How Canadian grocery stores decide what gets donated or dumped

For grocers, selling perishable items means making continual choices about every item on display — especially the ones nearing the end of their shelf life.

On a cool-but-sunny February day in Toronto’s west end, a temperature-controlled truck pulls up at the rear of a Metro grocery store, where pallets of food about to reach their sell-by date sit waiting. It’s time for the Daily Bread food bank’s weekly pickup.

Each package of meat, loaf of bread and deli item has been carefully inspected before ending up on the loading dock.

For grocers, selling perishable items means making continual choices about every item on display — especially the ones nearing the end of their shelf life. For those that don’t sell in time, most stores try to donate them to food banks rather than throw them away.

“It’s daily calls (on the floor),” said John Crisafulli, manager of the Metro location, during a walk-through with a Canadian Press reporter. All departments begin their day by scanning for items nearing expiration and picking them out, along with those with blemishes or flaws that make them undesirable.

Metro’s guidelines are straightforward. Two days ahead of their best-before dates, packaged items are discounted at 30 per cent. If still unsold the night before, an employee pulls the items off the shelf and freezes them in the backroom storage for donations to local food banks.

Some of those products are also sold on food-rescue apps such as Too Good To Go, said Dave Dinning, senior director of operations at Metro in Ontario.

But the shelf life of fresh produce is harder to determine and left to the employees’ discretion.

Take the apples, for example. Crisafulli examined the honeycrisps, galas and Granny Smiths, rearranging the display and picking out misfits with blemishes, bruises or holes. He then placed less appealing picks in a bag, marked it at $2 and re-shelved it in the discount section. Later, fresher apples replenished the selection. Finally, unsold quantities become fodder for animals.