Knowledge

Money From Selling Expiring And Expired Foods

Can money be made from selling expiring and expired food? The answer is a resounding “Yes but…” The reason there is the annoying word “but” after the “yes” answer is because expiring and expired food is not taken in a good light by many people.

Of course no one wants to eat foul smelling food with hints of decay in it like moulds. No one wants to contract food poisoning for eating highly questionable food items. But as I would soon suggest, there are people who do.

The only reason why people buy and eat expired food is because of its price. It’s no big secret that expired food is sold very cheaply and in fact even given away for free. Other people feed their livestock expired food like stale dairy products.

The same is true for expiring food. Usually, supermarkets offer at a steep discount their expiring foods which many financially conscious people think is a bargain. For example, I would usually expiring chocolate sold out within a few days because of the cheap price.

Not let’s go back to feeding pigs expiring or expired foods which is a safer use of expiring and expired foods. I’m sure that this is being done in many poor or developing countries. Afterall, there is this popular misconception that pigs will eat just about anything.

But in many developed countries like the USA and Australia, there are strict laws regarding the feeding of pigs expiring or expired foods including leftover food. If you happen to raise pigs and don’t know the law in your country, I suggest you study it now before you get into trouble.

Some of the laws in developed countries require that you sanitize first any expiring or expired food you would be feeding your pigs. Of course, this might actually defeat the purpose of saving money by feeding your pigs expiring or expired food.

Our family used to raise pigs and I as a young kid would collect the leftover foods of our neighbors. This is what we exclusively feed our pigs. In my family’s experience, none of our pigs suffered negatively because of being fed leftover foods from our neighbors.

These leftover foods were several days old food so I can definitely say that most of them were expired foods already. I wonder if what I used to do before can be turned into a business? That is, collecting leftover foods from neighborhoods and selling them to pig farms.

Google such keywords as: ”expired foods being resold in China” and you would immediately find a lot of articles which prove that there are now many Chinese people buying expiring and even expired food in China.

I suggest you read SCMP or South China Morning Posts article: ”Near-expired food bargain sales the latest trend in China as Beijing’s anti-waste drive picks up” which state that buying expiring or expired food is actually one of the trends in China.

I also can recommend a YouTube video from CGTN or China Global Television Network titled: "Buying near-expired food comes into vogue in China”. It has an identical information to SCMP.

There are even Chinese shops who exclusively sell expiring food and one of the biggest is HotMaxx which sell near expired food at between 50% to 80% discount. It has rapidly expanded since 2020. It now has more than 50 stores in Shanghai alone. It has 200 more stores nationwide.

It has also established deals with more than 200 famous food brands which includes local and international companies like Italy’s Ferrero and Taiwan’s Want Want. Perhaps you might try to consider setting similar stores in your respective countries.

I did a cursory search online if there are other businesses doing the same thing with expiring or expired food but found nothing except for those illegally doing it. The reason my search turned out nothing is that probably because the laws of many countries still ban the selling of them.

Luckily, I chanced upon an old NBC News YouTube video titled: "This Store Sells Only Expired Food | Archives | NBC News" which shows an American company of all things selling expiring or expired food.

The company is the Daily Table which is a non-profit. They have connections with supermarkets which supply them with expiring and expired food to resell in their own stores. Founded in 2015, the company has three stores to date and is still thriving. It is even opening up a fourth store.

In America, it is perfectly legal to sell expiring or expired food. But if your buyer becomes ill because of your expired food, you could get prosecuted. However, American law also states that infant food cannot be sold if its expired.

If ever you want to sell expiring or expired food just like the Daily Table, HotMaxx and similar stores, be mindful first of the food laws in your country. There are a lot of countries that ban the sale of expired and even expiring food.

I don’t know if there is a huge market for expired food besides being animal food for pigs. But in Taiwan, they actually encourage the use of such kinds of food for the feeding of pigs. This is their strategy to tackle food wastage in their country.

But I can say a different thing towards the marketability of expiring foods. There are people from many countries especially the poor and developing ones who do not shop on a weekly basis.

This is because they live from paycheck to paycheck and can only buy their food at the end of the day. After working for the entire day they only receive their daily wage at the end of the day. So, all they can afford is for a daily meal for the actual day or for the following day.

So, they don’t really need long lasting for that lasts for months and even years. To be frank, these people can eat a food that just expired. This is a win-win situation. The buyer is able to buy expiring or expired food at a steep discount and the store disposes of their food inventory.

And by all accounts, there is a big unserved market for many poor and developing countries of people who don’t really care if the food has just expired. They only need it to be still fresh for the day it would be eaten which is usually within the day it was bought.

There is a huge potential market for expiring and even expired food in many parts of the world especially in the poor and developing countries. In these places, many of the people live only on a day to day basis and don’t require food that last for a very long time.

They won’t care if a food is about to expire and even expired. This is because they don’t shop weekly. They can’t. They don’t have enough money for weekly shopping but only have enough money for food that can be consumed within a day or two.

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