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.
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 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.
