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Comment by k-mcgrady | Hacker News Reader

>> "we'd throw away excess bread at the end of each day"

And here's the problem. Good food getting wasted. That bread would be perfectly fine the next day and 90% of people would be happy with it but the business would rather waste it and have something perfect. The same thing happens in grocery stores. If a multi pack of crisps/chips splits they throw out the entire thing even though every pack inside the large container remains sealed. They could sell those individually or tape up the outer container and offer a discount. When I worked in a grocery store the amount of good food thrown away was unbelievable. I'm sure the amount of wasted food could be reduced significantly by focusing on these areas which don't fall under the 'better to have too much than too little' rule you mentioned.

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I'm guessing you got voted down because people don't want to eat bread baked the previous evening. Of course, I don't know because there are no frikkin' comments from the trigger happy. Even if they don't like your bread idea, doesn't your multi-pack point cancel that out? Waitrose discounts ageing sandwiches. I think you have a point that small improvements could be made in multiple areas. Assuming waste is a problem.

In Germany, in some places there are bakeries that offer bread from the day before for a discount.

Jimmy Johns, the sandwich shop, specifically markets their day-old bread for 50 cents/loaf. It appears there is a (small) market for less than perfect food.

In my region there is a group of charities that get food that would otherwise have been thrown out from local grocery stores. The handling of the food tends to be a bit careless so it's best to stay away from the things that really need to be refrigerated, but it was really helpful for me when I was unemployed. So I for one am glad that grocery stores have too much.

That's great but my point wasn't that they have too much. It was that they are throwing away perfectly good things with only surface/package damage. Giving them to a charity is a much better solution that throwing them in the trash.

There's a national chain of bakeries that operate in our town. They don't offer any discounts at the end of the day because that means that people won't pay full price but will soak up the left overs instead.

Selling seconds/discount items reduces waste but [in poorer areas in particular it seems, and more so with food] it acts as competition against your own full price product. Companies would rather produce waste than damage profits.

Of course there's a fine line and in some areas of commerce price discrimination based on spoilt" goods will be worth while. In large-scale food production the costs of food relative to the selling price are usually low and the negative effects of food wastage aren't born directly by those who do it, it's mainly the same effects as commercial over-farming. Wasting food causes floods (!) but the local bakery don't get the insurance bill and so don't care.

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