This UK supermarket sells food with the shortest shelf life of them all

Have you ever done a weekly shop, only to have items delivered which are about to go out of date?

A brand new Which? investigation has revealed which UK supermarket has the shortest shelf life for its fresh produce, and the culprit might shock you.

The consumer watchdog recruited 12 mystery shoppers across Britain to order the same list of 29 fresh groceries from Asda, Morrisons, Ocado, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose.

It then calculated the time remaining from delivery until midnight on the use-by date for each item and used this to calculate an average shelf life for each supermarket.

Despite being the most expensive supermarket, it was Waitrose which delivered products with the shortest shelf life, with the products lasting about 7.7 days.

It was the worst food retailer on average for several of the selected products including scones, bread, fresh pasta sauce, fresh tagliatelle, houmous and pork sausages.

There were also two packs of beef mince and one pack of chicken thighs which needed to be used within a day of delivery.

This comes as a Which? survey found 16% of people who had experienced frustrations with their most recent online supermarket delivery named receiving perishable items with a very short shelf life as their top gripe.

A Waitrose spokesperson said the brand was ‘committed to offering the freshest and highest quality products’ which was reflected in its ‘growing online grocery sales’.

‘In response to increasing customer demand for products with simpler ingredients, we have removed preservatives from some of the items in this analysis where they are common, including our houmous,’ they added.

‘Our online grocery pickers are trained to choose the longest dated products they can, and our most recent customer survey showed that the vast majority of our online customers rated the shelf life of our products as good or excellent.’

But it’s not just Waitrose in the firing line. Tesco didn’t fare much better with an average shelf life of 8.8 days, and one shopper received fresh pasta sauce and pork sausages 3.4 days until the use-by date.

A spokesperson for Tesco said the retailer works hard to ‘select the freshest items with the longest expiry dates’ and that it highlights any items with a shorter shelf life that it would like as part of its ‘Freshness Guarantee’.

They added that if customers aren’t happy with items at the time of delivery, they can ‘hand them back for a full refund’.

Which supermarket’s food has the longest shelf life?

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the products with the longest shelf life came from none other than Asda. Not one, but five shoppers received beef mince with 18 days left before its expiry date, while a pack of cod had a week left.

Even more impressively, the retailer’s tomato and mascarpone pasta sauce had an average of 33.6 days remaining, compared with just 12.2 days when bought from Waitrose – despite the Waitrose version costing 23p more.

‘When you pay for a supermarket delivery, you expect your fresh food to have a reasonable amount of time left on it,’ Which? retail editor, Reena Sewraz, says.

‘Our investigation found a striking difference between supermarkets, with some shoppers getting several days’ less time to use their groceries than others – and in some cases, just hours.

‘It’s particularly hard to swallow when you’re paying premium prices but getting food with a much shorter shelf life. Supermarkets need to make sure their freshness promises actually deliver, so shoppers aren’t left having to change their meal plans, rush to use food or throw away groceries they’ve paid for.’

How did the other supermarkets do?

When it comes to the remaining three supermarkets investigated, their produce’s shelf life was extremely similar.

Sainsbury’s products lasted an average of 10.2 days, while Morrisons and Ocado were tied for second place with an average of 10.4 days.

It was sweetcorn and two packs of basil that tripped Sainsbury’s up, with a best-before date on the day of delivery.

Ocado excelled with its honey roast ham which had more than 20 days left, compared to the 13 day average for other retailers, but its basil left a lot to be desired after one shopper received a pack that was black and wilted.

And lastly, Morrisons, also performed well but failed to impress with a substituted raspberry trifle which had less than four hours until it expired.

One shopper also received an opened pot of pineapple which leaked all over their other groceries. However, the retailer also delivered a houmous with a whopping 24.38 days left, compared to the 11.54 day average for other supermarkets (and the 3.88 day average at Waitrose).

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