Stock rotation and FIFO: cutting waste before it starts
General information for UK hospitality operators, not legal advice. If something here is wrong or out of date, the editorial policy explains how to report it.
How stock rotation actually works in a UK kitchen: FIFO and FEFO, date marks and day dots, fridge order, deliveries and a weekly check.
Stock rotation is the working discipline of using food in date order, so nothing is served after its date and nothing is thrown away for being buried at the back of a shelf. It rests on two rules that are often treated as one: first in, first out, which moves goods in the order they arrived, and first expired, first out, which moves them in the order they run out. The second wins wherever the two disagree, and they disagree more often than a delivery schedule suggests.
Stock rotation by FIFO and by FEFO
First in, first out means the oldest delivery is used first. It suits goods whose life is set at manufacture and which arrive in a predictable order: flour, tinned tomatoes, frozen chips, bottled minerals.
First expired, first out orders the same shelf by the date printed on the pack rather than the date it came through the door. It matters because suppliers do not always deliver in date order. A Thursday cream delivery can carry a shorter use-by than the cream already in the fridge, and a kitchen running pure FIFO reaches past the short-dated case and throws it away on Sunday.
The safe default is first expired, first out for anything carrying a use-by date, and first in, first out for dry and frozen goods where the dates follow the deliveries. Either way the rule has to be visible on the shelf rather than in a policy: dates faced outwards, oldest at the front, nothing new stacked on top of something older. Manufacturers decide which date mark a product carries, so a kitchen inherits a mixed set of dates and has to impose the order itself.
The legal line between use-by and best-before
Use-by dates relate to safety. Best-before dates relate to quality. Food Standards Agency guidance states that use-by dates tell you when the food is no longer safe to eat, and that after a best-before date food is usually safe but may not be of the same quality. Use-by dates must be shown on foods that go off quickly, such as meat products and ready-to-eat salads.
The duty behind that sits in Regulation (EU) 1169/2011, which applies in the UK as assimilated law. Article 24 provides that for foods which are highly perishable from a microbiological point of view the date of minimum durability is replaced by the use-by date, and that after the use-by date a food is deemed to be unsafe under Article 14 of Regulation (EC) 178/2002. Deemed, not suspected: no smell test rebuts it.
| Date mark | What it governs | What rotation has to do |
|---|---|---|
| Use by | Safety. The food is deemed unsafe once the date has passed. | Take it out of service before the date and record what was wasted. |
| Best before | Quality. The food is usually still safe afterwards. | Use it first, judge it on condition, and keep it clear of use-by stock. |
One rule cannot cover a whole store. The two marks, and the open-life date a kitchen sets itself, are worked through in date labelling in kitchens.
Open life, day dots and decanted containers
A printed use-by assumes an unopened pack. Once a pack is open, the storage instruction on the label governs what happens next: labelling guidance for food businesses gives "keep refrigerated and use within 3 days of opening" as the kind of wording a label carries where a consumer needs it. Some foods only need refrigerating once opened, which is the point at which the pack stops being read.
Day dots close that gap when they carry three things: what the item is, when it was opened or made, and the date it has to be used by. A coloured dot saying only Tuesday records when a tub was opened and nothing about when it stops being safe.
Decanted items need the same treatment and get less of it. Sauce moved into a squeezy bottle, dry goods tipped into a bin, cooked stock portioned into tubs: each leaves behind the pack that carried its date, its name and its allergen information. The label goes on at the moment of decanting, not at the end of the shift.
Freezing changes the arithmetic again. Food can be frozen right up until midnight on the use-by date printed on the label, and once fully defrosted it needs to be used within 24 hours. Neither fact appears on a freezer bag, so both belong on the label the kitchen writes itself.
Fridge order: cooked above raw, oldest at the front
Rotation and cross-contamination control share the same shelves, and the safety rule outranks the rotation rule. Food Standards Agency advice is to store raw meat, poultry and fish in clean sealed containers on the bottom shelf so they cannot touch or drip onto other food, and to keep cooked meat separate from raw. That guidance applies in England, Northern Ireland and Wales. Cooked and ready-to-eat food sits above raw, whatever the dates say.
A fridge packed by whoever had the trolley is one where first expired, first out exists only on paper.
Temperature sets the outer limit on how long any of it lasts. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland food that needs refrigeration must be kept at 8°C or below, and most operators run their fridges at 5°C or below to stay inside that limit with room to spare. Food may be held above 8°C for display or service for a single period of up to four hours, after which it must be used or thrown away, which is a rotation decision taken at the pass.
Temperature and rotation records answer different questions and an inspector asks for both: temperature monitoring records that survive an EHO visit covers what a usable log looks like.
Receiving a delivery so new stock goes behind old
Rotation is won or lost at the back door, in the ten minutes a driver is waiting. Four things have to happen there, in this order.
- Check the dates before the driver leaves. A case with three days of life left, on a product ordered weekly, is a credit note rather than a delivery, and only while the vehicle is outside.
