget it. But don't be cheeky, no were not going to reduce something down to 10p at the start of the day, there are checks in place to make sure we are not abusing the system. Oh and remember its only a bargain if you will be using it, great for things like meat for freezing, but many people grabbed some things in quantity which they'd never use.

I confirmed from my shopping experience that this tip works with Sainsbury's reduced items and Somerfield. But not Coop and Tesco.

Another tip is if you buy the so-cheap reduced items with multibuy, don't forget to add other normal items to your shopping. Because the till can show you minus in pounds (like it owes you). Then the checkout staff has to call his/her supervisor about this. Hope you don't want to draw attention on your good bargain shopping.

newfoundglory

I used to work for M&S when I was in the middle of my Uni course... thats a few years ago now. At the time, we would (depending on store closing time), mark down all display until items by 50%. This was a manual process, with no automation involved. All cashiers would have to manually key the reduced value at the tills. This of course has all changed now.

At the time all display until items were removed from sale, only some of these would be marked down and put back out (if there were a lot of one thing for example). The best items, would of course be kept back by us... so the staff of the store could enjoy a 50-75% reduction on the best products.

I must have lived off M&S ready meals for a good 4 months or so!

The quality of M&S food, being so good, waste would always last 4 or 5 or so days past "expiry" anyway unlike other supermarkets!

The staff waste policy at the time was always dependent on the store manager, who had complete decision - but it was always very good, and in favour of the staff and not customers.

I remember getting a £20 bunch of M&S flowers for 50p. Section managers would sometimes randomly hand out or offer free bottles of wine or chocolates at the end of the day as thanks for good work, and mark them out in the system as "tastings". I think one month we'd used something like £150 worth of "tastings", which raised some eyebrows in the store office. Haha.

I'd conclude that with M&S you'd do better as staff rather than a customer.

bungee316

I was a department manager for 10 years first in safeway, then in somerfield, then in morrisons, then back to somerfield then Sainsbury's. Recently left to be a driving instructor.

Reduction policies are essentially the same across all the companies i have worked in. Fresh foods are cheked every day with the longer life stuff eg butter, cheese etc perhaps once or twice a week. Grocery items ie not fresh gets checked on a cycle dependant on its shelf-life.

What this means then is that some items will be reduced by a little a long time in advance of their expiration ie the ones with a longer time between checks and others will be left until much nearer their expiration date.

Looking first at the grocery items. Say for example their is one tin of beans going out of date in a month. That would probably be left on the shelf until a day or two before it goes out of code as the likelyhood is it will sell on its own. If there is a shelf full of beans that are a poor seller they may be reduced by something like 25% a month or so in advance of their shelf life ending. It is then very much the volume that remains that dictates further reductions. If after a fortnight there is still the same amount then they may drop the price down to 50%. If that does not shift them it will probably drop further a week in advance of the expiration date.

* TIP - As these grocery (non fresh) items tend to expire at the end of the month (eg tin will read exp jun 08) the big final reductions will likely be made on the last couple of days each month. How much this will be will depend on the volume of the product on shelf and how quickly the product can normally be shifted.

Moving on to fresh, most stores check the majority of fresh foods 100% every day. Some leave more time between the much longer life fresh foods checks and simply record, in a book everythign going out of code between teh date of the initail check and the date of teh next (simply so tehy only need to check those items and not the entire section). Due to the nature of these products ie butterm cheese, juice etc they tend to re reduced in price about 3 days to a week in advance of their expiration date. Like the grocery items how far in advance will be dictated by the volume on shelf and the normal ability to shift the product. Since these items generally cannot be eaten in one day the price will come down more, longer in advance of the expiration date than other fresh food items. However, depedning on the common sense of the worker doing the reductions they may do the initial 25% or whatever a week in advance then leave it till the last day before reducting any further. If with say an hour till close of trade on the final day of the products life there is still some stock remaining, this is when the 75% - 90% reductions occur.

