I’m sure my regular audience is ready to get back to the usual fare on my blog – lively discussion of the best grocery sales and coupon deals in Chicagoland. I am too.
However, I received a lengthy, richly detailed email from a former Safeway manager in another state explaining what it’s like to run a supermarket under Safeway’s tight budget and time constraints. He has graciously allowed me to share portions of his email with my audience.
As you read this eye-opening mail, you will understand that the expired food issue is an enormous one, not only at Dominick’s but at other Safeway-owned stores around the country. And, to anyone who (incorrectly) felt that I was attacking Dominick’s employees or trying to somehow cause people’s jobs to be in jeopardy, that is not the case. His email will shed some light on how large a problem that the expired food is with Safeway. With the way the stores are currently structured, there is little, and in most cases, no time at all, devoted to stock rotation — causing products to sit on shelves for years at a time.
Here are some excerpts:
First of all, Safeway is in a panic mode here over your website. Knowing them like I do, I am sure this is a panic situation throughout the entire Company. Safeway is so worried, they have recruited as many employees as possible on overtime pay, time and a half, to work the last couple of overnight shifts to check and pull dates in all the stores. Keep in mind overtime is usually the subject of disciplinary action against the store manager.
If you have time to go to any Dominick’s stores today, you will probably see lots of empty holes in the aisles where out of date product has been pulled but not restocked yet.
So why the problem with code dates?
It is a very time consuming and labor intensive process to stay on top of code dates. In theory, every time a case of anything is stocked, the existing product on the shelf should be pulled off, the new case stocked, and the older product placed in front. Rotation at its finest. In addition, dates of both batches need to be checked as well. Depending on the item and how well it sells or doesn’t sell, if it is within a month of the code date, some sort of “flag” should be placed on the tag of the item to designate it as being close to going out of code.
Obviously this will require several followup checks to see if it is selling, if not, it should be pulled within a week or so of code left and reduced for sale. In addition to this, a store needs to have a “map” that is constantly being checked off to ensure sections get checked on a rotating basis on an every three months or so calendar.
What I have just described is for the typical dry grocery goods in a store.
In Meat, Seafood, Deli, Produce, Dairy and Bakery Departments, most dates need to be checked on a daily basis throughout the Department. You’ll usually find the Meat and Seafood Departments are the best at this, while the others are really hit and miss. It’s pretty easy to walk into any Safeway store and find outdated yogurt, milk, butter, etc. Look through the deli, salad case sometime and see what you find.
In the years I worked for Safeway, there was no instruction or program I’m aware of to rotate dry goods when stocking. There is also no “flagging” program. They did send emails from time to time to check dates in say, the salad dressing section, etc, but the rotation of the sections was very long, probably a year or so before you would get back to it again.
But, the main reason Safeway is so bad with outdated products is two fold:
The stores are typically on the slower side in sales volume requiring more date checking attention and ordering expertise and;
The labor budgets are so ridiculously tight there is not enough time to stock the loads let alone rotate and check dates.
Safeway uses a labor scheduling program that dictates hours to be used in each department based on a sales to labor formula. The budgets are unrealistic, so Managers are forced to take shortcuts where ever possible to have enough hours to stock and man the store.
…
As far as dry grocery goes, that same store probably receives 6 or 7 loads a week, an average of about 400 cases per night. The labor standard would typically give this store two stockers to unstack the load off of pallets in the backroom, bring to the sales floor, sort it by aisle and stack in the aisles, stock the product, clean up all the boxes and trash, and then “face” the entire store. (pulling two of every product in every aisle up to the front of the shelf) Facing an average sized Safeway takes about 4 man hours alone. On top of this, one of the individuals has to order the store, which takes about 3 hours or so, and every day a “BRI” or backroom inventory must be conducted. This entails a clerk taking a hand held computer and scanning and counting EVERY piece of merchandise in the backrooms, all end displays, all floor stacks, all top storage or “sky shelves”, all lobby displays, basically every area except the regular shelves.
When the program of BRI was introduced in about 2006, each store was given 2 hours a day to complete this for Meat, Dairy, Frozen and Grocery. Even though this process done correctly would take several hours to complete, at least they gave us some time.
Unfortunately, about 3 or 4 months later, management decided these hours would be deducted from the budgets, as it should now be easy to do. Wow.
So, lets do the math.
Two 8 hour clerks = 16 hours.
Minus 2 hours for BRI.
Minus 3 hours for ordering.
Minus 4 hours for facing.
Minus 2 hours to bring load to sales floor to appropriate aisle.
