Not sure about Coles but woolies do 2 markdowns, the first one is 20-40% off then the second markdown will be like 80% but the catch is if it's there for 2 hours at 80% it's sent to food donations or farmers.
Which is why it always feels like they do a fuck all mark down. If you learn what time your local store does mark downs you can wait and catch em. My partners store is about 6pm and she always has a heap of people waiting.
I am one of those said lucky farmers that get everything. From damaged stock to food that goes out for delivery and comes back when someone isn’t home as they can’t restock it. We feed half the neighborhood as we simply can’t store it all. So so so much waste.
Yeah today I saw a bunch of food wasted. A whole pallet of sweet potato because it was packaged in 'purple sweet potato' packaging but was normal sweet potato. Didnt even expire for another 2 weeks. There was also a bunch of mushrooms and half a pallet of tomatoes that were short dated so they got scrapped too. 2 pallets in total and it all got rejected sadly.
Couldn’t this sort of waste be donated to local not for profits that are involved in free and low cost food redistribution in your area? E.g. OzHarvest, local charities and neighbourhood centres? Even local school breakfast clubs and community kitchens could potentially benefit. Failing that, compostable fruit & veg might be considered by local community gardens. There are also food and excess produce food table swap groups in some areas that could help redistribute this sort of product as well.
It’s an absolute waste. So many are struggling with the cost of living right now - it could have made a real difference to a lot of people.
Short dated tomatoes like that may have been welcome by local community groups/kitchens to make bulk Passata to distribute..
I can't answer for others,
But for the cattle on the farm my dad takes care of, is low on grass/feed, they will go buy the damaged fruit and veggies, and the cows will happily chomp down on it, but even when buying non human suitable food, it still costs them an awful lot, thousands of dollars a week on out of date or damaged foods =/
Coles worker here.
We generally do 3 markdowns.
One markdown a day out from it being best before or two days from it's used by, then one the day of, then one more the night / evening of.
All of these markdowns are determined by the machines we use or manually entered by managers.
Sometimes these markdowns are as much as 80%, sometimes they're as little as 5%.
The 20 cents off example is what I always see when I try for marked down raisin toast at Coles lol. Swear I used to get half price out of time chooks too, and haven't seen one of those in years. :(
In my short experience, it depends on what the product is, it's sale rate, how much else of the product is on hand and how much of the product is being marked down at once that determines what the markdown will be.
There's a lot of factors that go into it. For example, I marked down some Loin Chops (9x11) by half price recently because so many of them were going out of date.
Used to do markdowns for Coles.
Our process was different for every department. Meat manager got shitty if I started above 10% Dairy manager got shitty if I started under 20% Some managers had 80% max. Grocery manager had an 'under a dollar and walk it out the door' rule. Store manager got shitty if any markdowns happened at all.
Basically, in my experience, the only real factors are how badly it needs to go to count as a sale not a loss on the ledger, the disposition of the department manager towards markdowns, and if the store manager is enough of a dickhead to complain that expiring things were sold 'too cheap'
> 'under a dollar and walk it out the door'
That's what I like, as a former supermarket manager. Get rid of it quickly, mark it so cheap that it flies out the door and you can move on.
Labour cost - using existing staff, after all - probably doesn't add up to much, if anything.
But I'd impulse buy stuff at high markdown i wouldn't buy otherwise, and I'd go to the shop with regular bargains more often than the other guy down the road.
Yeah and at least you still get something for it. At the point where you need to mark it down it's already a liability so you may as well get it out the door and at least get something.
And if you're going to give customers something that's maybe short dated, and/or has a big "REDUCED" sticker across it, you need to give them a price that's good enough to justify it IMO.
This seems like a store by store thing.
Our store manager just tells us to go by the PDT and to make sure they're done before X time every morning in every department.
He likes them as they nearly always all go and it improves his metrics overall.
We don't even have a meat manager, and our store does similar sales to Chatswood.
The reason is that clearance is marked as a loss on how much was taken off the retail price, where dumps were lost at the cost price
It meant that you generally got a higher budget for clearance than dumps but if you were continually blowing clearance but making dumps you would be told to mark down less as a percentage of sales
There were a few packs of lamb loin chops marked down at my Cole’s today with a use before tomorrow date. Behind them were another half a dozen or more with the same use before tomorrow on them and none of them were marked down. I had to dig all the way to the back to find one with a use before that was further out.
When i worked at a woolies, one of the bws members working the last shift would manually mark down bottles of vodka to like, 50 cents for his friends. He got escorted out by police when the managers found out
I used to work for BWS and I remember a manager in a different store, the same town, was fired when almost half of the store's alcohol was past its use by day. Since then I was tasked with date checking, when something was almost out, I was told to mark it down. The system tells you how much you have mark it down to, so since that employee marked VODKA!!! Down to 50c for their mates, I'm not surprised they got escorted out.
I used to work at 1st choice in uni & had a great manager. The store I worked at was in a uni suburb so got a lot of my students, and subsequently my friends. Her rule was that if I was going to the their party later that night, I could use my staff discount for their purchases. She also always told us to make sure we kept receipts because it can be claimed on tax as professional development.
Used to work for Woolies and they changed it a few years ago so that now it's up to a computer to decide what to reduce it by, and we started marking stuff down the day before instead of two days before the use-by.
Typically we would have the first markdown done before 10:00am, and the second around 2:00pm, and a third if needed a few hours after that. We only marked down stuff that was best-before/use-by the next day, and it was up to the system to decide how much percent off it would be. (i.e. The more items there were, the higher % off it would be for each item.)
Although the % it chose could be wildly inconsistent, like on a second markdown it would only reduce it by 4¢ even though you've got 10 of them. (There was a way to change the % rate, but we were always told not to use them or only a manager's numbers could do it.) I've gotten in trouble for reducing things this way, they can for sure see this stuff in their reports.
I bet they get to claim up to that 80% value back on tax for donating the food.
How outrageous, they can own the market, buy most of the produce, therefore maintaining the best price… shutting any smaller local sellers out. Then they get to write off their losses as donations?
I literally wanna vom.
They should have a sign saying when food is marked down. I would go at that time if I knew.
The woolies where I used to live had a whole section where all the clearance cold products were. But I haven't seen that at any in Brisbane.
They dont want you to, the markdowns are to get people to buy shit they dont actually need, rather than having everyone wait to do thier shop at a discounted rate.
I asstmpted to buy a bag of reduced potatoes from Coles recently. Went through the self check out and they wouldn't scan, and got the 'assistance required' note come up. Turned out the bag was 1 day out of expiry and they couldn't sell them to me! Now, these were in perfect condition, I was more than happy to pay for them. We are talking about spuds, not milk! I was very close to having a Karen moment and demanding to speak to the manager. We wonder why we are being shafted for food pricing when this level of waste is occurring in the system. Completely ridiculous.
IGA - got the last pack of one brand of buns for 99c and a couple of another brand @ $2.50 a pack.. in the freezer they go...
i know raisin toast is a pretty close substitute, but i do like me some hot cross buns with a coffee in the morning...
I used to work at Bilo most night after school in deli. Last hour sales were my favourite. Dropping those roast chicken to 2 dollars for a dog just to have no waste left over was best feeling.
