Handling short shelf-life products in your retail grocery
The expiration date of short shelf-life products is like a looming deadline for B2C retailers.
They’re always on the mind, whether it’s calculating the best way to manage them and avoid waste, the unhappy customers who bought an expired product that was accidentally left on the shelf, or the all-important profits lost from those that got thrown out.
Not to mention the curveball of product recalls, which is a whole other mammoth task that likes to creep up on you now and again, right when you’re least expecting it.
It’s not as if you can just forget about these products and only stock those with a longer shelf-life. Everyday essentials such as milk, bread, fresh fruit and vegetables, meat, fish and more all have short shelf lives and are the reasons that many of your customers enter your store.
So rather than feeling the pressure of short shelf-life products and ever-nearing sell by dates, what can retailers do to get the most out of these products and alleviate this ongoing selling pressure?
The answer lies below!
How to handle short life products in your retail stores
Work with an external merchandiser
There’s an indisputable link between how the products on your shelves are merchandised and your sales numbers. When it comes to short shelf-life products, the way in which they are displayed could be the key difference in the efficiency of your inventory turnover and thus profit margins.
Yet hiring an in-store merchandising team can be costly. Outsourcing your merchandising allows you to have the best of both worlds.
Merchandisers are experts in what they do. They know exactly how to maximize footfall, interest, and sales for each product, all of which have their own rules and best practices.
What’s more, they’ll be far quicker at installing merchandising—whether simply stocking the shelves or setting up grand displays for products—than retail workers, whose time would be far better spent helping out your customers and providing exceptional customer service.
Build a strategy for keeping your products in stock and updating displays
Never just put your stock onto the shelves and cross your fingers that they’ll sell. If you don’t have a strategy in place, you’ll pretty much be gambling on whether or not your products sell, or whether a customer will accidentally purchase a spoiled product.
At the bare minimum, you’ll need to create a plan for how certain products will be displayed on the shelves and when they’ll need restocking.
If you let your shelves become empty, not only will you get a lot of frustrated customers on your hands, but you’ll also be missing out on sales. Meanwhile, your products will be nearing their expiration date out in the back.
Then again, if you only restock the shelves when they’re beginning to look bare, there could be a load of expired or damaged products sitting on the shelves that you’re not aware of and need replacing. 
So, you’ll need an inventory management system.
You’ll need to track how much you sell of each product and when, so that you can effectively forecast how much you’ll need to order throughout the year.
For instance, let’s say that you sell 12,000 gallons of ice cream per year. Does that mean you should order 1,000 gallons per month? Probably not. It’s more likely that you’ll sell 9,000 across the summer months, with the other 3,000 spread across the rest of the year.
You wouldn’t want to order too much frozen dessert in the wrong months and have to dispose of the over-stock, then be empty handed when there’s a heatwave!
Another handy tip would be to always discount items that are nearing their expiration dates. It’s better to get them sold in time for a smaller profit than to absorb the entire cost, then be burdened with throwing them out. Stock them at eye level to increase their chances of selling!
Work with Buffalo Market
Buffalo Market can take the load of short shelf-life products off your mind. It’s our job to bring the products directly to you, merchandize them in the most efficient and effective way to boost your sales and improve your inventory turnover rate, manage your orders, forecasts and more!
We work on a direct store delivery model which bypasses the traditional retailer warehouse, therefore cutting the time that products are sat in storage within the supply chain. This is especially good news for your short shelf-life products, which get more time on the shelves to increase their chances of selling.
Our staff are specially trained to handle all types of products with the necessary care, so that your products arrive undamaged, under the right storage conditions.
Remember that inventory management strategy we mentioned earlier in this article? By working with Buffalo Market you can skip past the hassle. Our proven inventory management system will ensure that the products we deliver to you will always be in stock and merchandised in the optimum way.
We’re certain that with our accurate forecasts, you’d always have ample ice cream during a heatwave surge of sales. But even if, for whatever reason, your stock did sell out (firstly, congratulations are in order!) we’d be on hand to replenish the key products.
As the leading distributor of good for the earth and good for people products, we work with a whole host of major and independent retailers across California and beyond. Whether you’re an indie natural store or a leading supermarket chain, get in touch today!
With our near-daily delivery and merchandising services, we can get you stocked and selling the top mission-driven food and beverage brands in no time.