A systematic approach to preventing chilled-food waste at the retail outlet

The objective of this paper is to develop a systematic overview of interventions for preventing chilled-food waste at retail outlets, and to assess the impact of these interventions for a particular case of fresh-cut iceberg lettuce at a Dutch retail outlet. The structure of the simulation model as presented in this paper is generic, hence suitable for other retailers and other chilled-food products as well. The generated systematic overview focusses on interventions that do not require a system change. A distinction is made into technical, logistical and marketing interventions. Model simulations show the effectiveness of these interventions. It is concluded that a number of ‘waste drivers’ exists, such as a low and varying consumer demand, high selection behaviour, the order lead time, a fixed order unit, and a short use-by date. The retailer can fine-tune the replenishment level of his order policy and the way of rounding to the given order unit, but by doing so he is at best able to exchange waste for out-of-stock or the other way around. The systematic overview of interventions is valuable input to future research on defining and estimating the effectiveness of combining interventions, and interventions that do require a system change.