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Trader Joe's Ex-President To Turn Expired Food Into Cheap Meals

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Re: Trader Joe's Ex-President To Turn Expired Food Into Cheap Meals

#51

Post by ck2 »

digitalboss wrote: post #50
ck2 wrote: post #30

How is this a "good thing" ? Take something they rightfully have to give away and instead make profit from it. I already see grocers giving out tons of food to the local food bank, if they can convince governments to let them profit from it, that is one more path against poverty taken away by corporate entities. Another way to eliminate waste would be to price the product lower? If a regional grocery throws away tons…

Btw - you mention grocers giving tons of food, is actually not true. It's a very slow process, taking a way too long to become a popular trend. Hopefully with this latest story and initiative that other large/med/small grocers jump on board. The poor/needy in the US are eating fast food more and more, as they can't afford groceries, with high costs for meat, vegetables and milk all rising. I'm excited to see how this…

Fast food is not a matter of being cheaper than groceries, it is a matter of no grocery stores in walking distance of the poor, but the 7/11 or McDonalds is.

Fast food is far more expensive than groceries. I haven't eaten at a fast food place (or any other restaurant for that matter) in a couple of decades.

Re: Trader Joe's Ex-President To Turn Expired Food Into Cheap Meals

#52

Post by keithpeter »

smsm42 wrote: post #8

I've always wondered where the products go when they are past their expiry date. They don't suddenly go bad at the second expiry date passes... Are they just thrown out? Sold to discount stores? Sent to local homeless shelter? It it legal to give expired products to anyone? Does it expose one to liability?

'Sell by' dates are earlier than when fresh produce can be expected to become bad. Cooks can examine the fresh produce and decide if they should cook it or not. Tinned or dry goods might be harder to judge. I imagine the liability drops down to the person preparing food in a shelter or soup kitchen.

UK: many shops sell off food at half or third price when it hits sell-by. They put it in bins/special fridge areas and they have yellow 'BUY NOW' stickers on, and some products have a warning like 'use today'.

I know of cafes that give away their expired sandwiches on the day and hour of expiry. So when given away, it was fine.

Re: Trader Joe's Ex-President To Turn Expired Food Into Cheap Meals

#53

Post by maxerickson »

jmspring wrote: post #40
backprojection wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree with you - shopping at TJs is a fairly low-BS experience. But I feel that putting less fresh stuff in front is just common sense - its just a a FIFO buffer.

FIFO is common at many stores. I mostly shop at a handful of local stores, one in business for around 100 years, the other around 40 now. The younger of the two is more "hippy" (for lack of a better term) and has had many expired products on the shelf I've had to point out/return (when I wasn't paying attention). The older, not so much. I don't shop at the local Safeway -- a wholly different issue. A lot of stores go…

What an absurd way for the store to put it. "Yeah, we don't look after the sell by dates, but shop here anyway."

(It's perfectly fine for the store to rely on the vendor to stock their products, it's silly for the store to try to communicate to a customer that they aren't still responsible...)

Re: Trader Joe's Ex-President To Turn Expired Food Into Cheap Meals

#54

Post by arbutus »

_lex wrote: post #15

I HATE this. I previously shopped at Trader Joe's with confidence - I knew I wasn't being gouged on price, so I generally ignored prices. I knew the food was good, so I could turn my brain off and just buy whatever I fancied. However, maybe 7 months ago, I started to notice that I was buying expired or nearly expired things from Trader Joes - bread that would go bad the next day (got mouldy), cheese with mold, etc. I…

Not sure how a LIFO queue would possibly work whatsoever for perishable goods.

Re: Trader Joe's Ex-President To Turn Expired Food Into Cheap Meals

#55

Post by ap22213 »

_lex wrote: post #15

I HATE this. I previously shopped at Trader Joe's with confidence - I knew I wasn't being gouged on price, so I generally ignored prices. I knew the food was good, so I could turn my brain off and just buy whatever I fancied. However, maybe 7 months ago, I started to notice that I was buying expired or nearly expired things from Trader Joes - bread that would go bad the next day (got mouldy), cheese with mold, etc. I…

Maybe I'm crazy, but I always thought that Trader Joes just bought their food from low cost countries and cheap manufacturers and then sold it for much higher prices, but with cool labels and within a fun atmosphere. I would never trust Trader Joes food, personally.

