The Produce Project: Day 4
August 16th, 2007 by Jonathan
I recently worked at a supermarket produce department for three months, an endeavor I’ve dubbed “The Produce Project.” On the first day of work, I got right into the action by tossing more than 50 pounds of ”sell-by” date casualties and watching some computer training videos.
My fourth day began with more culling. As I pulled out tomatoes, potatoes and peppers, I thought about how strange it all was. A fruit or vegetable can be 95 percent perfect, but that one bad spot dooms produce to the dumpster.
I knew that the produce I’d culled was headed to the dumpster, but before this day I hadn’t actually thrown it away. Having to dispose of all that mostly good produce didn’t feel so great. When I was alone, I began setting some stuff aside on the grass next to the dumpster in the hopes that someone might take it home. Upon returning to the dumpster, I’d often find that items had disappeared.
I watched yet another training video that warned of the “bacteria danger zone”–41 to 135 degrees F. It specifically mentioned cut melons as items that needed immediate refrigeration. After that, I made a point to get these into the refrigerated wall first when re-stocking, imagining them rotting from storeroom to shelves.
On this day, I learned that produce makes up about 10 percent of a store’s sales. That figure was a bit higher than I’d imagined. I also found that shoppers were surprised to see me open two boxes of strawberries, cull the rotting fruit and combine them into one box. There seems to be an illusion that wrapped produce is untouched. Not so. In fact, sometimes we’d pull out the bad strawberries without adding new ones.
Finally, I had to laugh when I witnessed how management views its employees. Two supervisors entered the small office as I was watching a training a video. “Is that the new guy?” one asked, wondering if I was the new management trainee.
“No, that’s produce.”
Just don’t cull me.
Stumble it! | Posted in The Produce Project, Supermarket |
Jonathan,
I just discovered your web site! Good stuff. Did you do any more blogging after day 4 at the supermarket?
I recently worked for 3 months at a small, independent, local “natural foods” market. There, one of the owners has a farm in town so at least for the summer one of the produce fellows who cares about not wasting, as do I, put the culled produce in a big barrel for the owner to take home to compost. That produce person and I no longer work there so I don’t know what they are doing nowadays. Also, the store has an extensive prepared foods department so they tried to take perishables from fish, meat, and produce as much as possible to turn into something prepared. That cut down the waste quite a bit.
What I also saw was inadequate tracking of expiration dates on packaged foods, such as aspetic packages of soymilk. They didn’t keep track via computer, I don’t know if that’s possible anyway. Whenever I would find a product within a month of reaching the date, I would place it on sale and diplay it separately. Whatever did not sell had to be tossed. Apparently, prior to my employment, folks working at the store were taking those items home, but a policy was in place when I was hired to stop that and toss the items. Not only was it wasting perfectly good food, but folks were tossing the packaging in the trash! I would empty the product out, e.g. soymilk, and put the empty container in the recycling bins. Speaking of recycling bins, the store wasn’t using them when I first began working there. They didn’t even have any as the town just recently decided to pick up business recyclables, imagine that! I asked the manager enough so they finally got the bins.
That’s what I witnessed at a small market. Imagine what the larger stores can accomplish with some of these ideas.
Gauri
Wow, thanks for sharing your experiences, Gauri. What you’ve said confirms my belief: one person can make a significant impact at a store, institution or company.
I haven’t blogged about my experiences after Day 4, but thanks for the nudge. I’ll have to get on that!