Hello all. I am hoping that an employee or former employee can help me out with this question. What happens to the shelf returned cheese products? What does Kroger do with their expired cheese and cheese that has packaging issues that their customers do not buy?
Expired items are simply tossed for the most part. Kroger is very stingy and won't even donate to charities and charities don't want to receive items because they give itemized deductions for tax purposes which makes it too complicated for these small non-profit organizations who could use said product.
Also, they're scared that any item that is one day past the 'best by' date will make someone sick, so they dump it using that excuse as well.
Over half of food used in the United States ends up in the trash. People need to learn better, including myself, what dates really mean and how to tell if food is good to eat or bad.
At our store, we scanned our outdates as daily donations and a local church picked them up for use to feed the hungry. Some days there were two buggies full!
At our store, we scanned our outdates as daily donations and a local church picked them up for use to feed the hungry. Some days there were two buggies full!
My store has all of these posters at our backroom talking about how we'll donate unwanted stuff to food banks and stuff. It was even in the computer training I did when I was hired. Yet I've never seen it in practice.
Entire crates of milk, boxes of yogurt/cheese, and even boxes of cereal go to waste because of a few damaged pieces.
Expired items are simply tossed for the most part. Kroger is very stingy and won't even donate to charities and charities don't want to receive items because they give itemized deductions for tax purposes which makes it too complicated for these small non-profit organizations who could use said product.
Also, they're scared that any item that is one day past the 'best by' date will make someone sick, so they dump it using that excuse as well.
Over half of food used in the United States ends up in the trash. People need to learn better, including myself, what dates really mean and how to tell if food is good to eat or bad.
Anyone who has ANY questions about the dates on packaging should read this recent article. I'm sure you'll find it fascinating...
And by the way, we DO donate product. A food bank truck will show up several days throughout the week to pick it up. In fact, knowing that the food we donate (that would otherwise be thrown away) is going to a good cause and actually helping hungry people is a motivation for me to be on top of looking for product that shouldn't be sold, but can still go to needy families. And it keeps me on top of doing those markdowns! Of course, if you're constantly donating a TON of product, either someone isn't rotating, someone isn't marking it down, someone isn't ordering right, or there are too many items either coming in of bad quality (say...produce that is out-of-season) or with very short dates, and you're unable to sell it all in time. We've actually had some products come in on the truck (like yogurt, for instance) that were brand new in the case, and the dates on the cups were expired from two weeks ago! (So always check your dates when you stock product!) In any case, I'd rather have anything that WE CAN donate be donated than to just throw it away, which most likely it would if we didn't have this program.