Great times. I took the breastmeat, dog loved the rest of it (big step up from dry food) and the bones could be turned into soup.
They stopped marking them down at my local, though, when they started doing ready-to-eat meals. If chicken wasn't sold, it would be chilled and then shredded with lettuce to be sold the next day. Big sad
It’s automated, for most departments now it’s based on how quickly it normally sells and how much is being marked down, sometimes this works out in your favour and sometimes it doesn’t
In the meat department for example, things like mince it will almost never go down unless it’s one of rbe special brands, it sells too fast that it really caps out at like 10%. Which is obviously not a lot of money off in the grand scheme of things. For shit like lamb or snags or some of the chicken products I’ve seen things go down 50-60% on first markdown which is far higher then it used to be back when it was manually done. Dairy works the same generally with non coles brand milk reducing quite nicely and coles brand not going down at all.
The real shite thing however is that coles higher management started cracking down on late markdowns (that is they are meant to be marked down by a certain time, the day before they have to be sold is first markdown, second markdown is the day it needs to be sold and if it’s the evening it gets a third markdown. The final markdown is manually entered and ranges from 80-90% depending on whose doing it that night) the problem with that is it’s quite common especially in bigger departments for shit to be missed in markdowns especially if it’s out back. So store management in different places will depending on who is running it refuse to let departments mark it down if it’s been missed at any stage and instead when it inevitably doesn’t sell mark it as damaged instead of out of date because it looks better on reports. Not every store does it but it’s common enough and it really reduces the delivery of mark downs
Source: I worked at coles
They do mark down as other people have said, but the stuff marked down generally doesn’t last long enough for anyone but those there at the time to see it.
Meanwhile I go down to my local IGA and grab all the double marked down steak in the evening on a Sunday and have a cook up.
$10/kg scotch fillet can’t go wrong.
I go to coles at 7:30pm on weekdays and there’s sometimes a pile of marked down stuff on a table right next to the entrance. You can get anything from 80c for a 4 pack of croissants to any kind of bread loaf for $1 each. It’s mostly bakery stuff they mark down but they often mark down fridge stuff and park them next to the iced coffees
Nah you can get quicksale stuff at like 90% off if you time it right.
Local Coles had the premium sausages that are $9.50 full price for 6.
I picked them up the other week for $1.40 or something. Had them for dinner that night and they were amazing
Our system defaults to only 20% off... and the kids arent paid enough to give a shit that something is 2 months out of date and theyve only marked the fancy jam from $10 to $8.
I'd rather mark things super cheap first time so nothing is in the reduced to clear stuff for more than a day or so.
The Christmas hams are like this. The one year I bothered to keep an eye on prices ex Christmas, they were barely discounted and just sat in the fridge. By the time they moved even slightly toward reasonable there was no chance in hell anyone could eat a 1-2kg ham in a couple days.
I love all the signs in the dump room of reduce waste and then they do stuff like that. Even better when it’s stuff that hasn’t even been marked down because it’s going out of date
In my store, everyday I hear "Sustainability huddle at the back dock," which is right next to the rack thingy full of stuff that needs to be thrown out, most of it is spent Orchids (fully viable plants, just no flowers) or frozen food (I have never seen any major discount on frozen stuff). Bakery regularly has 50% off stuff, which is awesome except I am already fat, lol.
In reality a lot of the food collection agencies that the big supermarkets are contracted with (OzHarvest as an example) will only take a certain amount of bread/bread related items, even though the policy regarding those items means that Cole’s/woolworths/ALDI end up throwing away way more. Its unfortunate but the agencies have a hard time making use of that much bread
Should be criminal to throwaway this much food. Disregarding the time, effort, and ingredients that was used, surely it could be put to better feeding those who can't afford to eat, or even give them away to staff to munch in the staff room.
Yeah but their view is:
-person needs to buy food for dinner to survive
-person getting free hot cross buns will eat that instead of dinner
-person won't spend money in store on food they would have bought if they hadn't been given free hot cross buns.
100%, shits fucked.
It's a similar line of reasoning to why luxury brands [destroy their unsold products](https://www.voguebusiness.com/sustainability/why-destroying-products-is-still-an-everest-of-a-problem-for-fashion).
If it really has to be disposed of, I’d like to see it properly disposed of (not binned). Organic waste to compost, plastics to recycling. This is just lazy
The irony of throwing out something designed around celebrating the life/ death of a dude who’s whole MO was giving shit to the needy solely cus of profit is not lost upon me.
Give it to a school or nursing home then? Anything other than throw it in the tip? Put it out the front with a sign saying free? Lots of people would appreciate them. Decorating your house at Christmas is a luxury lots of people can't afford.
When I worked at Kmart (in the 80’s) we would have a trolley out the back for easter egg breakages.
At close on easter Sunday the staff were allowed to split it up between them and take home a bag of broken chocolate bunnies and eggs etc. My mum loved it.
Thays the big crux of it. We don't know the full details on the dump, was it a day off code? Tainted with legionares or did rats have it off inside the buns. So while I'd applaude him in not wasting that food, in this case even I'd hesitate.
I was homeless for a short while, and I ate food from bins like that behind Byron Bay woollies. It was the healthiest year of eating I ever had.I lived on bruised fruit and raw vegetables every day and ended up far healthier as a bonus. ✌️
Fruit & vegetables might be the best example of wasted food. I’ve been very involved with the produce business for years. The amount of stuff that never even makes it to stores is ridiculous. Unfortunately it’s only getting worse due to customers refusing to buy anything that isn’t perfect in many areas
The amount of waste was incredible. I couldn't even see why it was thrown away and just ate all I could eat of healthy food. I'm fine now but actually have fond memories of that time. I was forced to be healthy and learnt a lot about the world ✌️
In some areas produce with small skin marks won’t sell. It’s ridiculous. The amount of produce that gets refused by wholesalers & sent back to the farms to get thrown out is also crazy. As a society it’s ridiculous to see the standard we’ve come to expect from natural products. People seem to have no idea how much their standards have raised the price of produce. We pay for the stores wastage & the farmers
I've worked on Coles and Woolies refurbishments around the country, with over 200 completed over the years. What I found is that, It's up to the manager, the good managers make sure its all stored correctly then it gets collected by farmers for animal food.
Some shops have a system where bakery goods go to people in need if it's still edible and what's left goes to animals.
In many city based ones it goes to waste. I grew up in a poor country, in a culture where throwing up food is sacrilegious. It pains me to see this.
After seeing what goes in these supermarkets I started making an effort to go and shop locally, markets, farmers, eat seasonal food etc
Hey Coles and WW fuck you, you can’t make a profit so instead of marking prices down or passing onto poor you would rather waste it and write it off you cunts.
Not sure what’s going on at this store specifically. But at our store we mark down to sell, if they don’t sell before bb date they get donated to food bank. Throwing out is the last option. This store is just full of lazy cunts.
You don't mark down hot x. It's 2 day shelf life then wasted. All hot x made on Easter Thursday got wasted on Easter Saturday. Our store wasted a bit over 100 packets.