This leaves 5 hours to actually stock the 400 or so cases, or 80 cases per hour, or 1.3 cases per minute. Each case probably averages about 12 units.Now, the clerk being paid $8 per hour working all night has to pick up the case, locate the item, check the upc to make sure it matches the tag, get a ladder if its a top shelf, open the case, remove all the existing shelf stock, stock the case, put the older product back on the shelf, break down the box, and move on. Try it. I cant do it, and don’t know anyone who can.
Since rotating and date checking doubles the time spent per case, guess what doesn’t get done?
I have been in this business for a lot of years, worked for several chains in different parts of the country, and nowhere is it this bad.
What kind of auditing does management have in place?
Twice a year in every store there is a pricing audit, and as part of the audit, dates on baby formula are checked. There are heavy fines levied against the stores bonus potential if outdated baby formula is found. Nothing else is checked. Nothing.
I am going to forward your website link and video to all of the news stations in [STATE.] It’s time to expose their practices and code dating issues to consumers here too.
I look forward to sharing correspondence with you.
To this manager, who requested I refer to him as “Mr. Grocer,” I appreciate you sharing this information with me and my readers.
I have suspected that the expired food problem at our Dominick’s locations reaches far beyond the store level. All of the long-timer Dominick’s employees I’ve spoken with have all mentioned how difficult it is to work for Safeway. The number of staff, especially at night, has been cut to two people, yet employees’ responsibilities have been increased to far more than people are capable of achieving during a shift or during a week.
How can Dominick’s employees be expected to do these jobs, to completion, with enthusiasm with the statistically impossible workload that Mr. Grocer has outlined in his mail? It is no wonder that customer service and morale among employees drops with that kind of pressure.
I have received numerous emails since this story broke from Dominick’s employees saying the same thing. There aren’t enough people, time, or budget to do proper rotation of the stock, so it is simply not done.
With expired product piling up and no one removing it, it’s only a matter of time before a store develops a reputation among shoppers of having too much expired food on the shelves. Yet in each shareholders’ report, Dominick’s continues to muse over different ways to drive more traffic to its stores. I read one report saying that they were going to get people back into the stores around Christmastime with “nostalgic ads” reminding everyone that Dominick’s is a Chicagoland institution.
So, their big Christmas ad campaign was in all the local papers – very pretty with classic images of Dominick’s grocery stores throughout the decades. But the problem is, nostalgic ads don’t fix the problems in the stores. Their reputation of expired food on the shelves has been driving shoppers away for a long time.
Getting the expired product out is the first step in rebuilding market share. But, with confirmation of how unrealistic and intense the workload is that Safeway is putting on its employees, the cycle will repeat itself unless changes are made and enough time and staffing is allocated to stock rotation.
Coupon savings says
Well, from the other post about who takes the loss for the expired stuff, it looks like Safeway will also have to explain a one time charge in this quarter or at least higher costs associated with restocking.
I see Jewel employees with handheld devices scanning products all the time. I do not know what they are doing but more than Safeway, I take it.
Hopefully, as the situation is rectified, the employees will be given the time not to take short cuts. If they cannot be profitable the right way, they need to look at their business model.
Hopefully other stores will take notice too.
LuluD318 says
I applaud you for taking the time to sympathize with the Dominick’s employees. I know a couple of very nice ones who agree with you. You really are taking every possible angle and looking at it from all sides. I am really enjoying all of the information on this very hot topic.
Booju says
…and thought they were supposed to stock products on their shelves that are literally from the those nostalgic years!!! ;)
woodstock06 says
I have a friend that works for a company that in in sales.He visits stores and He said that the grocery store numbers (including Jewel) are not good.And as always walmart is on top.I am NOT a walmart shopper.I know I can do better at Jewel.But if Dominicks does not change there will be no more Dominicks.And they will not be missed.We have many food chains here to get food.Jewel,Target,Meijer,and walmart.But as I said before I stopped shopping at Dominicks way before I heard about Jill.And the reason was not customer service but expired food on the shelves.That was over 10 years ago.Since then I have only walked in a Dominicks store 10 times tops.And it has to be a pretty good deal to get me to walk in one.I hope things will change.I would hate to see a food chain that has been around for so long go under.And I would HATE to see people lose jobs too.Especially now.But it is for the safety of all that they change.
teacherk says
The show Undercover Boss should invite Safeway’s CEO to go on the show to see how successful he/she would be doing what Mr. Grocer said the workers are expected to do. I’d like to watch that episode!
doodlebug says
What bothers me, as much as or more than the expired food, is that the grocery stores are allowing perfectly good food to go to waste on their shelves. Are they ordering too much stock? Can’t they do more accurate sales forecasting?
