Did you ever decide one day to clean the inside of your refrigerator? The first step in tackling this chore is to remove everything and sort through it. In the shuffle some items may have gone past the use by date, others were simply forgotten about in the back of the crisping drawer and have to be discarded. Those in the retail food industry supermarkets know this as shrink.
The aforementioned refrigerator chore gets one thinking about all the produce spoilage that occurs throughout the system — from farms to consumers. In supermarkets, produce departments experience waste and the losses can often reach serious dollar amounts. Every percent of produce shrink loss is a percent less on profit, and when the profit decreases, that’s when management starts snooping around for reasons causing it. Shrink is usually one of the biggest factors.
Management holds produce managers accountable for their gross profit numbers. Whenever the gross profit is deficient, they usually want to know what went into the tank — meaning the shrink loss.
It’s true that most produce shrink exists at store level, but the fact is shrink does not starts and end in store. There are many factors that can contribute to shrink, thus produce managers should not have to take the full brunt of the blame.
There are a number of areas where shrink is initiated before product arrives to a store. This is the “invisible shrink.”