With the shorter life fresh foods eg, ready meals, cooked meat etc. Stores normally check these lines every day and the day before their expiration date start reductions by 25% - 33%. On the day they are due to expire the price will come down gradually during the day until nearer the close of trade when they will be put down to silly prices.

* TIP - If you ask a worker to reduce something, you will only annoy them. They will not want to do it for you and may think up a lie just to annoy, so dont ask. Technically if you ask them to do it and they do, they could be fired, I HAVE seen it happen.

* TIP - A lot of stores will particularly Morrisons will have computers that only allow certain mambers of staff to reduce beyong a certain value (ie the higher up the pay grade the lower the price). General staff will only be allowed to reduce 25%, department managers up to 50% and Deputy Managers (the ones who wear their own clothes anything below 50%

* TIP - In any supermarket the best time to get the best prices is undoubtedly with the last couple of hours before store close, if its within 2 hours to close and things going out of date that day are only 50% they WILL go down more - but remember DONT ASK

* TIP - in store produced goods tend to go the lowest eg in-store bakery items could go down to pennies.

* TIP - Days before store closure eg bank holiday/christmas/new year is always the best time to get the most stuff cheap, simply because they must clear everything for that day, the day they are closed and will likely have reductions for the first day of opening.

* TIP - most stores will have a dedicated reduced to clear section. However shop around and you will see a lot of prodcuts will be reduced for the next day or the coming days and left in their normal position. These will obviously have better code life but will tend not to be reduced any further until nearer their expiration date.

* TIP - Stores rotate stock so ALWAYS take from the back of the shelf.

* TIP - Just because it is reduced in price does not mean it is lower quality. It will simply have been lying on a shelf *chilled* for longer.

* TIP - Like the DONT ASK tip, DONT RUMMAGE, find something short coded and point it out so it can be reduced. Staff like me will simply answer, yeah that gets done later, then wait till you leave and reduce it then. Might sound bad, but asking really really really annoys staff.

* TIP if you MUST ask someone, ask the guys not wearing a uniform that look important - a good one to look for is the one wearing the badge saying Store Manager. These guys deserve to be annoyed and willbend over backwards for you. Likelyhood is they will take one look at a product and answer "certainly sir/madam, i'll just get one of my colleagues to take care of it for you" then to keep you happy reduce it even if they are not meant to. Lower pay grades dont care and will try and get rid of you. Not their fault just the way it is.

WhiteHorse

I used to work for Tesco.

On one occasion, some bright spark at head office arranged for dozens of whole fresh salmon. Of course, there were too many to be sold.

We were however only allowed to make modest reductions on a small number. The rest were simply tossed in a skip. Watching so much food (which had been killed as well) being thrown away, some staff became extremely upset.

Dotdot

The nice lady in my local NETTO store has big bags of loose rolls and bakers cakes reduced T about 2pm in the afternoon!

Becki-Boo_2

I moonlight in ASDA part time (2nd job to beat debt and fully utilise my 10% discount card)
I am a big 'Woops' shopper so have gone out of my way to find out that the bread is marked down between 1700 and 1900 and the meat is marked down twice a day. Once around midday and once again between 0800 and 2100 depending on how busy the store is. The discounts of meat and ready made go cook range meals are huge at the 1800 - 2100 mark down. I have managed to pick up over £100 of joints, fish, mince meat etc for under £20.00. This depends on the sell by date. if not sold by midnight is it removed from shelves and binned. The price marked down is up to the person doing it, so be nice ;-)
If a customer asked you to reduce something because it’s on it’s sell-by date are you allowed to? Yep, why not - they have the power
Does it vary if it’s a 24-hour store? Yep, although they mostly stick to the times but are not restricted as much as non 24hr stores
And any other useful tips …Don't be afraid to get stuck in there, it can be a bit of a grab all you like at times

MidgeyCrystal

Get your cheap [cheep!] Rotisserie Chickens from Waitrose [they have good farming policies] and a £3.99 chicken will cost you as little as 99p. Reductions are throughout the day - every 3 hours or so.

:j