New Store Will Specialize in ... Expired Food

Trader Joe's has made a profitable business out of repackaging regular supermarket food in cooler boxes and selling it in funkier surrounds. Now the company's former president wants to do the same thing for ... expired food, reports NPR. A new report has found that 40% of America's food is wasted because people are confused by "sell-by" and expiration dates. So Doug Rauch plans to repackage food that has passed its sell-by date but is still safe to eat, and sell it at huge discounts in "underserved" areas at a new store called the Daily Table.

"It's the idea about how to bring affordable nutrition to the underserved in our cities," he says. Rauch says most of the food will be stuff that grocery stores would otherwise throw away because the label says it's too old, or because it doesn't look attractive enough. The Daily Table will be "kind of a hybrid between a grocery store and a restaurant," he tells NPR, "because primarily it's going to take this food in, prep it, cook it (for) what I call speed-scratch cooking. But the idea is to offer this at prices that compete with fast food." (More sell-by date stories.)