I realize the stores will always have some stock that won’t sell before the expiration dates, but why is throwing it out the only option? Millions of people in this country go hungry every night, hundreds of thousands of them in Chicagoland alone. Maybe I’m naive, but wouldn’t an organization such as the Greater Chicago Food Depository be more than happy to help remove some of this food when the expiration dates are approaching? I’m pretty certain that Trader Joe’s donates their unsold food to
this wonderful organization.
Anyone else feel similarly?
iworkatdoms says
I work at Dominick’s where you can imagine your name has been mud for days now. Because we know the expired food is there and why there’s so much and at first we thought we are going to get in trouble for this. It shakes things up and nobody wants to lose there job. But this manager’s mail is all true every word. You should see how much they want us to do in a day, it would be impossible for anybody. So everybody does what we can when we can. There is a lot of scrambling to work fast and it gets depressing. It is nobody’s job to take the expired food out. Thats the truth. None of us do it.
What else doesn’t help is alot of time we get old stock and it might be going out of code 2 or 3 weeks from when we are first getting it to go on the shelf. Something big needs to change and today we were talking while this is bad right now for Dominick’s it could be good later. If they have to give us more hours to keep stocking better and watch dates they will need to change things. And maybe we would get them to send us things that are not expiring in only weeks. We could get more hours and more money to do this right and alot of us would be happier working here.
Thank you for thinking about us who work at Dominick’s also. I know it isn’t great but it is my job.
Bernard2003 says
(my hubby is in a somewhat related form of the food industry). We think there is some portion of this situation to do with the distribution of product to the stores. In a chain as big as safeway, they are probably distributing their own stock to some degree. This may be were they need to focus on distributing stock that is not going to expire immediately after delivery to the store. I agree that it sounds like the amount of work they expect their employees to accomplish per shift is unrealistic.
To be sure, a distribution issue like that is not a store level issue. I have also seen quite a few nice Dominick’s employees and a handful of bad eggs that I try to avoid (maybe those are training opportunities? hmm not sure how that one should be handled.)
mashupmom says
Jill — I just wanted to thanks for all the effort you have put into bringing these issues to light and helping reach the people who don’t read the blogs or facebook. I have a diehard Dominick’s shopping friend who has always felt that Jewel is “run down” and Dominick’s is “classy.” I’ve been telling her for years that mood lighting and wooden floors aren’t everything — she called me this week almost in tears because she saw your news stories and went and looked in her cabinet only to find that a number of items she’d recently purchased are expired. “I thought I could TRUST them!”
Your name shouldn’t be “mud” at Dominick’s. You should be thanked for bringing these issues to light and helping prompt corporate to clean things up. No one can say you didn’t make all efforts to notify them before going public — these issues have been going on for years. I went to my store just yesterday, and it was lovely: All the shelves were faced, all the expired products pulled, everything clean and shiny. If this keeps up, it will only be good for sales.
grocery.worker says
I came across your site due to the fact I work for a vendor that supplies grocery stores across the country and was alerted to the “problem” found by shoppers at Dominick’s. I am not from the Chicago area and am not familiar with Dominick’s but I felt I should respond.
I have worked in the grocery business off and on for 22 years. Things have changed drastically to meet demand. As long as consumers demand groceries, or any other product, at low prices, companies will do what ever it takes to meet those demands while remaing profitable. The easiest way to keep costs and prices down is to reduce labor costs. As Dominick’s employees have pointed out this is what is being done. Corners have to be cut when this happens.
Consumers make the ultimate choice with their dollar. As many posts show people have quit shopping at Dominick’s due to the problems there. This is your choice, but people also don’t want Dominick’s to close or employees to loose their jobs. Sorry, that is the way things work. How many people lost their jobs when chain stores like Dominick’s, Target, Walmart and Meijer began to develop and small mom-and-pop stores closed?? The “problems” at Dominick’s are just part of the evolution of American society. At first larger stores offered lower prices so people shopped there. Small stores went out of business. Choices of where to spend your dollar shrank. Now that there are fewer choices the competition for your dollar has become even tougher as companies fight for business. To win the fight they cut everything they can in order to remain competitive. Choices will continue to shrink as businesses like Dominick’s go under due to bad business practices.
The question each of us has to ask ourselves is how much is enough? How important is price? That is why I found it amusing that this “problem” was brought to light by your story. I’m sure Dominick’s would be willing to hire more employees to take the time to check product rotation, or have more labor hours to get things done if you are willing to pay more for the products you buy. Since the theme of this site is stretching your shopping dollar I would guess this is not the case.