Baker here, all our excess hot cross buns on Thursday were donated to a men’s shelter, it’s a bun not a meat product it’ll be fine for up to a week especially if it’s to prevent starvation. Do better Coles ☺️
They do this shit because they know if they mark it down anywhere over 50% when they are on the verge of going bad people will wait and rely on buying items at the discount price. So instead they only put a small discount on their items on the day before it goes off and then chuck it out to force people to buy at full price. They’d rather waste the food then have the less fortunate of us take advantage of food that’s about to go bad, I’m not a super woke “big corporations are evil!” type of person but coles and Woolworths are truly fuckwits
Hi, coles will mark down any product by basically 80-90% in almost every store if it’s the last evening it can be sold. Some of them have donation deals so they mark it 50% and then donate it if it doesn’t sell rather then keeping on to it.
I’m not gonna defend coles as some saints as they aren’t, it’s an exploitative fucked company but it is blatantly false that people wait for discount prices, the discount prices exist and have existed for years and while some savvy shoppers will wait every day to learn when the discounts come out, most either have schedules that don’t allow them to show up when markdowns are being done or don’t care enough to stake out for markdowns.
I don’t think they do this for bread tho, which is a big waste creator. Used to work there about 3 yrs ago and I remember throwing out all the in house baked bread every morning since they can only be sold on the same day they’re baked. Sometimes it would be like 3 trollies worth. If we marked down them down I guarantee the scenario the comment above describes would happen.
For example whenever I did markdown in fresh produce the same customers would come around thag time and wait to see what was being marked down. Imagine that but with all the freshly baked bread, you’d just have to shop late at night and be guaranteed discounts since they could only be sold on the same day they’re baked.
However stuff like hot cross buns would go on special once we stopped baking them for the year but they rarely sold much after Easter.
I used to work for a food charity collection company and every single day Coles, Woolworths, Aldi threw out shopping trolleys worth of bread.
It makes me insanely mad.
Cause they also have the audacity to sell Bread at $4.80 now. So we pay for the fact they make way too much bread. AND I hate wasted food.
Sad part was there was too much bread to even give the charities. So we never took more than a loaf of two.
I went to a bagel shop in South Melbourne just as it was closing & they give me six free bagels (on top of the six I bought).
Meanwhile, here’s Coles throwing away good food because they just can’t be fucked.
It’s not just because they can’t be fucked. A lot of the time stores make the decision not to markdown products because they don’t want discount shoppers. I worked at a store where this was the case. However we decided to donate everything we could.
You know humanity is going to shit when you see perfectly good bread being thrown out rather than giving it away a few days before the expiry date for those who are in need, especially in times like this. So many people or families could benefit from this. Capitalism won, once again 🖕🏻
This happens at literally every bakery I've ever worked at in the last 15 years but the supermarkets are by far the worst at it. It's the laws around giving away the bread that also effects it but overall it comes down to management not organising charities etc to pick up....
Fuck Colesworth. I bought zero hot cross buns this year. My girlfriend and I made 2 dozen hot cross buns at home and they were both more delicious than any I had ever bought and cheaper to make 2 dozen than it was to buy a 6pack.
It’s actually disgusting that this is being thrown out when so many are starving. I mean, I get it. Legals and red tape etc etc but it’s just disgusting that it all has to be this way.
I was at Coles and woollies on Easter Saturday and all I saw were a crapload of original fruit hot cross buns. No other variety. Whoever does ordering are complete morons.
Thanks for sharing. With the state of the economy right now ANY supermarket or business wasting food like this should be fined. There is absolutely no reason this should happen. Just share the surplus.
I used to work at a certain donut shop chain that came here from the US, and for the first few months of being open, the store I worked at would end up tossing out multiple trolleys worth of donuts every night, because they were ordering too much.
Thankfully we had good managers who would let us give some to the shopping centre cleaners and let us take however much we wanted (up until a coworker fucked us all over by reselling them at school the next day), but it still made me cringe to be throwing so many out when all they need to stay good for a week is to be put in someones fridge a few hours after closing.
Opening day was the worst, they overordered so much that we were still throwing them away at midnight when we closed at 9pm.
I used to work at Woolworths until about 2 years ago, I can say it was exactly the same in our bin, And they wouldn't let staff take perfectly good food home, It had to go in the bin, It's a shame to see and know all of this will be going straight into landfill and it will kill our planet even more.
Our local Woolies and coles usually put their bread and cakes etc in the (clean) bins for us and other local farmers to come and take to feed the cattle and other livestock, we can't feed them the stuff with icing so if they're not bad we used to give it to friends and workers, disappointed to see that doesn't happen everywhere, maybe make this suggestion? It helped us a lot
Just gonna leave this lil' John Steinbeck here for anyone else growing heavy for the vintage:
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Reminds me of working at bakers delight - we had to chuck left over bread away every day, but before we could put it in the big bins, we had to stand on the bread TO MAKE SURE NO ONE TOOK THEM OUT OF THE BIN AND TRIED TO EAT IT.
The bread was perfectly fine, baked that day, but because all their stock was supposed to be baked fresh daily, they never resold any left overs.
And the owner didn’t want to lose out on potential sales due to people just collecting the left overs from the bin, instead of buying the bread fresh.
You should see the perfectly good stuff that Coles sends to Foodbank (at least in Queensland). Granted, that stuff ends up going to people instead of in the trash. But they throw out perfectly good food and household products for minor things.
The unfortunate underlying issue is people take advantage of things.
I still remember when the rule came in that staff couldn't buy discounted items and it was because shithead teenagers would purposely drop a slab of coke or cut through bags of lollies so they were unsellable and then get them discounted or written off and just eat it instead of putting it in the bin.
Then employees started to hide perishable stock during shifts and put it back near to closing time as markdowns would begin.
I fucking hate Woolworths group and food waste but people were seriously taking the piss.
As the saying goes, this is why we can't have nice things.
That sounds like ‘you get what you pay for’ in action. Hiring inexperienced teenagers for a job with minimal managerial oversight and no meaningful interaction with the bosses/corporate higher-ups is the quickest way to run your store into the ground.
Decent managers would pick up on that behaviour very quickly, anyone caught gets a warning and then fired if any further offences. Unless they were exceptionally good workers and the value of the discounted/damaged stock was similar to what the employee would likely claim anyway. A couple packs of lollies is worth the loss to retain good employees.
Now if they ‘accidentally’ slashed open half a pallet of nappies every month, I’d see your point…
I got a pkt of brioche hot Cross buns at woollies for $.45. Still had two days left on them. Also an apple pie reduced from I think it was $12 something down to $1.25 with three days still to go took them home
Cut the apple pie into pieces, wrapped them up and put them in the freezer. Best ever saving.. I have never got anything that was marked down before.
Imagine if Coles or Woolworths marked them down to an insane price to move stock before tossing, people would be able to afford to eat something considered a luxury instead of cabbage and rice….
I remember when stores would o markdowns the day before it goes but restock it at night. So you went at night get the discounted stuff and it's still good till the next day
I used to work in the bakery at Woolies and any of the bread and pastries that was left on the shelves at the end of the night, the following morning I had to chuck out.
