Minimizing food waste in grocery store operations: Literature review and research agenda

Research on grocery waste in food retailing has recently attracted particular interest. Investigations in this area are relevant to address the problems of wasted resources and ethical concerns, as well as economic aspects from the retailer’s perspective. Reasons for food waste in retail are already well-studied empirically, and based on this, proposals for reduction are discussed. However, comprehensive approaches for preventing food waste in store operations using analytics and modeling methods are scarce. No work has yet systematized related research in this domain. As a result, there is neither any up-to-date literature review nor any agenda for future research. We contribute with the first structured literature review of analytics and modeling methods dealing with food waste prevention in retail store operations. This work identifies cross-cutting store-related planning areas to mitigate food waste, namely (1) assortment and shelf space planning, (2) replenishment policies, and (3) dynamic pricing policies. We introduce a common classification scheme of literature with regard to the depth of food waste integration and the characteristics of these planning problems. This builds our foundation to review analytics and modeling approaches. Current literature considers food waste mainly as a side effect in costing and often ignores product age dependent demand by customers. Furthermore, approaches are not integrated across planning areas. Future lines of research point to the most promising open questions in this field.