Re: Trader Joe's Ex-President To Turn Expired Food Into Cheap Meals

#56

Post by makomk »

stephengillie wrote: post #24
jjoe wrote: post #9

With the exception of infant formula, the laws that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) administers do not preclude the sale of food that is past the expiration date indicated on the label. FDA does not require food firms to place "expired by", "use by" or "best before" dates on food products. This information is entirely at the discretion of the manufacturer. A principle of U.S. food law is that foods in U.S. com…

This is news to me. Having worked for Safeway for many years, we held to those dates religiously.

Here in the UK it's illegal to sell food after the "use by" date and every so often someone gets in trouble for it. ("Best before" dates, on the other hand, are advisory.)

Re: Trader Joe's Ex-President To Turn Expired Food Into Cheap Meals

#57

Post by makomk »

venomsnake wrote: post #47
jlgreco wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the benefits of ultra-pasteurization go out the window once you open the package, thereby contaminating the milk?

There was this Mythbusters episode (pyramids preserving foods) where they sliced an apple in half. The one half rotted fairly quickly at room temperature the other was fine. Brief investigation showed that there was difference in the initial contamination of the two halves and the results observed. Modern kitchen and fridge are fairly clean places unless you are a movie bachelor. So opening a milk bottle and pouring…

Actually, they didn't appear to investigate the cause at all - they just assumed one cut surface must have been contaminated more than the other and changed the experiment to remove the cut surface altogether. Since the mold on the non-pyramid apple only survived on the cut surface, not cutting the apples made sure no mold grew on any of them, and all bar one of the apples (the one from the cube) was perfectly preserved at the end of the experiment.

Was kind of annoying actually; the Mythbusters got so pissed off that their experiment appeared to show pyramids working that they set up their next test in such a way it'd give the same result regardless of whether pyramids or contamination had caused one apple to rot faster before, then held it up as proof pyramids were bunk. While it's really unlikely pyramids can magically preserve food, they should still have been honest and fair in their testing.

Re: Trader Joe's Ex-President To Turn Expired Food Into Cheap Meals

#58

Post by makomk »

ck2 wrote: post #51
digitalboss wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Btw - you mention grocers giving tons of food, is actually not true. It's a very slow process, taking a way too long to become a popular trend. Hopefully with this latest story and initiative that other large/med/small grocers jump on board. The poor/needy in the US are eating fast food more and more, as they can't afford groceries, with high costs for meat, vegetables and milk all rising. I'm excited to see how this…

Fast food is not a matter of being cheaper than groceries, it is a matter of no grocery stores in walking distance of the poor, but the 7/11 or McDonalds is. Fast food is far more expensive than groceries. I haven't eaten at a fast food place (or any other restaurant for that matter) in a couple of decades.

Also, not everyone has properly-equipped kitchens or the time to cook, and in fact there are some assholes who think anyone who does have basic kitchen equipment shouldn't be allowed to call themselves poor. (Remember that infamous Fox News slide implying most "poor" people weren't because they had fridges? Which is, really, fairly fundamental to being able to cook for yourself.)

Re: Trader Joe's Ex-President To Turn Expired Food Into Cheap Meals

#59

Post by mistermann »

_lex wrote: post #15

I HATE this. I previously shopped at Trader Joe's with confidence - I knew I wasn't being gouged on price, so I generally ignored prices. I knew the food was good, so I could turn my brain off and just buy whatever I fancied. However, maybe 7 months ago, I started to notice that I was buying expired or nearly expired things from Trader Joes - bread that would go bad the next day (got mouldy), cheese with mold, etc. I…

> I eventually realized that for perishable goods, they put the new stuff in the back of the shelves

I can't imagine this is a new practice at Trader Joe's, it's an industry standard, and common sense quite frankly.

I'm very interested in what you consider proper practice should be with perishable foods (or what you think they used to do)? It almost sounds like you think they used to throw all perishables away that didn't sell on the first day and restock everything fresh nightly.

Re: Trader Joe's Ex-President To Turn Expired Food Into Cheap Meals

#60

Post by pbreit »

billybob255 wrote: post #3

Not to downplay the good work he's doing, but both of those things (selling expired food and giving it away) are both pretty common. There are discount stores who specialize in expired food.

The novel part is that a business person with prior success on a large scale is doing it. Hardly anything is actually novel.
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