If you shop at Waitrose...

[brownbreadicecream]

... do you find loads of the food has really short 'use by' dates? I've recently moved somewhere where it's one of my nearest supermarkets and today I saw TONS of stuff that the 'use by' date was tomorrow. Stuff like naice ham, quiches, not just salad etc. For some items it's impossible to buy with use-by dates longer than one day.

I know the dates are just a guide and I don't throw food out purely if it's past the date (in fact I'm starting to turn into my mum and keeping it for ages...) but that's not really the point. In fact the last branch I shopped at I'd repeatedly picked up out-of-date food that was just sitting on the shelf with no yellow sticker etc. (One cupcake mix kit was months out!)

It's a bit of a pain as I like to shop for as many days' meals as possible, but it's not the end of the world. Just wondered if it was the same throughout the UK?

Waitrose & M&S are both a pain for this. I find it particularly annoying at xmas when the thing you are obviously buying to go with xmas dinner goes off on 24th December!

I think it's a Monday thing. Markses can be the same. I usually find much better dates if I shop midweek.

Can't say I've noticed it - i have a good old rummage at the back for the ones with the longest sell by dates on them tho.

I don't normally shop on a Monday though and seem to have this problem quite a lot! (Sundays are even worse...)

There was a stack of nice ham on offer in the 'offer' aisle, all use-by tomorrow. In the ham section was the rest of it with a longer date on.

There was a stack of nice ham on offer in the 'offer' aisle, all use-by tomorrow. In the ham section was the rest of it with a longer date on.

That's why it was on offer then, surely? Because it was so close to its sell by.

nope, just a normal 'half price' offer. the longer use-by date ones were the offer price too.

You have to be a bit savvy. I check Waitrose dates really carefully, and always pick from the back of the shelf

Just off there now, funnily enough. I shall be vigilant!

I shop on line with Waitrose. If the use by date is up the next day you get the item free.

No more so that anywhere else and I shop there quite regularly.

Our co-op is a bugger for it.

Sometimes the nicer stuff is nicer because it's not stuffed with preservatives or using preserving techniques - so naturally has a shorter shelf life.

Other stuff can be tossed in the freezer, stopping the clock until you thaw it out again. That's what we did for a lot of the Christmas food.

And as per nearby thready, use-by dates are (from the consumer's point of view) an indicator not a law!

Went shopping at our Waitrose on Saturday and everything I was buying seemed to have fairly decent dates in them. Nothing I bought was next day or even day after.
That includes fruit, veg, bread, fish and meat, etc.

Maybe it is store dependent??

They'll have moved the lower date Ofer Han to a more prominent place to encourage people to buy that first, to save waste for them. Just like they move shorter date items to the front of the shelves and stack longer dates behind.
In that sense every shop does it ime.

No rarely had that problem although I am one for rummaging for the longest dates if I know I'm not going to eat it immediately. I snap up yellow stickered items when I can. In our branch they start reducing the day before the sell by. One thing I have noticed though is that the reductions are nowhere near as good as they used to be.

They were terrible for this in the run up to Christmas