- Check and record the temperature of chilled and frozen lines. Chilled goods arriving above 8°C are a problem the kitchen did not create, and the record is what turns it into a supplier conversation.
- Put away back to front. Pull existing stock forward, load the new stock behind it, and face the dates outwards.
- Label anything that gets decanted at the point it is decanted, with the item, the date and the use-by the kitchen is working to.
A goods-in routine that skips the put-away step is the commonest reason a site with good date labels still throws food away a week later, when nobody can say which of two identical trays came in first.
Dry goods, the freezer and the cellar
Dry stores mostly carry best-before dates, and some lines carry no date mark at all. Government guidance for food businesses lists fresh fruit and vegetables that have not been peeled, cut or similarly treated, along with vinegar, cooking salt and solid sugar, among products needing a lot number rather than a best-before or use-by date. Rotation on those lines runs on delivery order, because there is no date to run it on.
The same exemption covers drinks containing 10% or more alcohol by volume, which is why a cellar cannot be rotated the way a fridge is. Spirits and fortified wines usually arrive with a lot number rather than a date mark, so the only workable rule is first in, first out by delivery, with new cases loaded behind old ones on the rack. Kegs, casks and minerals normally carry dates, and rotate by them.
Freezers hide their own failures. Frozen food left too long suffers freezer burn, which affects quality rather than safety, so nothing smells wrong and the loss shows up only in the plate cost. Labelling what went in and when is the only way a freezer rotates at all.
What rotation failure costs in waste and at an inspection
Failure shows up in two places. The first is the waste sheet, where the same three or four lines appear week after week: the herbs, the cream, the fish ordered for a special that did not sell. That pattern moves gross profit before anyone names it. The route from waste to margin is set out in reducing food waste in hospitality, and the counting side in weekly stock counts.
The second is an inspection. An officer opens a fridge and reads the labels, and what is on the shelf either matches the food safety management system or contradicts it. An unlabelled tub of cooked rice invites the question of when it was made. A pack past its use-by in a service fridge is worse: government guidance states that it is a criminal offence to sell food that is past its use-by date. The food information rules apply to a food business even where food is given to consumers for free.
The weekly rotation check
- Walk every fridge, freezer and dry shelf front to back, and pull anything with fewer than two days of life to the front.
- Check that every opened or decanted item carries a name and a date, and bin what does not.
- Compare the waste sheet with the order sheet for the same lines, and change the order before changing the rotation.
- Check the cellar and the back of the freezer, the two places nobody walks past.
- Name the person who did the check and the date, and file it with the other records.
Where Zynthio fits
A rotation rule holds when it is a named task with a time on it rather than a habit. Zynthio generates daily lists at 00:01, sweeps missed checks every fifteen minutes and enforces time windows, so a date-code walk goes overdue when it is not done. Every entry is timestamped and named, with photo evidence and repeating groups where one check covers several fridges, and temperatures log as a validated min/max field that raises a corrective action automatically on an out-of-range reading. Six weeks of records export as a PDF.
Deeper stock work, including batch and expiry tracking with a daily sweep and quarantine, sits in the EPOS and Stock add-on, one product covering till and stock, flagged coming soon rather than live. What is available today is set out on the stock management page.
Frequently asked questions
Is FIFO or FEFO the right rule for a kitchen?
Both, on different stock. Use first expired, first out for anything carrying a use-by date, because suppliers do not always deliver in date order and the printed date is what the law works from. Use first in, first out for dry and frozen lines where the dates follow the deliveries, and for items carrying a lot number instead of a date mark, such as vinegar, cooking salt or spirits.
Can a pub still sell stock that is past its best-before date?
Yes, in principle. A best-before date relates to quality rather than safety, and government guidance says food is usually safe to eat after that date but may not be of the same quality. The judgement then falls on condition, so check it before it goes out. A use-by date is different: it is a criminal offence to sell food that is past its use-by date.
How long can an opened pack be kept in the fridge?
Follow the instruction on the pack first. Labelling guidance for food businesses gives wording such as keep refrigerated and use within 3 days of opening, and that instruction governs once the pack has been opened. Where the pack says nothing, the business sets an open life itself, records how it decided, and writes the date on a day dot or a label that stays with the food.
Does freezing get round a use-by date?
It pauses it. Food can be frozen right up until midnight on the use-by date printed on the label, and food cooked or frozen on or before that date can still be eaten afterwards. Once fully defrosted it needs to be used within 24 hours. None of that survives without a label, so write down what the item is and the date it went into the freezer.
What will an officer look at on a date-labelling check?
The shelf, not the folder. Expect them to open fridges, read the labels on opened and decanted items, and check that raw meat, poultry and fish sit in sealed containers on the bottom shelf so they cannot drip onto other food. Anything unlabelled, or anything past its use-by date in a service fridge, contradicts the food safety management system on the wall and will be raised.