🚀 go-pugleaf

  ja> From: joe.chelena@his.com

  ja> My wife shops once a week, on Wednesday, at Shoppers Food Warehouse in
  ja> the Burke, Va store.  She buys a weeks worth of groceries, which
  ja> includes 2 gallons of 1% milk.  More times then we would like to
  ja> count, the second gallon turns before the next Wednesday.  When it
  ja> turns the milk is still several days away (short off) the "Sell By
  ja> Date".  We have talked to a few friends and they have had the same
  ja> problem.  Shoppers is more than happy to take the milk back when this
  ja> happens.  Even so I am beginning to wonder if someone, either Shoppers
  ja> or the dairy, is up to marking the wrong sell date???
  ja> 
  ja> Has anyone had this happen to them, or have any ideas?  Before
  ja> Shoppers we shopped mostly at Giant, plus a few times at Safeway and
  ja> *never* had such a problem.
 
I find Giant to have the freshest dairy.  I've had problems with Safeway dairy,
but not very often.

It's all tradeoffs, and when you take advantage of the price at SFW, you lose
on the other side.  Giant and Safeway charge more, and don't have to trim their
personnel quite as much -- they can bring product in from trucks faster with
more people and better equipment.  And where Giant or Safeway might notice that
a case of milk had been sitting on the loading dock for too long and open a
container to /see/ if it was still okay, SFW is more likely to assume that it
is and not take a chance on wasting /any/ product.

I suspect that my Safeway experience is peculiar to the South Lakes Safeway in
Reston, as I never had any difficulty when I lived within walking distance of
the one at Hunters Woods or when I've shopped at others.