San Diego Researches Dynamic Food Pricing to Reduce Grocery Store Waste

A researcher in San Diego has found that lowering food prices, as it gets closer to its expiration date, could significantly reduce organic food waste.

This development could prove to be huge for California as the state mandates separating organic food waste to be used for composting. This law went into effect almost two years ago and it requires all residents, grocery stores, and restaurants to separate food scraps from regular trash and send it to a facility that will use that waste for composting.

“If you walk into any grocery retailer in the U.S., most of the perishables are going to have the exact same price the moment they got there to the moment they expire and go to a landfill,” said Robert Sanders, an assistant professor of marketing and analytics at UCSD’s Rady School of Management.

Over 10% of food waste comes from retailers throwing away food that has passed its expiration date.

“If you can at least change prices along the way, towards expiration, you then decrease waste ... by 21%,” Sanders said.

Dropping the price of food as it nears its expiration date increases the chance it’s sold to a customer looking for a bargain, likely using the product and saving it from going to waste.

Read the full article here.