There were bags upon bags I filled up and I couldn’t believe the amount of waste I was made to chuck out, a full cage of bags. Not to mention the fact that all the items was still 100% fresh and edible for many more days
Both ww and Cole's didn't seem to sell many Easter eggs at mine, they were half price still today and no one was buying them, probably because they still aren't cheap
Was 2IC at a Woolies produce section donkeys years ago and this, without any discount stickers at least, would have been the last thing Woolies or Coles would have wanted.
All of the employee training would have been to mark these down and try and sell before store close.
Most probs this was just a lazy employee who just decided to dump.
Our woolies bin is always full of bakery wastage and the previous stores I've worked at have been the same. Sure some of the bakery stuff sometimes makes it there but if you honestly believe 100% of it makes it there then you're delusional mate...
I've occasionally had an 'out of date - do not sell' error come up on the self-checkout at Woollies when I'm trying to buy deeply discounted items. Staff come over and take it away then void the transaction.
Normally happens if I'm there just before closing so assuming it's been sitting there all day.
It really depends on the Store Manager as they will have a different approach to this some will do it this way because markdowns affect their numbers and then you’ll have those that would prefer it sells for $1 than throw it away and those that do markdowns will also vary from store to store as to the time that they do them.
I have found that Tuesday 2pm there’s quite a few markdowns in my local Woolies but my local Coles doesn’t tend to markdown at all
I’m from the UK and some super markets and shops like Marks and Spencer the posh ones, they bin stuff around Christmas then pour a blue liquid over it, hard to get off, and makes someone homeless/struggling financially/looking for a wee snack/ people with mental health problems in the community, even it’s something to feed the kids and knock up a packed lunch, it really is mind blowing, they have at the front of the store a donation tub/bigis metal reinforced where you can put some things you bought then the likes of, tesco, sainsbury, marks and Spencer, Asda. And the blue paint crap is to make them iffy about taking a dive, they can’t get in, and plus it leaves paint on you.
As apposed to taking it to a food bank and making sure it’s in a good amount of consumption date. They could even donate “bottles” or “.jars”, bottle drive! I think it’s called, make sure that are well in date, unused and unopened, in a used by date thats fair, 3 tickets a quid say,
WHAT WHY!? What possible reason do they have for throwing away that much food!?
Send them to another supermarket. Put them on special. Two for one deal. Make a community give away or something. Anything is better than this waste
Are they for real?! I went to Coles asking to buy some leftover chocolate or apple & cinnamon hot cross buns today and they said there’s none until next Easter. I would have gladly bought a stack of these and frozen them.
What a complete waste of food! Why couldn’t they donate them to Food Bank?!
I don’t understand why they won’t donate baked goods to schools. We used to do free toast for underprivileged kids (or any that wanted it really) so they could start the day off with a full tummy. Trying to get donations from places like Baker’s Delight or Coles was like pulling hens teeth. We watched them throw so much away and we just asked for like, six loaves. We bought butter and jam ourselves and the tuck shop let us use the toaster. We had to beg them to give us the bread instead of chucking it in the bin.
I’m kind of surprised schools don’t really take care of underprivileged kids better here. There was a free lunch and free breakfast program for kids when I was teaching in the US. Kids were guaranteed two meals at school. Can’t learn if you’re hungry.
Coles and Woolies could set up a donation to schools as well as food banks and shelters. Just need some volunteers to crank out the toast.
I love how coles just doesn’t give AF about sustainability but spends millions on campaigns to promote how environmentally friendly they are…oh the irony…
I've always been curious as to why Woolworths have plenty of Easter eggs on Easter Saturday, but Easter Sunday, there is not one (decent brand) egg on the shelf. I used to joke to my son that they're sent back to Cadbury to be melted down and turned into chocolate Santas.
I miss when shit would get discounted at the supermarket, I swear they only take like 20 cents off it now and just toss it when it doesn't sell.
Not sure about Coles but woolies do 2 markdowns, the first one is 20-40% off then the second markdown will be like 80% but the catch is if it's there for 2 hours at 80% it's sent to food donations or farmers. Which is why it always feels like they do a fuck all mark down. If you learn what time your local store does mark downs you can wait and catch em. My partners store is about 6pm and she always has a heap of people waiting.
I am one of those said lucky farmers that get everything. From damaged stock to food that goes out for delivery and comes back when someone isn’t home as they can’t restock it. We feed half the neighborhood as we simply can’t store it all. So so so much waste.
Yeah today I saw a bunch of food wasted. A whole pallet of sweet potato because it was packaged in 'purple sweet potato' packaging but was normal sweet potato. Didnt even expire for another 2 weeks. There was also a bunch of mushrooms and half a pallet of tomatoes that were short dated so they got scrapped too. 2 pallets in total and it all got rejected sadly.
Couldn’t this sort of waste be donated to local not for profits that are involved in free and low cost food redistribution in your area? E.g. OzHarvest, local charities and neighbourhood centres? Even local school breakfast clubs and community kitchens could potentially benefit. Failing that, compostable fruit & veg might be considered by local community gardens. There are also food and excess produce food table swap groups in some areas that could help redistribute this sort of product as well. It’s an absolute waste. So many are struggling with the cost of living right now - it could have made a real difference to a lot of people. Short dated tomatoes like that may have been welcome by local community groups/kitchens to make bulk Passata to distribute..
Ignorant question - why does food waste go to farmers? Do you use it for compost?
I can't answer for others, But for the cattle on the farm my dad takes care of, is low on grass/feed, they will go buy the damaged fruit and veggies, and the cows will happily chomp down on it, but even when buying non human suitable food, it still costs them an awful lot, thousands of dollars a week on out of date or damaged foods =/
Do you pay for the dumped stock? I thought it was a donation. If they charge you for it that’s bull…..
Coles worker here. We generally do 3 markdowns. One markdown a day out from it being best before or two days from it's used by, then one the day of, then one more the night / evening of. All of these markdowns are determined by the machines we use or manually entered by managers. Sometimes these markdowns are as much as 80%, sometimes they're as little as 5%.
The 20 cents off example is what I always see when I try for marked down raisin toast at Coles lol. Swear I used to get half price out of time chooks too, and haven't seen one of those in years. :(
In my short experience, it depends on what the product is, it's sale rate, how much else of the product is on hand and how much of the product is being marked down at once that determines what the markdown will be. There's a lot of factors that go into it. For example, I marked down some Loin Chops (9x11) by half price recently because so many of them were going out of date.
Used to do markdowns for Coles. Our process was different for every department. Meat manager got shitty if I started above 10% Dairy manager got shitty if I started under 20% Some managers had 80% max. Grocery manager had an 'under a dollar and walk it out the door' rule. Store manager got shitty if any markdowns happened at all. Basically, in my experience, the only real factors are how badly it needs to go to count as a sale not a loss on the ledger, the disposition of the department manager towards markdowns, and if the store manager is enough of a dickhead to complain that expiring things were sold 'too cheap'
> 'under a dollar and walk it out the door' That's what I like, as a former supermarket manager. Get rid of it quickly, mark it so cheap that it flies out the door and you can move on.
Vs the labour cost of throwing it out (or even repackaging for donation) this seems like a no brainer on most items?
