Which? researchers have found that Waitrose has the shortest average shelf life for fresh food among six major UK supermarkets, while Asda delivered the freshest groceries.
Study details
During a two-week period, 12 mystery shoppers placed identical online orders of 29 fresh and perishable items across Asda, Morrisons, Ocado, Sainsbury's, Tesco and Waitrose, assessing more than 2,000 items in total. Researchers calculated the number of hours remaining from delivery to midnight on the use-by date for each item, then worked out an average per supermarket.
Shortest shelf life
Waitrose had the shortest average shelf life at 7.7 days, performing worst on several products including scones, bread, fresh pasta sauce, fresh tagliatelle, houmous and pork sausages. 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 shelf life. One customer received fresh pasta sauce and pork sausages with 3.4 days left, despite Tesco's online guide stating shoppers should expect a week for the sauce and at least five days for the sausages.
Sainsbury's averaged 10.2 days, with three items (sweetcorn and two packs of basil) carrying a best-before date on delivery. Ocado had some longer-lasting products, including two packs of ham with more than 20 days left, though one shopper received basil that was within date but black and wilted. Morrisons performed well overall, but one substituted raspberry trifle had less than four hours until expiry, while another shopper received houmous with 24.38 days left.
Best performer
Asda came out on top for delivering the freshest groceries. Five shoppers received beef mince with at least 18 days left, one pack of cod had seven days remaining, and a pasta sauce averaged 33.6 days, compared with 12.2 days from Waitrose, despite the Waitrose version costing 23p more.
All supermarkets were contacted for comment by Which?. Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury's failed to provide an official response. 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 Tesco spokesperson 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 Waitrose spokesperson 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."
