Secret supermarket codes you need to know before your next food shop
#supermarket codes #food shopping tips #best before dates #promotion end dates #Aldi discontinued items #Tesco Clubcard deals #Sainsbury's Nectar prices #grocery savings
📌 Key Takeaways
- Supermarkets use hidden codes to indicate product freshness and promotion dates
- Different retailers use different coding systems for best-before dates on produce
- Promotion end dates are often encoded in reverse on shelf labels
- Discontinued products at Aldi are marked with a capital D on price tags
📖 Full Retelling
Sky News revealed secret supermarket codes in the UK on Friday 27 February 2026 to help shoppers save money and make informed decisions while navigating the complex world of grocery shopping. As major retailers increasingly remove traditional best-before dates from pre-packaged fruits and vegetables to reduce waste, they've implemented alternative coding systems that can decipher product freshness and promotion durations. According to consumer group Which?, these hidden codes allow savvy shoppers to determine when produce is at its peak freshness and when loyalty deals will actually expire, enabling more strategic purchasing decisions and potentially significant savings over time. The coding systems vary across major UK chains, with Asda and Tesco using a month-letter followed by day-number format (B27 for February 27), Sainsbury's employing a J-start and S-end with the date in between (J0910S for October 9), and Morrisons simplifying with just the first letter of the month and day (S12 for September 12). For promotions, Tesco encodes end dates in reverse on shelf labels (260225 meaning February 25), while Sainsbury's indicates start dates with offers typically running for two weeks and ending on Tuesdays. Aldi shoppers can spot soon-to-be discontinued products by looking for a capital D in the right-hand corner of price tags, a signal that once those items are sold out, they won't be restocked.
🏷️ Themes
Consumer Tips, Grocery Shopping, Money Saving, Food Waste
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Original Source
Secret supermarket codes you need to know before your next food shop Want the fuller picture on your food shop? From freshness indicators to the length of product promotions, here are a few ways you can make life easier - by watching out for usually hidden clues. Friday 27 February 2026 09:23, UK Why you can trust Sky News When it comes to doing the food shop, we all love to bag a bargain. But you don't just have to look for yellow stickers and loyalty prices to check if you're getting the most bang for your buck. Hidden on supermarket shelves are different codes that can help you work out details to help you save. Subscribe to our Money newsletter For more information about how we use your data and your rights, you can visit our Privacy Centre . First name Last name Email From freshness indicators to the date when a promotion will end, taking a closer look can reveal all sorts of information. Here we run through a few that you can look for the next time you pop to the shop... Make sure you get the fruit and veg that will last the longest This was easy until a few years ago - look at the best-before date on the packet. But big supermarket chains have started removing these dates from pre-packaged fruit and vegetables in an attempt to reduce waste. Many have started using different codes to indicate when they are "best before". At Asda and Tesco, Which? says the code will start with a letter that represents a month, so A for January, B for February, C for March and so on. Next, there will be a number - this will represent the day of the month. So if the code was B27, the best before date would be 27 February. At Sainsbury's, the code works slightly differently. It starts with J and ends with S, which stands for the company name (J Sainsbury). The date will be in the middle. So the best before date of an item with the code J0910S is 9 October. Morrisons simply uses the first letter of the month and a number, so a product with the code S12 has a best-before date of 12 ...
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