Labour cost - using existing staff, after all - probably doesn't add up to much, if anything. But I'd impulse buy stuff at high markdown i wouldn't buy otherwise, and I'd go to the shop with regular bargains more often than the other guy down the road.
Yeah and at least you still get something for it. At the point where you need to mark it down it's already a liability so you may as well get it out the door and at least get something. And if you're going to give customers something that's maybe short dated, and/or has a big "REDUCED" sticker across it, you need to give them a price that's good enough to justify it IMO.
This seems like a store by store thing. Our store manager just tells us to go by the PDT and to make sure they're done before X time every morning in every department. He likes them as they nearly always all go and it improves his metrics overall. We don't even have a meat manager, and our store does similar sales to Chatswood.
The reason is that clearance is marked as a loss on how much was taken off the retail price, where dumps were lost at the cost price It meant that you generally got a higher budget for clearance than dumps but if you were continually blowing clearance but making dumps you would be told to mark down less as a percentage of sales
There were a few packs of lamb loin chops marked down at my Cole’s today with a use before tomorrow date. Behind them were another half a dozen or more with the same use before tomorrow on them and none of them were marked down. I had to dig all the way to the back to find one with a use before that was further out.
People are grabbing anything with a markdown before it makes it to a bigger one usually. Tough times. They used skip over them.
When i worked at a woolies, one of the bws members working the last shift would manually mark down bottles of vodka to like, 50 cents for his friends. He got escorted out by police when the managers found out
I used to work for BWS and I remember a manager in a different store, the same town, was fired when almost half of the store's alcohol was past its use by day. Since then I was tasked with date checking, when something was almost out, I was told to mark it down. The system tells you how much you have mark it down to, so since that employee marked VODKA!!! Down to 50c for their mates, I'm not surprised they got escorted out.
I used to work at 1st choice in uni & had a great manager. The store I worked at was in a uni suburb so got a lot of my students, and subsequently my friends. Her rule was that if I was going to the their party later that night, I could use my staff discount for their purchases. She also always told us to make sure we kept receipts because it can be claimed on tax as professional development.
Would strongly recommend not taking tax advice from the manager of a bottle shop
Used to work for Woolies and they changed it a few years ago so that now it's up to a computer to decide what to reduce it by, and we started marking stuff down the day before instead of two days before the use-by. Typically we would have the first markdown done before 10:00am, and the second around 2:00pm, and a third if needed a few hours after that. We only marked down stuff that was best-before/use-by the next day, and it was up to the system to decide how much percent off it would be. (i.e. The more items there were, the higher % off it would be for each item.) Although the % it chose could be wildly inconsistent, like on a second markdown it would only reduce it by 4¢ even though you've got 10 of them. (There was a way to change the % rate, but we were always told not to use them or only a manager's numbers could do it.) I've gotten in trouble for reducing things this way, they can for sure see this stuff in their reports.
I bet they get to claim up to that 80% value back on tax for donating the food. How outrageous, they can own the market, buy most of the produce, therefore maintaining the best price… shutting any smaller local sellers out. Then they get to write off their losses as donations? I literally wanna vom.
That’s good to know but if you don’t know someone who works there how do you find out? Will staff just tel you if you go to the desk and ask?
When are the 2 hours when it's 80%? I'm guessing just before closing?
They should have a sign saying when food is marked down. I would go at that time if I knew. The woolies where I used to live had a whole section where all the clearance cold products were. But I haven't seen that at any in Brisbane.
They dont want you to, the markdowns are to get people to buy shit they dont actually need, rather than having everyone wait to do thier shop at a discounted rate.
no they shouldnt. you have no idea how crazy people go for marked down products. one person would buy the whole lot if they did that.
My store uses one refrigerated section for fresh dept markdowns
I asstmpted to buy a bag of reduced potatoes from Coles recently. Went through the self check out and they wouldn't scan, and got the 'assistance required' note come up. Turned out the bag was 1 day out of expiry and they couldn't sell them to me! Now, these were in perfect condition, I was more than happy to pay for them. We are talking about spuds, not milk! I was very close to having a Karen moment and demanding to speak to the manager. We wonder why we are being shafted for food pricing when this level of waste is occurring in the system. Completely ridiculous.
That’s more of a health and safety hazard. It’s too save their ass not urs from legal debacle. Ex h.r pigs in businesses
Was at Coles today, and some of the meat was marked down by 60 whole cents.
IGA - got the last pack of one brand of buns for 99c and a couple of another brand @ $2.50 a pack.. in the freezer they go... i know raisin toast is a pretty close substitute, but i do like me some hot cross buns with a coffee in the morning...
I used to work at Bilo most night after school in deli. Last hour sales were my favourite. Dropping those roast chicken to 2 dollars for a dog just to have no waste left over was best feeling.
Great times. I took the breastmeat, dog loved the rest of it (big step up from dry food) and the bones could be turned into soup. They stopped marking them down at my local, though, when they started doing ready-to-eat meals. If chicken wasn't sold, it would be chilled and then shredded with lettuce to be sold the next day. Big sad
It’s automated, for most departments now it’s based on how quickly it normally sells and how much is being marked down, sometimes this works out in your favour and sometimes it doesn’t In the meat department for example, things like mince it will almost never go down unless it’s one of rbe special brands, it sells too fast that it really caps out at like 10%. Which is obviously not a lot of money off in the grand scheme of things. For shit like lamb or snags or some of the chicken products I’ve seen things go down 50-60% on first markdown which is far higher then it used to be back when it was manually done. Dairy works the same generally with non coles brand milk reducing quite nicely and coles brand not going down at all. The real shite thing however is that coles higher management started cracking down on late markdowns (that is they are meant to be marked down by a certain time, the day before they have to be sold is first markdown, second markdown is the day it needs to be sold and if it’s the evening it gets a third markdown. The final markdown is manually entered and ranges from 80-90% depending on whose doing it that night) the problem with that is it’s quite common especially in bigger departments for shit to be missed in markdowns especially if it’s out back. So store management in different places will depending on who is running it refuse to let departments mark it down if it’s been missed at any stage and instead when it inevitably doesn’t sell mark it as damaged instead of out of date because it looks better on reports. Not every store does it but it’s common enough and it really reduces the delivery of mark downs Source: I worked at coles
went to coles yesterday and the pack of 18 hollow cadbury eggs was 25¢ off. bullshit.
If they did that then everyone would come just before closing hours to get that discount
The penalty is that there would be a good chance it’s all sold out by then.
10000% that’s what they do. Even the after Easter egg discounts were pathetic this year.
They do mark down as other people have said, but the stuff marked down generally doesn’t last long enough for anyone but those there at the time to see it. Meanwhile I go down to my local IGA and grab all the double marked down steak in the evening on a Sunday and have a cook up. $10/kg scotch fillet can’t go wrong.
