How Indian Supermarkets Handle Near-Expiry Stock

The question every operator Googles eventually

You walk your floor on a Tuesday morning and spot a shelf of biscuits with ten days left. You've got two dozen packs. Do you markdown? Move them to a near-expiry corner? Call the distributor? The anxiety is real — and the answer depends on whether you have a system or just a habit.

The question operators search for is: what do the big chains actually do, and can a three-store chain copy it? This post answers both.

What the law actually requires

Under the Food Safety and Standards (Licensing and Registration of Food Businesses) Regulations, 2011, a food business operator is required to ensure that no food past its date of minimum durability or use-by date is offered for sale. The FSS Act, 2006, Section 26(2)(i) prohibits a food business operator from storing or selling any article of food that is unsafe, and expired food is treated as unsafe. Practically, that means expired stock must come off the shelf, be segregated, and be logged before disposal or return — not left to sell through.

Penalties under the FSS Act, 2006 run from fines for sub-standard food (Section 51) to prosecution for unsafe food (Section 59). FSSAI inspections increasingly include spot-checks of near-expiry stock and date labels, so the shelf walk is not optional.

What large chains actually do — based on public reporting

Large chains have dedicated loss-prevention and quality teams running structured processes. The specifics below are drawn from publicly available FSSAI guidance, retail industry reporting, and what chains have described in press interviews — not from internal documents.

Trigger-date markdowns. Rather than waiting until a product is days from expiry, trained staff flag items when they cross a defined shelf-life threshold. At that point, the product moves to a discounted section — often a physical near-expiry corner or a tagged shelf — at a reduced price. The markdown recovers some margin rather than writing the stock off entirely.

Return-to-vendor (RTV) windows. Many FMCG supplier agreements carry a clause allowing the retailer to return stock that will expire before it can reasonably be sold. Large chains track batch-level expiry dates and raise return claims before the window closes. Once a product expires, the claim window typically shuts — the loss sits with the retailer. For more on how this works in practice, see distributor expiry claim management.

Segregation and disposal logs. Expired stock that cannot be returned is pulled, logged by batch and quantity, and disposed of according to FSSAI guidelines. The log matters: during an inspection, an officer can ask to see what happened to stock that was written off. A missing log looks like the product was sold.

Regular shelf walks. Large stores run structured shelf-walk schedules — not just a manager glancing at the aisle. Staff are assigned specific sections, check dates against a log, and escalate anything within the trigger window. The Monday morning shelf walk approach is a version of this that a small store can implement without any software.

Does DMart sell expired products?

This question appears frequently in search and on Reddit threads. We could not find a published FSSAI enforcement order naming DMart (Avenue Supermarts Ltd) for selling expired products at scale. Individual Reddit posts from shoppers describing expired items at specific stores reflect the difficulty of managing date checks across a large estate — not a stated policy. If you find an expired product at any chain, the FSSAI consumer complaint portal (fssai.gov.in) is the formal channel.

The honest answer is that no chain with thousands of SKUs across hundreds of stores achieves zero near-expiry slippage. The difference between a well-run chain and a poorly-run one is whether slippage is caught by the system before a customer finds it, or after.

What a three-store chain can actually copy

You don't need a dedicated loss-prevention team. You need a process that runs even when you're not on the floor.

1. The near-expiry corner

Designate a fixed shelf or basket — same spot every day. Any product that crosses your trigger date (say, the point where remaining shelf life drops to a level your staff can eyeball and recognise as 'needs to move') goes there at a visible markdown. Customers learn to check it. It becomes a destination, not a dumping ground. Label it clearly: 'Best before soon — reduced price.'

For example, picture a two-counter grocery in a tier-2 city. The owner puts a small wire basket at the end of the dairy aisle. Every morning, the person opening the store pulls anything within a week of expiry and drops it in the basket with a sticky price tag. That basket clears daily because regular customers know to check it first.

2. The markdown ladder

A single markdown on day one of the near-expiry window often isn't enough. A ladder works better: a modest discount when the product first enters the near-expiry zone, a deeper cut a few days later if it hasn't moved. Suppose you set two steps — a smaller reduction at the start of the window and a steeper one in the final days. You recover more than a single late markdown, and you avoid the product expiring unsold. See near-expiry stock strategies for Indian retailers for a full breakdown of markdown approaches.

3. The return-to-vendor claim — before the window closes

This is where small stores lose money silently. The distributor's return window closes at or before expiry — sometimes well before. If you don't have a list of which batches are approaching that window, you miss the claim. A simple batch register — even a notebook — with the expiry date and the distributor's return deadline next to each batch is enough to catch this. The distributor expiry claim register template is a ready-made format for exactly this.

4. The disposal log

When stock does expire and can't be returned, write it off in a log: date, product, batch number, quantity, reason. This is your evidence during an FSSAI inspection that the product was removed and not sold. It also tells you, over time, which SKUs are generating repeat write-offs — which is a purchasing problem, not a shelf problem.

The gap between big chains and small stores

Large chains automate the trigger-date alert. Their system flags a batch when it crosses the threshold, and a task appears on a staff member's handheld. The near-expiry corner is restocked by exception, not by memory.

Small stores rely on memory and the morning walk. That works when the store is quiet and the owner is present. It breaks down during festival season, when a new staff member is covering, or when a batch of slow-moving product slips behind faster-moving stock on the shelf.

The gap isn't resources — it's structure. A written trigger-date list reviewed every morning closes most of it. For stores ready to move beyond the notebook, ShelfLifePro serves grocery and supermarket operators with batch-level expiry tracking and near-expiry alerts — 14-day free trial, no credit card required.

What to do this week

• Pick a physical spot for your near-expiry corner and label it.
• Pull your current stock and note anything expiring within your chosen trigger window.
• Check your distributor agreements for return deadlines — call your rep if the clause isn't clear.
• Start a disposal log, even if it's a ruled notebook for now.

The big chains have teams for this. You have a system. Both work — as long as the system actually runs.