There’s nothing more frustrating than unpacking the weekly food shop, only to find the mince expires tomorrow and the salad is already on its way out.
We naturally assume paying top-tier prices guarantees the longest shelf life in the fridge, but how much time you actually get before food hits the bin varies wildly depending on where you shop. A new investigation from consumer champion Which? has tracked the real lifespan of everyday groceries across the UK’s major supermarkets, and the results show a massive gap between brand reputation and what’s actually turning up in deliveries, proving that a pricier receipt doesn’t always buy you extra time.
The Which? investigation aimed to uncover which supermarket offers the freshest goods.
Which? recruited 12 mystery shoppers from across Britain and had them each order the same list of 29 fresh grocery items from six major supermarkets: Asda, Morrisons, Ocado, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, and Waitrose. For every item delivered, researchers worked out exactly how many days remained between delivery and the stroke of midnight on its use-by date, then averaged that out across each supermarket to get an overall shelf life score.
Waitrose came out worst, despite being the priciest option.
Perhaps the most eyebrow-raising result was that Waitrose, generally considered the more expensive end of the supermarket spectrum, actually delivered the shortest average shelf life of any retailer tested, at just 7.7 days. It performed particularly poorly on items like scones, bread, fresh pasta sauce, fresh tagliatelle, houmous, and pork sausages.
Some of the results were fairly stark, too. Two separate packs of beef mince and one pack of chicken thighs arrived needing to be used within a single day of delivery, leaving shoppers with almost no flexibility to plan meals around them.
Responding to the findings, a Waitrose spokesperson said the retailer remained committed to offering the freshest and highest quality products, pointing to its growing online grocery sales as evidence customers are happy overall. They added that preservatives had recently been removed from certain products, including houmous, in response to growing demand for simpler ingredient lists, and said online pickers are trained to select the longest-dated stock available. According to Waitrose’s own customer surveys, the vast majority of online shoppers still rate the shelf life of its products as good or excellent.
Tesco wasn’t far behind on some items, either.
Waitrose wasn’t alone in the firing line. Tesco came in with an average shelf life of 8.8 days, and one shopper in the investigation received both fresh pasta sauce and pork sausages with just 3.4 days remaining before their use-by date.
A Tesco spokesperson said the retailer works hard to select the freshest items with the longest expiry dates available, and highlighted its Freshness Guarantee scheme, which flags any items with a shorter shelf life in advance. They added that any customer unhappy with what they receive at the point of delivery can simply hand items back to the driver for a full refund.
Asda came out on top by a fairly wide margin.
At the other end of the scale, Asda delivered by far the longest average shelf life of any supermarket tested. Five separate shoppers received beef mince with a full 18 days left before expiry, while a pack of cod still had a week remaining.
The standout result, though, was Asda’s tomato and mascarpone pasta sauce, which arrived with an average of 33.6 days left on the clock. The same product bought from Waitrose had just 12.2 days remaining, despite costing 23p more, a gap that’s hard to justify on freshness grounds alone.
Reena Sewraz, retail editor at Which?, said shoppers rightly expect a reasonable amount of time left on fresh food when paying for a delivery, and pointed out just how striking the gap between supermarkets turned out to be, with some shoppers left with days less usable time than others, and in a few cases, just hours. She added that it’s particularly hard to accept when paying premium prices for food that then needs using almost immediately, and called on supermarkets to make sure their freshness promises actually hold up in practice, rather than leaving shoppers rushing to use food or throwing away groceries they’ve already paid for.
The middle of the pack was a much closer contest.
The remaining three supermarkets performed fairly similarly to one another. Sainsbury’s averaged 10.2 days, while Morrisons and Ocado were essentially tied on 10.4 days each.
Sainsbury’s was let down specifically by sweetcorn and two packs of basil, all of which arrived with a best-before date falling on the very day of delivery. Ocado, meanwhile, impressed with its honey roast ham, which came with more than 20 days left compared to a 13-day average elsewhere, though one shopper’s basil arrived black and wilted, rather undercutting the overall result. Morrisons also performed reasonably well overall, but stumbled on a substituted raspberry trifle that had less than four hours left before its expiry.
One Morrisons shopper also received an opened pot of pineapple that leaked over the rest of their order, though the same retailer delivered a houmous with an impressive 24.38 days remaining, well ahead of the 11.54 day average elsewhere, and a long way clear of Waitrose’s 3.88 day average for the same product.
How to cut down on food waste from your online shop
Which? has shared a few practical tips for anyone wanting to avoid ending up with short-dated groceries going to waste. Check your delivery as soon as it arrives, reviewing any delivery notes and unpacking perishables promptly so you can spot short dates or damaged packaging early.
If something isn’t up to scratch, hand it straight back to the driver at the doorstep for an immediate refund, rather than dealing with it later. And where possible, check use-by dates the moment your shop arrives and freeze anything freezable straight away in suitable containers, giving yourself far more flexibility than a tight use-by date alone would allow.