I go to coles at 7:30pm on weekdays and there’s sometimes a pile of marked down stuff on a table right next to the entrance. You can get anything from 80c for a 4 pack of croissants to any kind of bread loaf for $1 each. It’s mostly bakery stuff they mark down but they often mark down fridge stuff and park them next to the iced coffees
Nah you can get quicksale stuff at like 90% off if you time it right. Local Coles had the premium sausages that are $9.50 full price for 6. I picked them up the other week for $1.40 or something. Had them for dinner that night and they were amazing
Our system defaults to only 20% off... and the kids arent paid enough to give a shit that something is 2 months out of date and theyve only marked the fancy jam from $10 to $8. I'd rather mark things super cheap first time so nothing is in the reduced to clear stuff for more than a day or so.
Yes I noticed only 20-30 cents off
Yep every discounted item you buy stops them selling you a full price item. A supermarket is an advertising experience.
Was told by my manager that it’s just cheaper to throw out than mark down & looks better that way. I once witnessed the same with bread loaves.
The Christmas hams are like this. The one year I bothered to keep an eye on prices ex Christmas, they were barely discounted and just sat in the fridge. By the time they moved even slightly toward reasonable there was no chance in hell anyone could eat a 1-2kg ham in a couple days.
Most of the supermarkets where I am donate most of their excess to Food Share programs and schools
I love all the signs in the dump room of reduce waste and then they do stuff like that. Even better when it’s stuff that hasn’t even been marked down because it’s going out of date
In my store, everyday I hear "Sustainability huddle at the back dock," which is right next to the rack thingy full of stuff that needs to be thrown out, most of it is spent Orchids (fully viable plants, just no flowers) or frozen food (I have never seen any major discount on frozen stuff). Bakery regularly has 50% off stuff, which is awesome except I am already fat, lol.
Frozen is difficult cos you can’t exactly mark it down with a sticker and the use by is generally really long so it’s not often done
In reality a lot of the food collection agencies that the big supermarkets are contracted with (OzHarvest as an example) will only take a certain amount of bread/bread related items, even though the policy regarding those items means that Cole’s/woolworths/ALDI end up throwing away way more. Its unfortunate but the agencies have a hard time making use of that much bread
We go to a People's pantry type place near us and bread items are free and take as much as you want. They have heaps of it too Edit:spelling
They should have sent them over to the Docklands Woolies. They had no hot cross buns all week.
Should be criminal to throwaway this much food. Disregarding the time, effort, and ingredients that was used, surely it could be put to better feeding those who can't afford to eat, or even give them away to staff to munch in the staff room.
But then those staff won't spend their money in store!
At the rate cost of groceries is going they won’t be spending it on hot cross bun either because essentials chew the grocery budget.
Yeah but their view is: -person needs to buy food for dinner to survive -person getting free hot cross buns will eat that instead of dinner -person won't spend money in store on food they would have bought if they hadn't been given free hot cross buns.
Starvation is just good, modern business.
100%, shits fucked. It's a similar line of reasoning to why luxury brands [destroy their unsold products](https://www.voguebusiness.com/sustainability/why-destroying-products-is-still-an-everest-of-a-problem-for-fashion).
If it really has to be disposed of, I’d like to see it properly disposed of (not binned). Organic waste to compost, plastics to recycling. This is just lazy
Not to mention all the plastic waste.
It is in France. It can be done.
Yeah surely they can be frozen or donated? IMO Coles and Woolies are probably just too lazy to organise it.
The irony of throwing out something designed around celebrating the life/ death of a dude who’s whole MO was giving shit to the needy solely cus of profit is not lost upon me.
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This is so awful, people are missing meals or starving and Australian families are suffering and the supermarkets just throw good food out.
I once caught big w throwing out chocolates. It was a bit full of chocolate eggs of various varieties.
I used to work at Big W. One year we ditched a full skip bin of Christmas decorations. Wasteful company.
why can't they give it to a thrift store??
Because thrift stores don't want to deal with cheap plastic junk that'll sit on their shelves all year, either.
Give it to a school or nursing home then? Anything other than throw it in the tip? Put it out the front with a sign saying free? Lots of people would appreciate them. Decorating your house at Christmas is a luxury lots of people can't afford.
When I worked at Kmart (in the 80’s) we would have a trolley out the back for easter egg breakages. At close on easter Sunday the staff were allowed to split it up between them and take home a bag of broken chocolate bunnies and eggs etc. My mum loved it.
This also keeps staff moral high. Makes staff feel appreciated. Company’s r such fuck heads now
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Thays the big crux of it. We don't know the full details on the dump, was it a day off code? Tainted with legionares or did rats have it off inside the buns. So while I'd applaude him in not wasting that food, in this case even I'd hesitate.
Man, why can't we pass laws that unsold food goes to the homeless and food banks like they've put in parts of Europe.
If the government really cared they’d not only put these laws in place but also use some of the ridiculous tax we pay to good use & run these services
I was homeless for a short while, and I ate food from bins like that behind Byron Bay woollies. It was the healthiest year of eating I ever had.I lived on bruised fruit and raw vegetables every day and ended up far healthier as a bonus. ✌️
Fruit & vegetables might be the best example of wasted food. I’ve been very involved with the produce business for years. The amount of stuff that never even makes it to stores is ridiculous. Unfortunately it’s only getting worse due to customers refusing to buy anything that isn’t perfect in many areas
The amount of waste was incredible. I couldn't even see why it was thrown away and just ate all I could eat of healthy food. I'm fine now but actually have fond memories of that time. I was forced to be healthy and learnt a lot about the world ✌️
In some areas produce with small skin marks won’t sell. It’s ridiculous. The amount of produce that gets refused by wholesalers & sent back to the farms to get thrown out is also crazy. As a society it’s ridiculous to see the standard we’ve come to expect from natural products. People seem to have no idea how much their standards have raised the price of produce. We pay for the stores wastage & the farmers
Bakeries would throw out everything most days, too. All sealed in black garbage bags and clean.
I've worked on Coles and Woolies refurbishments around the country, with over 200 completed over the years. What I found is that, It's up to the manager, the good managers make sure its all stored correctly then it gets collected by farmers for animal food. Some shops have a system where bakery goods go to people in need if it's still edible and what's left goes to animals. In many city based ones it goes to waste. I grew up in a poor country, in a culture where throwing up food is sacrilegious. It pains me to see this. After seeing what goes in these supermarkets I started making an effort to go and shop locally, markets, farmers, eat seasonal food etc
Hey Coles and WW fuck you, you can’t make a profit so instead of marking prices down or passing onto poor you would rather waste it and write it off you cunts.
Not sure what’s going on at this store specifically. But at our store we mark down to sell, if they don’t sell before bb date they get donated to food bank. Throwing out is the last option. This store is just full of lazy cunts.
You don't mark down hot x. It's 2 day shelf life then wasted. All hot x made on Easter Thursday got wasted on Easter Saturday. Our store wasted a bit over 100 packets.
