[suvelx]

This is just bad produce management from the shops.

Longer-Expiry products at the back, newer at the front.

But I know at my local supermarkets nobody gives a shit, Frequently I'll buy the same product twice in a row, and the item on the second day expires before the one on the first.

All their staff just chucks the new shit at the front. The milk is even worse, as they just combine the half-empty early-date trollies and wheel out a fresh late-date one.

I'd say it all gets sold. But I have a /marvellous/ view of their bins. They throw so much stuff out.

[mrob]

But they are all sold for the same price, and it takes about 1 second to reach for the back of the shelf. There's nothing stopping this, and I refuse to pay the same price for an inferior product. There should be automatically applied increasing discounts as the product approaches the expiration date, so there's some reason beyond laziness to pick the less fresh ones.

[Dylan16807]

> I refuse to pay the same price for an inferior product.

Even if you're going to use it long before the date matters, so you get an identical experience anyway?

> There should be automatically applied increasing discounts as the product approaches the expiration date, so there's some reason beyond laziness to pick the less fresh ones.

That sounds like a bunch of labor that will make things more expensive. If they really want to trade effort for getting two-day-older stock cleared out, they can just let the shelf get closer to empty before restocking.

[Cthulhu_]

Sounds like poor management TBH; they can know exactly how much milk they need to stock to minimize waste.

[sct202]

But there's a balance between maximizing sales with more safety stock and minimizing waste with less, because of uneven demand fluctuations.

[michaelt]

Ah, but if the 2-pint jugs of standard semi-skimmed milk are out of stock, maybe you buy the 1-pint or the 4-pint or the organic.

The customer response depends on both the product category and the time of day, for obvious reasons. And I guarantee the likes of Wal-Mart will have run studies on this and chosen the optimal ordering level for milk in their stores.