We know supermarkets reduce food items if they’re close to their expiry date to avoid waste — but what time of day is best to find the bargains?
Yellow stickers often seen on food items in supermarkets mark out those nearing their expiration date. The labels are bright so they don’t go unnoticed and can lead to major savings. It helps supermarkets reduce waste and customers to save money by buying at a lower cost.
The majority of the items sold on yellow sticker labels can be frozen, such as bread, ready meals, and meat. I recently visited my local Marks and Spencer Food Hall every day for a week at different times to see when the best bargains were available, and I was very surprised with the results.
Yellow stickers are typically applied at different times, depending on the supermarket. However, these reductions are often put in place in the evening, shortly before closing.
On my first visit to M&S Food, I absolutely loved that the reduced items weren’t all placed together on a shelf. They were carefully distributed across the store and kept on the shelves you would usually find them in, which made it much easier to find the bargains.
On the first day, quite a few fresh goods were on discount in the pudding section, but other than that, the majority of the discounted goods had gone. Those on offer included yoghurt, a handful of ready meals and some fresh vegetables.
I also visited the store in the morning, although this was on a weekend, which could have impacted the goods on offer. And at around 9am on a Saturday and 11am on a Sunday, I didn’t really find any discounted foods other than some bread. I was expecting this as supermarkets don’t tend to reduce foods in the morning from what I’ve seen.
Which time of day was best?
I was pleasantly surprised, however, to find lots of discounted goods when I visited at lunchtime, which was around 12:30pm. Discounted goods included a honey-glazed gammon, which was reduced to £3.50 from £9, which I purchased to put in the freezer.
Some potato dauphinoise prepared dishes were also discounted to £2.64 from £4.50, and some freshly prepared vegetables were reduced to £1.64 from £3. I purchased all of these for just £7.78 when they should have been £16.50 which was a right bargain find.
Some yoghurts also had yellow sticker labels as they were going out of date that day, as well as some mushroom and chicken ready meals and a fish and chip ready meal. For a sweet treat I managed to find one of M&S’ new Cookie Cups reduced to £1.79 from £3 which I thought was a bargain as I wouldn’t pay £3.
I visited at this time three times over the week and found this was the best time for yellow sticker labels at my local store. I’d highly recommend searching for yellow sticker labels when shopping as you can end up saving a lot of cash and reducing food waste. It’s also important to note that this was just one Marks and Spencer food store, and the timings of reduced goods can differ between stores.