Daily ‘happy hour' at supermarkets in Finland

The Finnish supermarket chain, S-market, holds its own ‘happy hour’ every day, where the retailer applies extra large discounts to those food products nearly reaching their expiry dates.

Three hours before the expiry date

In Finland, S-market has designated a ‘happy hour’ for food products: at 9 p.m.—one hour before closing time—stores reduce food prices by up to 60% for hundreds of items that expire at midnight. Often, these are products for which the price has already been reduced by 30%, with the initiative forming part of a campaign to reduce food waste.

In addition to reducing food surpluses, the initiative could also help attract new customers, while also helping those people on limited budgets to eat better, by offering a wider variety of food at discounted prices. According to Mika Lyytikainen, the vice-president of S-market, the programme helps to sell food that would otherwise have to be given away. “If we sell at a 60% discount, we don’t really make any money, but it’s still more than if we had given away the food to a charity,” he told Springwise.

Disastrous for climate

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), around a third of all food produced and packaged for human consumption is wasted in one way or another. That’s equivalent to 1.3 billion tonnes of food per year, while about 10% of the world’s population is chronically malnourished. According to scientists, all this surplus food is a contributing factor to climate change.