A 90-day shelf life doesn't forgive a reorder mistake the way a T-shirt does.
Food and beverage brands operate on weeks or months of shelf life, not years. Generic reorder-point tools built for durable goods don't have a concept of "this stock will actively go bad" -- they only know "this stock is low."
Short answer: plan the selling window, not only the stock level
Combine current stock, recent sales, supplier lead time, safety stock and each lot's expiry date. A short shelf life or incomplete lot history can make the result partial or insufficient; zero observed sales does not prove that a product will not sell.
Foreshelf helps explain expiry-aware replenishment and prepares approval-gated proposals. It is not a food-safety, recall or fulfillment-control system, and it does not replace quality procedures or manual review of the lot data. See expiry-aware inventory, FEFO vs FIFO and the illustrative calculator.
The specific pain
For most Shopify categories, holding extra inventory is a cash problem, not a spoilage problem -- excess stock ties up money but it doesn't go bad. Food changes that. Every unit ordered past what will actually sell before its expiry date isn't just cash sitting on a shelf, it's a write-off waiting to happen. And the failure mode that costs the most -- reordering too little on a fast-moving item and running out -- happens on a shorter timeline than almost any other product category, because shelf life limits how far ahead you can safely stock up in the first place.
Why normal reorder planning misses this
- FEFO (first-expired, first-out) matters more than FIFO: a generic system that just tracks total quantity has no way to ensure the oldest lot sells first -- Foreshelf's batch tracking is FEFO by design.
- Short shelf life compresses your reaction window: a 60-90 day shelf life means a reorder decision that's a week late can mean the difference between a lot that sells through and one that doesn't.
- Multiple lots of the same SKU, different ages: the same product can have three lots on hand with three different expiry dates -- treating them as one number hides which specific lot is actually at risk.
- Supplier lead time eats directly into shelf life: a 2-week lead time on a 60-day shelf-life product leaves a much smaller real selling window than the same lead time on a durable good.
The Foreshelf workflow
Import batch/lot data with expiry dates. Foreshelf's FEFO logic tracks which lot should sell first, and Marcus's reorder math checks whether the current lot -- and any proposed new order -- will actually clear before it expires, given your real sales velocity for that SKU. If the incoming order would arrive with too little shelf life left to sell through, Marcus flags it before you place it, not after it's sitting in a fridge going out of date. Every purchase order or discount action requires your approval, with a 60-second cancel window.
A worked example (illustrative numbers, not a specific customer)
200 units in stock, selling 8/day, current lot expires in 10 days. Considering a 150-unit reorder with a 14-day supplier lead time.
The new order wouldn't even arrive until after the current lot has already expired -- and by the time it lands, you'd have roughly 200 - (8×10) = 120 units either sold or expired, with a fresh 150-unit lot behind it. Foreshelf's check catches the timing mismatch specifically: the lead time on this order exceeds the shelf life you're trying to plan around, which is exactly the kind of gap a simple "is stock low?" check won't surface.
Which features apply here
FEFO batch tracking, expiry-aware reorder decisions, and Marcus's approval-gated purchase orders and discount proposals are all directly built for this category. Multi-location inventory routing is not currently part of Foreshelf's product surface.
FAQ
Yes -- batch tracking is per-lot, and FEFO logic determines which lot should be allocated to a sale first.
No. Foreshelf is a reorder-decision tool built on top of your batch data. It is not a substitute for a dedicated food safety or recall-management system.
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