FEFO vs FIFO: why food brands pick by expiry

FIFO ships the oldest stock first. FEFO ships whatever expires first. For a food or beverage brand the gap between the two is margin: pick by received date, and a lot that arrived later but expires sooner sits on the shelf until it becomes a write-off. The harder question is which lots a pick may take at all, and that is where most systems stop.

Two rules, one difference

FIFO assumes the first unit received is the first to ship. It works when every unit of an item has the same usable life, as with dry goods or apparel, and it keeps the accounting simple.

FEFO ships the unit that expires soonest, whenever it arrived. In food and beverage two lots of one item nearly always carry different best-by dates: a supplier sends product with less remaining life, a production run lands warmer, a formulation changes. Under FIFO the sooner-expiring lot ages out on the shelf. Under FEFO it ships first, while it can still be sold at full price.

Which lots Cairn offers a pick

In Cairn every lot carries its expiry date, and a shipment's lots are offered first expiry first, across every warehouse that can serve the order. Lot and expiry sit on real-time inventory, so the offer reads the same stock the item record shows.

Some lots are never offered, whatever their date. A lot on hold, a lot in quarantine and an expired lot are never offered or drawn automatically. A lot still in receiving inspection is held, so it cannot be picked until quality passes it (the quality control page covers that path). An expired lot can still leave the books on purpose through a write-off, which is the one door that may take it.

Minimum life on the shipment

Many retailers refuse product with too little life left, and the refusal arrives as a chargeback weeks later. In Cairn a site can promise a minimum remaining shelf life per item, and a customer can carry its own, in days or as a percent of the item's shelf life; the stricter of the two applies. The lot picker flags a short-dated lot as it is chosen, and the server refuses a shipment whose lot would leave with too little life on the ship date, naming the lot, before anything posts. The fix happens at the warehouse, while there is still time to pick another lot.

When a pick takes exactly one lot

Most items let the picker name a lot or leave the choice to FEFO. An item costed by its specific lot is different: a pick takes exactly one lot, chosen on purpose, because the cost that leaves is that lot's own. The same rule decides every door that relieves stock, so a shipment, a material issue and a write-off of that item all ask for one lot.

Seeing the date coming

Alerts flag lots approaching their best-by date while they can still be sold, moved or promoted. Every pick keeps the lot genealogy intact, so a recall trace later starts from the lots that actually left, case by case. The whole path maps to the food and beverage workflow.

FEFO decides the order of the list. The offer rules decide what is on the list at all.