Avoidance of Food Waste from a Grocery Retail Store Owner’s Perspective

Izabela Karolina Horoś,Tonia Ruppenthal

doi:10.3390/su13020550

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the causes of food waste and potential prevention strategies from a grocery retail store owner’s perspective. We therefore conducted a case study in a German region through semi-structured expert interviews with grocery retail store owners. From the collected responses, we applied a qualitative content analysis. The results indicated that store owners try to avoid food waste as this incurs a financial loss for them that directly affects them personally, as opposed to store managers of supermarket chains who receive a fixed salary. The main causes of food waste in the grocery retail stores in the region surveyed are expiration dates, spoilage, consumer purchasing behavior, and over-ordering of food products. The most appropriate food waste prevention strategies developed by store owners are those based on store owners’ experience and their own management style, such as the optimization of sales and management strategies, including precise planning, accurate ordering, and timely price reductions on soon-to-be-expiring food products. The redistribution of food surpluses as donations to food banks, employees, and as animal feed further helps to reduce the amount of food waste, but not the financial loss. This study enhances the literature by revealing that grocery retail store owners have the ability and are willing to successfully implement and enforce food prevention strategies in their stores.

Highlights

Sustainable change in the food value chains has become an important aspect of scientific and political discourse
Store owners reduce the prices of food products that are close to their expiration date in order to sell the remaining stocks, while still making a profit, and reducing food waste
As one of the last options before the food is disposed as residual waste, either the store owners try to sell of food products completely until the last day of validity, or they donate the food products to food banks, their employees, and/or as animal feed

Summary

Introduction

Sustainable change in the food value chains has become an important aspect of scientific and political discourse Halving both the food waste at the retail and consumer levels, as well as food losses at the production and post-harvest stages are the targets set by the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, which are to be realized worldwide [1]. Achieving this goal is necessary to provide a sustainable food system, to ensure food and nutrition security for the estimated 9 billion population in 2050 [2]. While each different supply stage has different food waste causes, the scope of this paper is the grocery retail sector, so it only addresses the distribution and market stages

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Conclusion