The Nation’s Leader in Surplus, Seconds, Salvage, Opportunity & Spot Buys Specializing in Short-Coded, Past “Best-Use-By” Dates and Discount Products
Food Retailers, Manufacturers, Suppliers, and Processors:
Do you have a “Short-Dated” Food Issue? “Close-Coded” Food Can Cost you Money – Or – You can turn this Inventory Liability into Fast Cash from a Food Trader/Food Broker.
Food brokers are uniquely positioned to help alleviate product-related costs through several services, such as leveraging their usually extensive network and purchasing power to buy short-dated food. This “service,” as it were, has the potential to not only save businesses significant amounts of money through “less loss and less waste” and turn “close coded,” “short-dated,” or even past “best use by date” inventory liability into fast, usually much needed cash.
Marvell Foods is one of the nation’s leading food-buying, food brokerage, and trading companies. As a multi-generational family owned business, we have earned an unparalleled reputation as a food broker and food buyer for an enormous array of food and food-related products.
From fresh and frozen (proteins) to shelf-stable drinks/beverages, water, protein drinks, and almost anything else – spices, pet food ingredients, rice, pasta, pastries, bakery goods, and cheese, we help businesses save money by reducing waste and storage needs.
To help our clients, we offer creative ways to maximize the profit potential on all products,
including short-dated food for sale that is no longer fit for traditional consumer channels.
What is Short Coded Food?
Short-coded food refers to products that are perfectly fine to consume, but their expiration dates are considered too soon by retailers. Food brokers will actively and aggressively seek to purchase these short-coded food products and other shelf-stable items approaching their expiration and “best use by” dates.
Businesses lose money on short-dated food every day. According to the USDA’s Economic Research Service, these losses added up to $162 billion in 2010—and accounted for 31% of the available food supply. Over time, this can add to potentially significant revenue loss, especially when considering other factors leading to previously salable products needing to be pulled from shelves (think packaging updates, seasonal variations, and excess goods).
Quick Tips for Better Shelf-Life Management
Getting food products from production to the shelf efficiently is essential for your operations and your bottom line. To help you achieve this, we’re sharing some tips for better shelf life management—in addition to Marvell Foods as a critical source and strategic partner for your business to buy expired food, Marvell Foods has a nationwide network of alternative and secondary source buyers for your products and goods such as national and independent discount supermarkets and grocery stores, convenience stores, food banks, commissaries, government institutions, such as Federal and State Prisons, among a vast array of other niche buyers. Now, here are some hopefully helpful tips:
- Arrange products by short date— not first in, first out.
70% of consumer decisions are made at the shelf, and arranging your products greatly impacts what gets purchased and when. To help ensure products get sold before their “best use before” date, put products with the nearest short dates at the front instead of arranging by first in, first out.
- Centralize your data.
Make it easy to see what’s nearing its short date by storing all relevant product data in one centralized location instead of on multiple platforms or spreadsheets. This way, you can easily pull up a complete list of nearing “best before” dates and then push those products through placement and promotions.
- Analyze purchasing behaviors.
The more you know about your shoppers’ purchasing behaviors, the better you can anticipate and accommodate sale trends. For example, if you notice certain items are often expiring before you can sell off the inventory, that’s a sign that you should go back to the drawing board and evaluate how many units you purchase in the first place. (Granted, this
does NOT help you with the product(s) you presently have, BUT it will help by limiting overbuying and all the associated costs with storing and disposing of inventory).
- Look for other ways to sell short dated products.
Short dates happen, and when they do, it’s essential to have a plan to mitigate losses. Partnering with food brokers like Marvell Foods means you don’t have to worry about the next steps as products near their “best use before” date. Once your products/goods get within a 90-60 day window, it is best for you to reach out to Marvell Foods. This allows us to bring you the best price possible by being able to place it with other buyers/retailers who are comfortable and confident that they can sell these goods. When your goods hit that “30- day” window, the deal becomes more difficult, but not impossible, but know that this significantly impacts the price that you’ll receive. On the other hand, ridding yourself of very short-dated product and receiving cash for it right away, even if deeply discounted, is still an option for you.
Reduce Short-Dated Losses with Marvell Foods as Your Key Partner
At Marvell Foods, our team is ready to work to help you reduce profit loss from short-dated products. We offer immediate solutions for selling short-dated, expired, and other difficult
to-offload items so you can alleviate costs and better manage your business. And with our extensive network of buyers, we can offer you an effective and fast process with every sale.
Contact us today for more information!
