Japanese supermarkets regularly mark down prices of things that are either A) perishable, or B) soon to reach the best by date.
The folks who know to hit up supermarkets an hour before closing – that is, when sushi and bento have their prices slashed – I call them tiburones (sharks, but in Spanish).
Join me around the virtual campfire as I spin yarns of my time as a tiburón.
Singapores Cold Storage grocery stores used to mark down their mornings sushi at 5pm every day. I used to show up at 4:55pm and there would be a couple other backpackers doing the same thing. Really good sushi made 8 or 9 hours before at half price. What a deal!
The locals did not seem to find it as attractive a deal for some reason.
In London, Ontario, the sharks show up right when the independent grocery stores open in the morning. The produce and meat have been reduced just before opening, and I’ve seen some shoppers fill their carts up to the top with the reduced foods.
I have purchased food from food courts just before closing and ended up with some deals. There are lines at the mall’s cheap sushi shop once the sushi goes on sale an hour or 2 before closing. I’ll buy day old baked goods, but I don’t like the idea I’d day old pre-rolled mall sushi.
Sandwich places (including pharmacies) in the UK used to do this at the end of the day as well — I had to remind myself as a young’un that shrimp mayo that had been sitting out for the whole day was probably not a great buy even at half off 
“What does not kill me makes me stronger!”
Seriously, though, how long does it take for mayo to go bad? It depends on a lot of variables I imagine but I wonder how close we come to poisoning ourselves that way…
My hope is that it actually takes longer than we imagine but I have no evidence to support that hope.
Tales from Strawberry Village.
We have the same responses here in the UK. Generally I am against the deskilling of emplotees by relacement with customer self-service but in this one specific case I prefer to do it myself. Packing shopping bags at the pace I pick from the shelves not the super-fast speed of a checkout’s conveyer belt. Plus paying with a debit/credit card and maybe in the very near future through ApplePay.
There are three supermarkets I use on a regular basis. The most frequent has had self-service for over a decade or more. Do 90% of my shopping there. The second one has had it (working) for five or so years; they introduced it once before but stopped it because they said it led to shoplifting. Go there because they have a good selection of gltuen-/dairy-free products which one of my family needs. The third well their self-service system has not work once in all the years I have gone to them. I buy their own brand ground coffee in bulk because it is the one I like (and I’ve tried all the others whether branded or own brand). Every time I leave the supermarket and see their machines displaying “Closed” it reminds me of the (British?) McDonalds whose ice cream factory system never works in any of their outlets.
During lockdown that was one of the worst time to go. Queues snaked around the supermarket’s car park on a Saturday. It would up to two hours at least to get to the front of the queue even observing the two metre seperation rule. Security were only allowing 30 people in the store at a time. One out; one in. They discouraged couples from going together.
After a few weeks one of the queue minders suggested that Thursdays were a better day to go as the queues were only a dozen people and the wait about 15 minutes. Being in a position to go on Thursday I found it a more pleasant experience. Once lockdowns were over I continued with Thursdays, which proved to be a boon as it was the day the supermarket’s weekly house magazine was put out; by Saturdays there were often none left.
When I am asked by shorter fellow customers to get something from the higher shelves I joke that “it is the only reason that my spouse takes me along” as they too are somewhat short in stature.
My favorite supermarket in our area is Market Basket (Massachusetts), known for its loyal customer base. What I love most includes low prices, no need for loyalty cards/coupons* to receive sale prices, a selection of reliable store brands, and their well-staffed and well-stocked stores. Zero self-checkouts at MB. Simple.
I find all this refreshing. As a point of comparison: If I chose to shop at my nearby Whole Foods, I would find higher prices and a store that’s largely been gutted of staffed cashier lanes in favor of self-checkouts. Plus in order to receive sale prices, I need to give up my data (“Are you a Prime member?”). Doesn’t work for me unless WF stocks a specialty item I can’t find elsewhere, but even that has gotten to be less and less frequent.
I do also enjoy the selection at Trader Joe’s, and pop in there every couple of months to pick up various favorites.
*Note: Shoppers automatically receive the discount on store sale items at checkout—no coupon or loyalty card necessary. So no Market Basket store coupons, though they do accept manufacturer’s coupons.
We at 5’9" honor your service, good sir. You ever need anything pulled out from under the bed, car, whatever… say the word. My short self is at the ready.
I live in a sparsely populated area, where much meat and veg is grown or bought locally, so our stores weren’t all too cramped. That said, we don’t have a ton of places to shop, but I didn’t see the hoarding we saw on TV. We’re in an info. age where people freak at anything and everything. Every day is the " end of the world as we know it." I’d rather enjoy a beer and brat and enjoy the ride. Which I did often in “lockdown.” I wasn’t locked down no-how.
I understand that’s their reasoning, and yet to sometimes reach a product, I have to climb on grocery store shelves, since it’s not easy to find a worker to come help grab a product. That is even more dangerous, and it probably doesn’t do any good to their actual shelves.
Having worked in warehouses I would never climb on shelving.
Just cautious 
I was at Safeway yesterday and wanted to use the app, but I couldn’t tell whether there was a limit on my cider which is in the U xcanner.
The beer and wine manager was there and he took my phone and spent a couple of minutes to reset the functions.
Bunch of hidden pages to modify things.
Now I can scan the product barcode instead of having to read the paper shell tag.
So much better and less stress to boot!
Free fruit for kids in the fruit basket.
The Law of Unexpected Consequences when they cut staff to save money. (A company I worked for decided to cut back on specially printed coding forms, the result being that people just photocopied the ones they had–at a much higher cost.)