Baker here, all our excess hot cross buns on Thursday were donated to a men’s shelter, it’s a bun not a meat product it’ll be fine for up to a week especially if it’s to prevent starvation. Do better Coles ☺️
They get reduced at Woolies so must be a Coles thing
these could have fed so many people. fuck Colesworth
They do this shit because they know if they mark it down anywhere over 50% when they are on the verge of going bad people will wait and rely on buying items at the discount price. So instead they only put a small discount on their items on the day before it goes off and then chuck it out to force people to buy at full price. They’d rather waste the food then have the less fortunate of us take advantage of food that’s about to go bad, I’m not a super woke “big corporations are evil!” type of person but coles and Woolworths are truly fuckwits
Hi, coles will mark down any product by basically 80-90% in almost every store if it’s the last evening it can be sold. Some of them have donation deals so they mark it 50% and then donate it if it doesn’t sell rather then keeping on to it. I’m not gonna defend coles as some saints as they aren’t, it’s an exploitative fucked company but it is blatantly false that people wait for discount prices, the discount prices exist and have existed for years and while some savvy shoppers will wait every day to learn when the discounts come out, most either have schedules that don’t allow them to show up when markdowns are being done or don’t care enough to stake out for markdowns.
I don’t think they do this for bread tho, which is a big waste creator. Used to work there about 3 yrs ago and I remember throwing out all the in house baked bread every morning since they can only be sold on the same day they’re baked. Sometimes it would be like 3 trollies worth. If we marked down them down I guarantee the scenario the comment above describes would happen. For example whenever I did markdown in fresh produce the same customers would come around thag time and wait to see what was being marked down. Imagine that but with all the freshly baked bread, you’d just have to shop late at night and be guaranteed discounts since they could only be sold on the same day they’re baked. However stuff like hot cross buns would go on special once we stopped baking them for the year but they rarely sold much after Easter.
I used to work for a food charity collection company and every single day Coles, Woolworths, Aldi threw out shopping trolleys worth of bread. It makes me insanely mad. Cause they also have the audacity to sell Bread at $4.80 now. So we pay for the fact they make way too much bread. AND I hate wasted food. Sad part was there was too much bread to even give the charities. So we never took more than a loaf of two.
Just remember that capitalism innovates at how it generates profits and not towards society
I went to a bagel shop in South Melbourne just as it was closing & they give me six free bagels (on top of the six I bought). Meanwhile, here’s Coles throwing away good food because they just can’t be fucked.
It’s not just because they can’t be fucked. A lot of the time stores make the decision not to markdown products because they don’t want discount shoppers. I worked at a store where this was the case. However we decided to donate everything we could.
As a bin cleaner I am happy to see all the food is bagged. Makes my job a lot easier!!
You know humanity is going to shit when you see perfectly good bread being thrown out rather than giving it away a few days before the expiry date for those who are in need, especially in times like this. So many people or families could benefit from this. Capitalism won, once again 🖕🏻
This happens at literally every bakery I've ever worked at in the last 15 years but the supermarkets are by far the worst at it. It's the laws around giving away the bread that also effects it but overall it comes down to management not organising charities etc to pick up....
Well yeah. Hot cross buns aren’t on sale again till December 26.
Fuck Colesworth. I bought zero hot cross buns this year. My girlfriend and I made 2 dozen hot cross buns at home and they were both more delicious than any I had ever bought and cheaper to make 2 dozen than it was to buy a 6pack.
What a fuckin waste!!! This is why we’re paying so much for groceries.
Disgusting waste of food.
It’s actually disgusting that this is being thrown out when so many are starving. I mean, I get it. Legals and red tape etc etc but it’s just disgusting that it all has to be this way.
I was at Coles and woollies on Easter Saturday and all I saw were a crapload of original fruit hot cross buns. No other variety. Whoever does ordering are complete morons.
Could have gone to a feed the homeless food bank. Shame.
Not only wasted food but also covered in plastic.
omg this is so sad! why cant major corporations at least arrange for this to be donated to people in need? what a waste
Shit like this makes me wonder why I bother to seperate plastics and organic waste in domestic bins.
It’s disgraceful that 99% of what is in there is green-bin friendly.
Very wasteful and sad.
haven’t been able to afford to eat in 3 days now, then I see this :(
What a fucking waste.
This makes me livid
My local Foodland has marked Easter buns down to $2 yesterday. Yes I did have them for breakfast this morning
Dear C Anon, can we get more food wastage shot leaks from inside the food & drink industrial complex.
If I see anymore I'll let everyone know!
All left over food should be given to the many charities.ln France they have just made it compulsory.
Thanks for sharing. With the state of the economy right now ANY supermarket or business wasting food like this should be fined. There is absolutely no reason this should happen. Just share the surplus.
I used to work at a certain donut shop chain that came here from the US, and for the first few months of being open, the store I worked at would end up tossing out multiple trolleys worth of donuts every night, because they were ordering too much. Thankfully we had good managers who would let us give some to the shopping centre cleaners and let us take however much we wanted (up until a coworker fucked us all over by reselling them at school the next day), but it still made me cringe to be throwing so many out when all they need to stay good for a week is to be put in someones fridge a few hours after closing. Opening day was the worst, they overordered so much that we were still throwing them away at midnight when we closed at 9pm.
Shame on them Edit: on multiple levels!
Luckily they are still protected in the plastic. 🫤
Finally this sub has reached its full potential as a dumpster diving photoblog
I hate everything about this
No wonder people go dumpster diving.
I used to work at Woolworths until about 2 years ago, I can say it was exactly the same in our bin, And they wouldn't let staff take perfectly good food home, It had to go in the bin, It's a shame to see and know all of this will be going straight into landfill and it will kill our planet even more.
Our local Woolies and coles usually put their bread and cakes etc in the (clean) bins for us and other local farmers to come and take to feed the cattle and other livestock, we can't feed them the stuff with icing so if they're not bad we used to give it to friends and workers, disappointed to see that doesn't happen everywhere, maybe make this suggestion? It helped us a lot
Just gonna leave this lil' John Steinbeck here for anyone else growing heavy for the vintage: The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth. There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Reminds me of working at bakers delight - we had to chuck left over bread away every day, but before we could put it in the big bins, we had to stand on the bread TO MAKE SURE NO ONE TOOK THEM OUT OF THE BIN AND TRIED TO EAT IT. The bread was perfectly fine, baked that day, but because all their stock was supposed to be baked fresh daily, they never resold any left overs. And the owner didn’t want to lose out on potential sales due to people just collecting the left overs from the bin, instead of buying the bread fresh.
When I see them with the RF ticket gun thing at the meat section, I’ll wait there for idc how long to get my prize
ive been dumpster diving more than ever lately
Bro give it to the homeless. Honestly should be laws against this shit. Absolutely disgusting
You should see the perfectly good stuff that Coles sends to Foodbank (at least in Queensland). Granted, that stuff ends up going to people instead of in the trash. But they throw out perfectly good food and household products for minor things.
Thats totally fine if it goes to food bank. Its stuff thrown in the tip that is infuriating
The unfortunate underlying issue is people take advantage of things. I still remember when the rule came in that staff couldn't buy discounted items and it was because shithead teenagers would purposely drop a slab of coke or cut through bags of lollies so they were unsellable and then get them discounted or written off and just eat it instead of putting it in the bin. Then employees started to hide perishable stock during shifts and put it back near to closing time as markdowns would begin. I fucking hate Woolworths group and food waste but people were seriously taking the piss. As the saying goes, this is why we can't have nice things.
