The evening sale at Market’s frying point ended due to hoarders. The chains assure that the problem is not nationwide.
The hoarders have packed buns and products into their carts hours before the evening sale starts. TIINA SOMERPURO/KL
The loss reduction took a surprising turn. In Salo, S-Market Plaza has stopped the evening sale of frying point products.
The reason is hoarders, who piled buns and other products into their carts long before the sale started, reports Iltalehti.
Previously, in the store, the products from the frying pan were sold at a 60 percent discount starting at 8 p.m. A group of people came to the store already after nightfall to hoard products from the bakery, and they hung out in the store for so long that they didn’t pay for the products at the cash register until after eight.
Local problem
S group’s convenience store responsibility expert Iida Lehtimäki says by email that he does not recognize hoarding like the one described above as a national problem.
– The majority of customers use the possibility of an evening sale as part of a normal shopping trip. The hoarding of sale products from the roasting point that has come to light is rare, he says.
– Frying point products are baked as you go, which means that availability and wastage are already managed during the day, and there is no need for an evening sale everywhere.
Last year, the S group reduced its losses by 31 percent compared to 2014.
– The most visible loss control method in grocery stores for customers is the discounting of food products close to the best-before date, says Lehtimäki.
The national evening sale policy has been in use in the S group for eight years.
K Group’s daily grocery store communications manager Helena Viinanen tells by email that there is no uniform evening sale in K-shops, but each merchant decides on his own discount sales.
According to information from K-group’s communications, it has not appeared that a similar hoarding phenomenon has occurred in K-grocery stores.
– In general, however, there is currently a lot of demand for red-labelled products, says Viinanen.
Struggling with the hoarding problem, S-Market Plaza ended up handing over the unsold baked goods to food aid providers.