Sainsbury Yellow Stickers

[MumFeelingHopeless]

Recently, I've noticed the yellow sticker discounts in my local sainsbury are not as good. Is this a trend, or just bad luck for me?

Previously, you would find £8 or £9 ready meals (think Charlie Bingham for 2 people) for around £2-£3, now you're lucky to see a £1-2 reduction. Similarly, you would find £4 ready meals for 70p-£1.50. But now there is barely 50p-70p off.

Has anyone else noticed this? Is it just my local store? Anyone who works in sainsbury know whether the policy has changed? Maybe my store has just changed the timing of the best deals?

Seems the same in Tesco, discounts are hardly worth having unless you would buy it anyway and the dates suit (or if you can freeze it).

Don't think I've seen any decent discounts anywhere for a while. Pennies off jobs.

A few years ago my Sainsburys used to do tiny reductions, like a £3 ready meal would be reduced to £2.90. I stopped looking at the reduced items cos it was completely pointless. Went on for months. So maybe it’s completely arbitrary.

I've noticed this in my local Aldi and in the Co-op. Used to get really good 75% off stickers in Aldi and stuff reduced to less than a quid in the co-op. The discounts are much less now. They both signed up for local food share projects so at a certain time all the yellow stickers are pulled off the shelves, and scanned as a charitable donation. I suspect it's better financially to write off £100 worth of reduced stuff as a donation than sell it for a tenner; might be wrong though.

Are these shops using the very-close-to-date stuff for "too good to go" bags instead maybe?

I have noticed this too.

I do most of my food shopping on line so always have a look at the reduced items when I do find myself in a supermarket.

Really not worth getting 30p off an item that is about to go out of date. I would rather pay full price and have more time to eat it.

There might be regional variations but my local Sainsburys does a first reduction which is only around 20% or so on most products and then later in the day if the item remains unsold a further reduction later which is 75%. Sometimes if there is a big surplus of something then they go straight to the bigger reduction.

Baked goods tend to be reduced to half price at around 5pm.

It might be worth asking the staff what time the reductions are made? If they are trialling something new and it's not successful they may change back. My local Iceland used to do a 50% reduction and then for a few months the maximum reduction was 20% and no-one seemed to bother to buy the reduced items. They have now gone back to a 50% reduction, so they must have realised that for most people a tiny reduction is not worth it.

Most of the big stores donate alot of surplus stock and short dated items to people who collect via the olio app. It actually annoys me slightly as alot of people are struggling and could do with getting cheaper food, but instead one woman who comes into our local shop leaves with massive trays full of free food, that most likely ends up in the bin... She'll take 20 lettuces (plus a multitude of other items) in one go, and unless she's got a guinea pig farm, there's no way she'll eat all that before it goes bad.

@Iguanainanigloo olio works by other people then collecting the food, free, from that one woman who is a volunteer who lists it for individuals to collect from her. If she’s not listing it that’s another issue, but I collect for Olio and have 10 or more people collecting from me each time.

M&S yellow stickers used to be really good for same day use by but now only get a few pence off it's not worth buying - used to stock the freezer for less than an Aldi/Lidl shop but now don't bother as not worth it

Most give their excess to food banks/lasers now and write it off as charity for tax reasons. Much better for them than selling for buttons and makes them look good too.

I don't find the yellow stickered stuff in Sainsbury's to be much of a bargain. Often I find you could buy a similar, full priced item in lidl or aldi for less.

I work in a supermarket. Staff get first dibs on reduced items and charitable waste. I got 2 big tubs of lurpak the other week for free a couple of days past their sell by date.

Not sure if other places do the same I expect they might.

I find them in Sainsbury’s in the hour or so before closing (I drop in weekly after a run for coffee). I've found lots of vegetable bags for 10p (can be frozen) and ready meals ranging from half price to just under £1.00

I've never seen big reductions in our local Sainsbury's.

Our local Morrison's, however, reduces down to 10%. If you turn up at the right time (by luck, rather than judgement, as the timings seem to vary), then you can fill your freezer for pennies.

I understood it that they went on the staff trolley if no takers. No idea if that's accurate.

Nowhere has decent deals now

It is where I work. Helps if you are friends with the reductions people too obviously 😊

I saw a TikTok where Tesco Colleague Shop items are free after 9pm

I work in Sainsburys, the general rule is a small discount the day before the BBE date then half price late on the day. With very short life items like some bakery items or the made instore pizzas a reduction will only be made on the day, it also depends on how much there is that needs to go. The timing of doing the reductions has been put back later in the day for most items than it use to be but will again vary depending on what item it is and how much there is. If other stores are like ours there is also huge competition to get hold of the machines which print the tickets as there are not enough to go round so sometimes even when we are ready to reduce we have to wait for someone else to finish their bit before it can be done. Once items are reduced they usually go very quickly as there are now more and more customers looking for a bargain.

It's become less common to get really good reductions, but they are still around. I got a couple of fancier ready meal rice bowl things (1 chicken, 1 pork) for 35p each the week before last. I also got a number of packs of meat and fish to pop in the freezer from M&S, reduced by around 50%, at the weekend.

I am so so happy to read that. I was thinking the other day it must be awful if you are a cashier, and are maybe struggling, and you see customers with tons of bargains, it must be hard to keep a smile on your face. So many shop staff were unsung heroes during the pandemic, making sure we all got fed. Thank you

Our local supermarkets are often approached and asked to donate their clearance stock to a local food bank/ kitchen type project, which cooks meals that are eaten daily. Since this arrived in the town lots of supermarkets are ‘in partnership’ with it, so the reduced stock barely hits the shelves nowadays. I suspect lots of supermarkets do similar now, given that most towns have these sort of initiatives in the COL crisis. Most companies are looking carefully at ways to manage waste in responsible ways , so it’s a box ticked for them too.

seems a bit unfair for those that are not food bank level but need to be xareful while shopping imo

Yeah I think that's coz their margins are squished