---
title: "The Billion-Dollar Industry Behind Near-Expiry Food: Supermarkets, E-commerce, Charity, and Cross-Border Shopping"
description: "Near-expiry food, once a niche market, is emerging as a billion-dollar opportunity globally. From specialized supermarkets in Europe to e-commerce platforms in China, businesses are finding innovative ways to reduce waste and profit from these products, despite challenges in consumer acceptance and standardization."
author: "陈玉清"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2019-07-25"
language: "en"
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# The Billion-Dollar Industry Behind Near-Expiry Food: Supermarkets, E-commerce, Charity, and Cross-Border Shopping

> Near-expiry food, once a niche market, is emerging as a billion-dollar opportunity globally. From specialized supermarkets in Europe to e-commerce platforms in China, businesses are finding innovative ways to reduce waste and profit from these products, despite challenges in consumer acceptance and standardization.

**In today's era of new retail, the traditional food industry is facing the challenge of transformation and upgrading. A large number of startups centered on consumers and advocating personalized consumption are seizing opportunities. Whether through passive reflection or active creation, the entire industry is seeking new changes, trying to find the next new consumption model that people will follow in the future.**

As the quality of life continues to improve, people hope that their material needs can be endowed with more spiritual connotations, and the product itself embodies a life philosophy. Following this line of thought, many supermarkets specializing in near-expiry food have emerged abroad.

Unlike the previous crude sales methods that only used price as a selling point, they have begun to advocate the low-carbon and environmentally friendly nature of their products, and have raised the slogan of refusing food waste. Consumers of these supermarkets are no longer limited to the elderly who love discounted goods; many young people have also become the main consumer force of the supermarkets.

Near-expiry food, as the name implies, refers to food that is about to reach its expiration date. Many people are unable to accept it because they question its safety. However, near-expiry food is still within the shelf life and meets the scope of safe food.

Before the establishment of near-expiry food supermarkets, to avoid food waste, these foods were distributed to various relief stations abroad, turning them into relief food for the poor.

Today, although people in various countries have increased their awareness of near-expiry food, a standardized market for near-expiry food has not yet emerged, and the methods of handling near-expiry food vary.

**Abroad: Supermarkets, Relief Meals, Sustainable Utilization...**

"A food waste supermarket" is a "surplus food supermarket" in Leeds, UK, opened by the charity "The Real Junk Food Project."

They cooperate with other local supermarkets to purchase and sell those near-expiry foods. Usually, these foods are very cheap, and people can even exchange labor for them without paying. This supermarket has brought a lot of support to local poor families.

Daily Table, located in Washington, D.C., USA, is a non-profit retail supermarket. Most of the products in the supermarket are near-expiry foods donated by large local suppliers, providing people with various cheap agricultural products, dairy products, bread, and other foods.

They process and cook these foods in their own kitchen, and under the guidance of nutrition experts, deliver fresh "ready-to-eat meals" to customers.

It is worth mentioning that Daily Table was founded by Doug Rauch, the former president of Trader Joe's (nicknamed "Que De Jiu"), which was a luxury-oriented national supermarket chain known for wasting food.

Daily Table's "ready-to-eat meals" made from near-expiry food
Image source: Daily Table official website

WeFood is Denmark's first near-expiry food supermarket, located in its capital, Copenhagen. From the first day of opening, this supermarket selling near-expiry food became a "star supermarket" that attracted attention at home and abroad. Even the Danish princess and the minister of the food and environment department attended its opening ceremony.

Within three weeks of opening, this supermarket attracted over 30,000 followers on Facebook, showing its popularity. Compared with ordinary supermarkets, WeFood's prices are about 50% cheaper, but not all people who come to WeFood are attracted by its prices; most people like the concept of this supermarket.

Fruits sold at WeFood
Image source: WeFood official website

In addition to opening supermarkets for near-expiry food, foreign countries also recycle these near-expiry foods to maximize their residual value and create the greatest social benefits.

In Japan, the 24-hour convenience store Lawson cooperates with local waste disposal companies:
The off-shelf food from the store is first handed over to the processor; after simple odorless treatment, the processor sends the food to a composting plant, which sells it to fertilizer companies; finally, the fertilizer company turns the compost into organic fertilizer and distributes it to farmers cooperating with Lawson. The vegetables and fruits grown by farmers using this organic fertilizer will eventually be placed back on Lawson's shelves.

