Two dates govern every product in your walk-in, and they don't mean the same thing at all. The DLC — date limite de consommation, 'à consommer jusqu'au' — is a safety limit: after it, the product is legally unsellable and unservable, full stop. The DDM — date de durabilité minimale, the old DLUO, 'à consommer de préférence avant' — is a quality opinion: past it, the product may lose taste or texture but isn't dangerous or illegal by that fact alone. Confusing the two costs money in both directions: serving past a DLC is a legal and health risk no plate is worth; binning everything at its DDM throws away food you paid for.
What does DDM mean on food?
DDM stands for date de durabilité minimale, the French best-before date, printed as 'à consommer de préférence avant'. It is a quality indication, not a safety limit: past it the product may lose taste or texture, but it is not automatically unsafe or illegal. Judge it by inspection. Before 2015 the same date was called the DLUO.
What does DLC mean?
DLC stands for date limite de consommation, the French use-by date, printed as 'à consommer jusqu'au'. It is a legal safety limit on perishable products such as fresh meat, fish and dairy: once the date passes, the product can no longer be served, sold or donated. It goes in the bin, without debate.
DLUO, and 'best before end' labels
DLUO, date limite d'utilisation optimale, is simply the old name for the DDM: retired in 2015, still printed by habit, and still common on imported stock. A label reading 'end of DLUO', or a DDM giving only a month and year ('best before end...'), means the same thing: a quality date you judge, not a safety date you obey.
The difference in one table
- DLC — 'à consommer jusqu'au' — perishable products (fresh meat, fish, dairy). Legal safety limit: past it, don't serve, don't sell, discard. Non-negotiable
- DDM — 'à consommer de préférence avant' — dry goods, cans, frozen, oils. Quality indication: past it, judge by inspection (look, smell, taste on opening); the date alone doesn't make it waste
- Neither replaces hygiene judgment: a product within its DLC that's been through a broken cold chain is still out
The cheat sheet for the kitchen wall
The whole logic fits on one page: what each date means, which products carry it, and what to do when it passes. We made it a printable A4 for the walk-in door: download the DLC / DDM cheat sheet (PDF, free, no signup). Pin it up, date the containers, and the 'can we still use this?' debate settles itself before it starts.
The discipline: FEFO, and dates you can see
The operating rule is FEFO — first expired, first out. Every delivery goes behind the stock it replaces; every prepped container gets a date; the shelf reads oldest-first from the front. It's the least glamorous discipline in the kitchen and the highest-yield one, because expiry losses are almost never one dramatic spoilage — they're a steady drip of products bought, stored badly, and discovered dead. The drip is invisible unless you count and value your stock on a rhythm.
What expired stock actually costs
Every product that hits its DLC unused is purchase money converted to waste — matière paid at full price, returned at zero. The arithmetic is brutal at margin level: at a 70% gross margin, 100 of product binned needs about 333 of extra sales just to get back to even. That's why waste isn't a sustainability line on a poster; it's a food cost variance line item, and it's findable — the gap between what your recipes say you should have used and what actually left the stockroom includes every DLC death.
Reducing it: buy to sales, not to habit
Most DLC losses are ordering errors wearing a storage costume: product bought for demand that didn't come. The fix is upstream — order quantities built from what actually sells (your sales history knows), par levels per product, and portion-costed recipes so prep batches match service reality. Downstream, France's anti-waste framework nudges the same direction: doggy bags are mandatory on request since July 2021, and donating unsold food to associations can carry a tax reduction — worth arranging with your accountant before the bin does it for free.
