Impact Study
|September 19, 2026
How Veruca's delivery network keeps perishables fresh at scale with Shelflife
“Shelflife is… a time saver, a waste reducer, and something our whole team relies on daily.”
64%
Reduction in expiration-driven shrink
2×
Increase in near-expiry revenue recovery
~75%
Reduction in manual date-check labor
The retailer
A grocery delivery operation built on speed and freshness
Veruca is a grocery store with home delivery serving the San Diego area. It carries its own inventory across produce, dairy, prepared foods, and other short-shelf-life categories and fulfills orders from an innovative warehouse and micro-warehouse mobile operation.
The model runs on speed. Micro-warehouses keep inventory close to where orders come from, so fresh product reaches customers fast. That speed is the advantage, and it is also what raises the stakes on freshness. A fast, distributed operation pushes a lot of perishable product through a lot of locations, and the quicker it moves, the harder it becomes to keep up with expiration tracking.
The challenge
SKU-level tracking left freshness invisible
Veruca tracked inventory the way most grocers do, at the SKU level. That tells you how many units are on hand, not how close any of them are to expiring. For a fast, distributed operation, that blind spot shows up in three ways:
No visibility into expiration
SKU-level tracking shows how many units are on hand, not how close any of them are to their expiration date. Freshness lived on the packaging and in the heads of staff, not in the system.
Manual checks that don't scale
The only way to know what was aging was to go and look. Staff walked the trailers and the warehouse reading dates by hand, a job that gets slower and easier to miss the more locations there are and the faster product moves.
Shrink, caught too late
When a batch was missed, it was usually found too late to sell. Near-expiry product that could have moved at a markdown aged out instead, and product the business had already paid for was written off as shrink.
“We promise a 30-minute delivery or money-back guarantee, so we're having a hard time keeping up with manual date checks because we're moving so quickly. The worst case situation would be for a shopper to receive a close-to-expired or expired product in their delivery.”
Solution
What Shelflife did
Shelflife launched as a parallel overlay on the IMS and POS system Veruca already had in place, so nothing needed to be ripped out and replaced. It captures the expiration date of every batch and tracks it in real time, from receiving through sale.
That batch-level visibility replaces the manual walk. Instead of sending staff out to read dates by hand, Shelflife holds the expiration state of every batch across every location in one live view, so a fast, distributed operation stays legible no matter how much product is moving through it.
It also changes what happens before a batch ages out. Shelflife surfaces which product is closest to expiring and flags when to discount it, so near-expiry inventory gets caught while there is still time to sell it at a markdown, rather than being discovered after the date has passed.
Impact
Measurable results in four months
Within the first four months, Shelflife cut shrink, boosted revenue, and reduced the time spent on on-shelf inventory control.
Shrink
64%
reduction
Expiration-driven shrink fell from 15.1% of sales in April to 5.4% of sales in July.
Recovered revenue
2×
increase
Near-expiry recovery grew from 3.8% of sales in April to 7.5% in July.
Labor time
~75%
reduction
Less time spent on on-shelf inventory control after real-time visibility replaced the manual date-check.
“Shelflife has been one of the most valuable tools our team uses. It gives us instant, accurate visibility into product shelf life so we can act on items approaching expiration, offering customers a deal rather than taking a loss. It's a time saver, a waste reducer, and something our whole team relies on daily.”
Veruca has since asked Shelflife to replace its existing inventory management system entirely. What started as a layer for expiration visibility is becoming the system of record for inventory itself, which is the clearest signal of all: the retailer is moving more of its operation onto Shelflife, not less.
See what Shelflife can do for you.
Transform your expiration visibility into measurable waste reduction and recovered revenue.