In Germany, there is a public welfare organization with 800 branches called "Tafel" ("Relief Table"), with 13 institutions in Berlin alone. "Tafel" mainly collects near-expiry food from supermarkets and distributes it to those in need. About 700,000 people regularly receive their free food, paying at most a symbolic fee of no more than 1 euro.

At the same time, the German Federal Food Recovery Association has 80 medium-sized food recovery companies. Because fermented recovered food can generate biogas for electricity and heat, the Food Recovery Association discovered this.

The attention paid to near-expiry food abroad is also related to data on food waste in recent years. A study in the journal *PLOS ONE* showed that Americans waste nearly 150,000 tons of food every day, equivalent to about one pound (about 0.45 kg) per person per day, with fruits and vegetables being the most wasted.

According to a survey by the British NGO "Love Food Hate Waste" in cities across the UK, Britons throw away food worth £15.1 billion (about $24.4 billion) purchased from supermarkets every year.

On average, each British household discards food worth £572 (about $925) purchased from supermarkets each year, mainly due to "overbuying" leading to food expiring or not being eaten at all.

**Domestic: Supermarkets Set Up Near-Expiry Food Zones, Pinduoduo Attempts to Sell "Near-Expiry Milk"**

In China, people's recognition and acceptance of near-expiry food is far from sufficient. Near-expiry food has always existed as a niche market in special zones in major supermarkets, or is sold at a discount during specific time periods, and the people who buy them are mostly elderly people who value price advantages.

Through marketing methods such as **price reduction or bundle promotion**, major supermarkets can quickly and effectively sell near-expiry food, and also avoid the secondary sales of repackaged products by unscrupulous food manufacturers. This method is mostly applied to products that supermarkets produce and sell themselves.

In addition, destruction or processing into feed are also common treatment methods. At present, most supermarkets in China will return food directly to the manufacturer or supplier when there is still one-third of the shelf life left, and issue a delisting receipt.

With the development of domestic online e-commerce platforms, near-expiry food has also found a survival soil other than supermarkets. E-commerce giants such as Pinduoduo, Taobao, and JD.com have vaguely noticed this new market waiting to be tapped.

The sale of "near-expiry milk" led by Pinduoduo is undoubtedly impulsive. In today's context where the correct concept of near-expiry food has not yet been popularized, selling near-expiry infant formula directly challenges consumers' psychological bottom line. "Near-expiry" is easily equated with "expired," thereby deepening people's misunderstanding of near-expiry food.

In contrast, the public's acceptance of near-expiry snacks is much higher. Of course, this is also closely related to the fact that the consumer group is the young post-90s generation, because they have a relatively high acceptance of new things.

In particular, some imported snacks that are expensive in domestic supermarkets, when they become near-expiry food sold online, the price suddenly drops by more than half, and they are widely loved by young consumer groups.

**It May Become a Multi-Trillion-Dollar Business in the Future**

According to statistics from the General Administration of Customs, in 2018, China's imported food scale exceeded $70 billion, and China has become one of the world's largest consumers of imported food.

Near-expiry food with obvious price advantages can test the waters in this industry, because the consumption resistance of imported food is precisely the price. Coupled with the traffic attributes of the e-commerce model, young consumer groups who pursue personalization and fashion are bound to become their main consumers.

For enterprises, near-expiry food was originally a burden caused by industrial surplus, and improper handling can also cause serious waste of social resources.

Deliberately creating the sale of near-expiry food is undoubtedly a reallocation of resources, not only reducing the cost loss of products, but also filling market gaps and gaining new consumer groups.

Especially in today's era of vigorously advocating environmental protection and frugality, near-expiry food itself has a good brand concept. It can even be used as a charity product to solve the global hunger problem.

Data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations shows that about 1.3 billion tons of food are wasted globally each year, causing direct economic losses of up to $940 billion.

**Therefore, whether from the product itself or the market environment, near-expiry food has the potential to become a new business opportunity.**

But for now, the development of near-expiry food still faces huge challenges. The public's acceptance of near-expiry food, the supply of near-expiry food, and the reasonable recovery period of near-expiry food are all objective problems in front of us, waiting to be solved step by step. But just like the first person to eat a crab, exploring the blue ocean of near-expiry food also requires enough courage.

Source: 35斗 (ID: vcearth)


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