Which? has found that Waitrose had the shortest average shelf life for fresh food among six major UK supermarkets, with products lasting an average of 7.7 days from delivery to midnight on the use-by date. Asda delivered the freshest groceries, according to the consumer group's investigation.
How the investigation was carried out
Twelve mystery shoppers placed identical online orders during a two-week period for 29 fresh and perishable items at Asda, Morrisons, Ocado, Sainsbury's, Tesco and Waitrose, assessing more than 2,000 items in total. The researchers added the number of hours remaining from the time of delivery to midnight on the use-by date for each item and calculated an average time per supermarket.
Which supermarkets had the shortest shelf life?
Waitrose had the shortest average shelf life at 7.7 days, and it was worst on average for several products, including scones, bread, fresh pasta sauce, fresh tagliatelle, houmous and pork sausages. For example, two packs of Waitrose beef mince and a pack of chicken thighs arrived with a use-by date the day after delivery.
Tesco delivered fresh groceries with an average of 8.8 days of shelf life left. One shopper received fresh pasta sauce and pork sausages both with 3.4 days of life left, while Tesco's online shelf life guide says customers should expect a week for the sauce and at least five days' life on the sausages.
At Sainsbury's, the average shelf life was 10.2 days, with three items - sweetcorn and two packs of basil - with a best-before date on the day of delivery. Ocado had some longer-lasting products, including two packs of ham with more than 20 days left, but one shopper received basil that was in date but black and wilted.
Morrisons performed well, but one substituted raspberry trifle had less than four hours until it expired. In contrast, one shopper received houmous with 24.38 days left.
Which supermarket was best?
Asda delivered the freshest groceries, with five shoppers receiving beef mince with at least 18 days left before its use-by date, while one pack of cod had seven days remaining. A 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.
All of the supermarkets in the research were approached for comment by Which?, but Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury's didn't provide an official one. A spokesperson for Ocado said: "We are proud of our Fresh+ promise, making us the only UK online grocery retailer to offer a life guarantee on all fresh products. Our promise guarantees a minimum number of days of freshness on products ranging from fruit and veg to bread and milk, ensuring customers can trust Ocado to deliver the freshness they are looking for on each and every delivery. If customers aren't 100% happy with a product's freshness, they can easily arrange an immediate refund online or through our app."
A spokesperson for Tesco said: "We work hard to select the freshest items with the longest expiry dates for all our Grocery Home Shopping delivery and Click + Collect orders and we highlight any items that have a shorter shelf life than we would like as part of our Freshness Guarantee. If customers are not happy with any items at the time of delivery or collection, they can hand them back for a full refund."
A spokesperson for Waitrose said: "We are committed to offering the freshest and highest quality products, reflected in our growing online grocery sales. And 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. 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."