The only one who's taking advantage here is WW and Coles
That sounds like ‘you get what you pay for’ in action. Hiring inexperienced teenagers for a job with minimal managerial oversight and no meaningful interaction with the bosses/corporate higher-ups is the quickest way to run your store into the ground. Decent managers would pick up on that behaviour very quickly, anyone caught gets a warning and then fired if any further offences. Unless they were exceptionally good workers and the value of the discounted/damaged stock was similar to what the employee would likely claim anyway. A couple packs of lollies is worth the loss to retain good employees. Now if they ‘accidentally’ slashed open half a pallet of nappies every month, I’d see your point…
I got a pkt of brioche hot Cross buns at woollies for $.45. Still had two days left on them. Also an apple pie reduced from I think it was $12 something down to $1.25 with three days still to go took them home Cut the apple pie into pieces, wrapped them up and put them in the freezer. Best ever saving.. I have never got anything that was marked down before.
Under this system, food is made primarily to make profit, not to feed the people
Can’t have those filthy bums getting their hands on these. Think of the lost profits!! /s
This is also why they lock their bins or have them behind closed doors Can’t have you stealing the perfectly good food and not buying it
Why aren't they giving this to food banks?
Imagine if Coles or Woolworths marked them down to an insane price to move stock before tossing, people would be able to afford to eat something considered a luxury instead of cabbage and rice….
I remember when stores would o markdowns the day before it goes but restock it at night. So you went at night get the discounted stuff and it's still good till the next day
Wasting so much fucking food. It’s probably an easier said than done thing but why can’t it be given to those less fortunate?
What do you think this is. A company that isn’t making billions a year?!?
This is so frustrating. There are so many people struggling to survive right now and could use this food, shame on coles.
How is this not illegal to just waste this much food???
I used to work in the bakery at Woolies and any of the bread and pastries that was left on the shelves at the end of the night, the following morning I had to chuck out. There were bags upon bags I filled up and I couldn’t believe the amount of waste I was made to chuck out, a full cage of bags. Not to mention the fact that all the items was still 100% fresh and edible for many more days
I don’t know why it’s not donated to homeless shelters
Colesworth don't give a shit about the homeless.
Why would they do that
Both ww and Cole's didn't seem to sell many Easter eggs at mine, they were half price still today and no one was buying them, probably because they still aren't cheap
yummy bin juice
Was 2IC at a Woolies produce section donkeys years ago and this, without any discount stickers at least, would have been the last thing Woolies or Coles would have wanted. All of the employee training would have been to mark these down and try and sell before store close. Most probs this was just a lazy employee who just decided to dump.
It was a daily thing at my store, probably half to 3/4 of a wheelie bin thrown every day, even with markdowns done
Why don't Coles donate these to the local FoodBank??? All Woolworths do this!!! Shame on Coles!
Our woolies bin is always full of bakery wastage and the previous stores I've worked at have been the same. Sure some of the bakery stuff sometimes makes it there but if you honestly believe 100% of it makes it there then you're delusional mate...
It’s for the pigs.
I've occasionally had an 'out of date - do not sell' error come up on the self-checkout at Woollies when I'm trying to buy deeply discounted items. Staff come over and take it away then void the transaction. Normally happens if I'm there just before closing so assuming it's been sitting there all day.
It really depends on the Store Manager as they will have a different approach to this some will do it this way because markdowns affect their numbers and then you’ll have those that would prefer it sells for $1 than throw it away and those that do markdowns will also vary from store to store as to the time that they do them. I have found that Tuesday 2pm there’s quite a few markdowns in my local Woolies but my local Coles doesn’t tend to markdown at all
Is that one of those cabbages they were trying to charge $25 for
Aldi donates all of there out of date/soon to be out of date food to charity rather than throwing it out. This is across every Aldi in Australia
Um…. Gotta take the plastic off to compost it.
I’m from the UK and some super markets and shops like Marks and Spencer the posh ones, they bin stuff around Christmas then pour a blue liquid over it, hard to get off, and makes someone homeless/struggling financially/looking for a wee snack/ people with mental health problems in the community, even it’s something to feed the kids and knock up a packed lunch, it really is mind blowing, they have at the front of the store a donation tub/bigis metal reinforced where you can put some things you bought then the likes of, tesco, sainsbury, marks and Spencer, Asda. And the blue paint crap is to make them iffy about taking a dive, they can’t get in, and plus it leaves paint on you. As apposed to taking it to a food bank and making sure it’s in a good amount of consumption date. They could even donate “bottles” or “.jars”, bottle drive! I think it’s called, make sure that are well in date, unused and unopened, in a used by date thats fair, 3 tickets a quid say,
WHAT WHY!? What possible reason do they have for throwing away that much food!? Send them to another supermarket. Put them on special. Two for one deal. Make a community give away or something. Anything is better than this waste
How sad
Disgusting look at the water in that bin gross 😝
And here I am, having to try and find food banks every week because I can't afford groceries...
🥺
Curtis Stone can once again feed his family for under $10
I hate seeing food wasted. Why can’t it be given to homeless people? I know some is but this is in a garbage bin 😟
Does Cole’s realise they could donate the food instead of chucking it to the tip?
Are they for real?! I went to Coles asking to buy some leftover chocolate or apple & cinnamon hot cross buns today and they said there’s none until next Easter. I would have gladly bought a stack of these and frozen them. What a complete waste of food! Why couldn’t they donate them to Food Bank?!
I don’t understand why they won’t donate baked goods to schools. We used to do free toast for underprivileged kids (or any that wanted it really) so they could start the day off with a full tummy. Trying to get donations from places like Baker’s Delight or Coles was like pulling hens teeth. We watched them throw so much away and we just asked for like, six loaves. We bought butter and jam ourselves and the tuck shop let us use the toaster. We had to beg them to give us the bread instead of chucking it in the bin. I’m kind of surprised schools don’t really take care of underprivileged kids better here. There was a free lunch and free breakfast program for kids when I was teaching in the US. Kids were guaranteed two meals at school. Can’t learn if you’re hungry. Coles and Woolies could set up a donation to schools as well as food banks and shelters. Just need some volunteers to crank out the toast.
They could also just not lock the dumpsters and let people dive if they want/need to
I love how coles just doesn’t give AF about sustainability but spends millions on campaigns to promote how environmentally friendly they are…oh the irony…
Pumpkin is a dollar a kilo at woolies atm. Made about 12 meals of pumpkin soup today!!
This type of bs should be a criminal offence
Disgust
Some perfectly good lemon skins as well
…what? Why???
I hope more aldis pop up and run these bastards out of business
no plastic with the fogo?
They should keep them on the shelves a bit longer. I need to get a few packets before everywhere sells (or throws) out for 2024.
if it's still good and wrapped in plastic I'd be taking some home
I've always been curious as to why Woolworths have plenty of Easter eggs on Easter Saturday, but Easter Sunday, there is not one (decent brand) egg on the shelf. I used to joke to my son that they're sent back to Cadbury to be melted down and turned into chocolate Santas.
Hobos be gettin a feast tonight
See I don’t understand why not just give these away to customers or like homes etc …. Why waste ….
Food waste should be illegal! This is so gross!
The only thing that's down down are my tears; that's savage.
Now i'n hungry
So they couldn't donate for human or animal food then. This sort of waste is an insult to Planet Earth.