In the grocery business we have a name for people who shop around looking for the best bargains on goods. They’re called “pickers” because they come in and pick through to find only the best prices on items. There is nothing wrong with this practice. It just defeats the purpose. Businesses run good bargains to get you in the store to buy those items as well as other items. They want to gain your business on a consistent basis. If the bargains are the only thing you buy you actually drive the prices of other items up. Most of the best bargains are actually sold at a loss. To make up for this loss they raise the prices on other items. In the end you see higher prices across the board. Did you ever notice the regular price on items actually goes up from what it was prior to a sale when the sale ends? It goes up and stays at the higher price to make up for the loss. Seems like you are shooting yourself in the foot here.
In coporate America the only thing that matters is the bottom line. This is the society we live in. We have created it. We refuse to address coporate abuses and greed. We don’t want coporate regulation because that would be socialism (a whole nuther subject). We as voters continue to watch as America falls further and further behind due to our refusal to deal with the problems we have created. As long as you keep your head in the sand your a$$ is sticking up and its going to get kicked.
doodlebug says
Thanks for your very thoughtful responses to my posts, nightcrew1 and ishop2. I came across the link below for Chicago’s biggest food bank. It’s very eye-opening. I hope everyone interested in the topic of expired food will read it. What I get from it is that donating foods with approaching expiration dates (and cosmetically damaged items, etc.) is a complete WIN for the grocery chain. It saves them money on transport and disposal costs, there is no risk of liability because of laws that have been passed to protect the donor organization, and it’s GREAT for their public image.
Again, here’s the link. I hope it works:
https://www.chicagosfoodbank.org/site/PageServer?pagename=diff_food
joulscouls says
This is just an off the cuff idea, but since Dom’s is trying to stay in business w/ an unrealistic budget, and it makes sense to donate soon-to-expire groceries, why not allow (cleared) volunteers from the local food pantry to come in at night, remove the soon to expire food, fill out required paperwork and have a Dom’s employee scan the product dates before they leave. Probably more efficient and definitely cheaper than having to rotate themselves and the food pantry is able to stock up.
I realize this is an unorthodox solution but w/ some thought put into it, couldn’t it work?
coupking says
For years as a cashier at Dominick’s I have gone out of my way to take care of couponers, even though they hold up the line, often try to stack coupons, obviously taking entire stacks of coupons and or coupon books meant to be available to all customers. I have seen how quickly they can turn on you when things don’t go quite their way. That is why I find it hard to believe that the change in policy with regard to catalina coupons and expired coupons played no part in you going to the media. There is no excuse for out of date product being on the shelves, but I found it interesting that no one went in Jewel, Independents, Walmart etc., where I am sure similar situations exist. With actions taken to remedy the problem I am sure Dominick’s has the Least amount of out of code merchandise of any chain in the country. When this hit I wouldn’t say Dominick’s went into panic mode, it was more like take care of business mode. Thank you for making this public, hopefully we will be given the tools to keep taking care of business the right way. And don’t worry, before you know it the coupon policy will probably change again.
coupking says
I have to say I don’t believe you!
hahahahaha says
YOU are directly affecting the employees.
YOU are not looking out for other shoppers.
YOU definitely made an extremely selfish decision to involve yourself in a company’s business.
Yes, I admit that the expired products are not acceptable and they should be taken care of but I also think you and your friends took this issue way out of proportion and into your own hands, which should have not been done in the first place because you are not even a Dominick’s employee or even affiliated with the company in any way (besides trying to rip us off and steal our money.)
Honestly, I just think this is a waste of your time that you could be using affectively (working at a job (no need for coupon clipping if you have enough money, right?), spending time with your family?, or helping an organization or company (instead of sabotaging.))
This isn’t even an issue that’s directly affecting your life.
I hope you know what you’ve done and I hope you know that after enough time passes, NO ONE WILL REMEMBER THIS. We are a nationwide, major corporation.
Savermom2go says
Than we wonder why people are out of work…and this economy is what it is! Safeway and every other retail/grocery store needs to rethink their employment practices. I work for a similar company and see the problems also….less employees, more work, not enough hours in the day…something gets kicked to the way side. There are so many people out of work that would love to work…but the problem is minimum wage. They want to offer anyone no matter what age or work experience minimum wage. Safeway would be leaps ahead if they would show the government on how it should be done…CORRECTLY!. Correct number of employees at a decent wage = great customer service because everything is fresh and neat. And great customer service = more sales! It is a win win situation and I do not see why top CEO officials of all companies do not see this. I understand, it all comes down to the bottom line…profits. But nothing will change unless someone makes the correct change! Oops! Sorry for being on my soap box. Thanks for listening.