What do grocery stores do with prepared food at the end of the night? I was at Publix, and they had a lot of sushi still in the display, and I wondered if they just throw it out. It looked pretty old to be honest, and I doubt it's sellable. Not sure how popular or safe it is to donate either. That said, it made me sad to think about it all being thrown away. Does anyone know what is typical for what they do with it? It's kind of a weird item to donate, unlike something like bagels or bread.
Sushi at the End of the Day at Grocery Stores
byu/brilliantminds_4RLZ inFrugal
Posted by brilliantminds_4RLZ
9 Comments
I’ve often wondered this too!
Trash or employees grab it.
It will get dumped in the trash. My son used to work in a grocery store and was horrified to discover how much food was thrown away every day. Even stuff that was still fine to consume. One of the store managers got into big trouble for occasionally allowing past date food that was still decent to be put in the break room for employees if they wanted it
I work for Publix. We donate a lot of food to food banks. Tons from bakery as a bakery never is profitable. It just is there to bring customers in. Produce does a fair amount. The meat department freezes donations. As for sushi, I honestly don’t know but I doubt it’s donate. Also sushi is a contracted company at any chain.
The store I work for…all food on the hotbar and sushi go half off an hour before closing so there’s not much left. Might be worth asking if your store has a policy like that.
It depends. Food rescue programs are becoming more popular, but haven’t caught on everywhere yet.
My husband volunteers for salvation army in our community driving twice a week to pick up food from our local grocery stores and several coffee shops too. Twice a day food gets picked up and taken to the distribution facility where it’s sorted into past it’s sell by date but still (probably) fine for human consumption (there’s always something that looks fine in the packaging but needs to be discarded) and stuff that is definitely spoiled , which is then connected with local farmers to become animal feed.
I can’t tell you what happens to the food at the end of the day where you live, but I can tell you that where I am, sushi would also be picked up by the food rescue truck. Whether or not it gets sent to animal feed or human distribution would depend on how soon the next distribution day is (2 days a week). But in any event, it wouldn’t just be thrown out.
I always wonder this about the meat counters. Ours is STACKED. It’s so expensive and I imagine so much gets trashed. I don’t get how they can be making money
Ask them!
The Target near my old apartment had a deli and they would put clearance stickers on their “same day” food at the deli closing time, which was usually 1 hour before the store closed. Whole sandwiches/salads were $1 and halves were 50 cents! I would hit the deli at like 8:01pm and stock up.