Back in my days in retail, we were ordered to put resupply as FILO into the shelfs. It makes sense to sell the oldest products first. So why the transfer shuffle?
Since I've had to deal with a similar issue professionally, maybe think of a retailer with 5 distribution warehouses and 50 stores. Normally you want to pick from the closest distribution warehouse to minimize transport costs. However, for food items that expire sometimes it might make sense to pick from the furthest warehouse if their stock is getting older, you need to optimize both for transport costs and the cost of having to throw food away. It's beyond a HN comment, and I'd have to review what isn't NDA, but the optimization math for such a scenario gets both really complicated and really interesting.
Hope this clarifies why they would be moving stick though.
We also had commercial stores spread out which were in essence local warehouses. Those stores spent a large part of their time handling stock transfers. They held specialty products small stores rarely need and couldn't justify the minimum order quantity.
It's a lot more efficient and much faster than having product shipped across the country.
</hn programmer pedantry>
Perhaps fresh in, last out?
Hard to address the consumers' tendency to "reach out in the back", to get longer expiration time products.
Seems kinda like farting in a crowded room and then slipping out the door.
I however choose not to do so quite deliberately. I want to avoid food waste. I just check the date is "good enough". My regular shop has a good enough flow that I usually pick from the front.
Food waste is a trending concern around here. But I think you and I who cares about shelf life belongs to the same minority. The majority has enough other worries and does not spend bandwidth to care as it is usually good enough.
I consider fish a "fresh" item and care more for looks and smell.
Same as with vegetables. But I hate people who prod everything - that is detrimental to the product.
* the amount of stock going through one fulfillment center instead of landing on shelves in smaller stores, means we never have old products laying around. The cucumber you get from us came in a few hours ago. The one in your store has been laying there for days and touched by many. 10 stores each need their own buffer to handle variable demand and thus overstock and get deliveries for certain products rarely. We don't. Our spoilage is so so low compared to traditional stores. * anyways, to alleviate the fears of ordering something that's about to expire, we guarantee x amount of days for perishable products.