Woolworths bakery staffer asks customers to buy old bread first to prevent waste

A Woolies bakery worker has issued a public plea for customers to stop buying bread with the furthest away expiry dates, claiming it causes unnecessary food waste.

Back in February TikTok user @tony.zakharia2 shared how the clips on loaves of bread will usually correspond to what day it was baked and was a guide to which one was the freshest.

His video went viral, with plenty of customers responding that they always went by the bag clip colour or picked the bread at the back so they could get the freshest loaf.

But in response to Tony's video, Woolies worker Kate Murdock told customers to stop as "it makes my job so much harder".

Woolies bakery worker Kate Murdock said taking the freshest bread caused unnecessary food waste. Photo / Supplied

"It's like that for a reason so that it goes in order and we don't waste anything," she said in a TikTok video posted this week.

"We usually have (the amount of) what we think is going to sell and we put it in rotation of what's oldest to newest."

Customers taking fresher items from the back caused an unnecessary amount of food waste, Murdock warned.

"When people do this they try and search for the newest one, it ends up leaving the oldest ones last and a lot of the time we end up having to throw them out, so please don't," she said.

"A day-old bread won't make much of a difference to you, I promise.

"You will not even be able to taste the difference I promise you, but it does make a hell of a lot of difference to our farmers and us."

It was in response to a viral TikTok about how bread tags revealed which bread was freshest. Photo / Supplied

Murdock's video, which has since been viewed more than 74,000 times, sparked a bitter divide in the comments section.

"Too bad, I need the longest shelf life possible so I don't throw it all away when it goes off," one person wrote, prompting Murdock to tell them to "try your freezer".

"I don't care I want fresh bread, stop taking your job so personally, Woolworths isn't going to pat you on the back for it girl," another commented.

"I don't want bread that will go off two days after I buy it," one person wrote.

However, there were plenty who agreed with Murdock, saying that customers who only took the freshest bread caused major headaches.

Not everyone agreed with Murdock and said they needed to buy the freshest bread to make it last longer. Photo / Supplied

"This, OMG people are so clueless of the impact it has on the wider community," one person wrote.

"I completely feel you, I too work for a grocery store, it pains me to have to throw away older products because people opted for the fresh," another commented.

"I also work in the bakery, can confirm this makes life difficult," another Woolies worker commented.

In response to Murdock's video Woolworths told news.com.au it worked hard to "minimise our stock loss by ordering the right level of stock to meet customer demand".

"From time to time, we do find ourselves with surplus food, including bread. That's why we have food waste measures in every store to help redirect surplus bread to avoid it going into landfill," a spokesman said.

"Excess bread is donated to a variety of charity partners such as OzHarvest, Food Bank and FareShare, along with other hunger relief agencies, farmers and commercial composters to be put to good use.

"Last year over 46,000 tonnes of surplus food was donated to hunger relief partners, farmers and commercial composters."