We may never know why the chicken crossed the road, but we do know what makes it fly off the shelf. Grocery store displays typically follow a “first in, first out” strategy—with older items placed in front so customers will buy them before they expire, minimizing the amount that gets thrown out. But that rule backfires when it comes to the fastest-growing grocery category: precooked foods—from sushi boxes and prepared salads to the undisputed king of the category, the rotisserie chicken. The piping hot birds may provide an instant solution to what’s for dinner, but they also degrade quickly, turning dry and tough—and leading to a lot of waste. (Nobody wants this morning’s wings.) When a retailer sought help reducing such waste, Graduate School of Business associate professor Dan Iancu and professor Erica Plambeck, MS ’98, PhD ’00, along with the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s Jae-Hyuck Park, MS ’15, PhD ’21, made the surprising discovery that putting the freshest precooked items out front—and keeping them on the shelf longer—boosted sales and decreased waste. Switching to “last in, first out” had another benefit: Customers were buying better quality items on average, Plambeck explained. “That leads to increased demand and, paradoxically, less gets thrown out.”
Summer Moore Batte, ’99, is the deputy and digital editor of Stanford. Email her at summerm@stanford.edu.
