EVERY DECEMBER, SOMEONE SUGGESTS PULLING BACK THE SALAD SECTION.
"IT'S WINTER. PEOPLE WANT COMFORT FOOD. HOT SOUP. MAC AND CHEESE. NOT COLD LETTUCE."
AND EVERY YEAR, THE DATA SHOWS CUSTOMERS KEEP BUYING SALADS ANYWAY.
I'VE WATCHED THIS HAPPEN IN STORES ACROSS THE COUNTRY. SOMEONE GRABS A CONTAINER OF CHICKEN NOODLE SOUP, PAUSES, THEN ADDS A SALAD. NOT BECAUSE THEY'RE VIRTUOUS. BECAUSE THEY DON'T WANT TO EAT ONLY HEAVY FOOD FOR THREE MONTHS STRAIGHT.
BUT RETAIL TEAMS SEE SLOWER BROWSING AND ASSUME THAT MEANS LOWER DEMAND. IT DOESN'T. IT MEANS PEOPLE ARE COLD AND MOVING FASTER THROUGH THE REFRIGERATED SECTION. THEY'RE NOT LINGERING. THAT'S DIFFERENT FROM NOT BUYING.
The Shrink Panic in Fresh Food Retail
The "shrink fear" makes it worse. Worried about waste, stores cut back on fresh options—then wonder why customers stop coming to that section entirely.
I had a conversation with a category manager last February. They'd cut their salad section by 40% in January, thinking they'd reduce shrink and maintain sales. Shrink dropped. Sales dropped harder. By March, they were scrambling to get the space back, but the shelf sets were locked until May. Four months of customers learning to shop elsewhere.
Removing the salad doesn't shift the sale to something else. It shifts the customer to another store.
And here's the thing about shrink management: it's often a merchandising problem disguised as a demand problem. Salads sitting in the back corner of a poorly lit case with inconsistent restocking don't sell well in any season. But instead of fixing the presentation, stores blame winter.
What Actually Sells: Year-Round Salad Performance
Some salads actually perform better in winter. Chickpea salad doesn't know what season it is. Sesame noodle sells year-round. Shrimp becomes a weird January hit—I've never understood it, but the numbers don't lie.
Bulk salads move because people want variety without committing to a full entrée. The Monday lunch crowd still exists in February. They're not all eating chili.
Grain bowls hold steady. Pasta salads dip but recover by mid-January when resolutions kick in. Caesar stays consistent because Caesar is eternal.
The real drops? Leafy greens and anything marketed as "light" or "refreshing." Nobody wants refreshing in January. They want substantial. They want protein-forward options that feel like a meal, not a side dish.
So the move isn't to gut the category. It's to adjust the mix for seasonal demand. Keep the workhorses, cut the summer-specific items, make sure the section looks full even with fewer SKUs. People buy from abundance, not from half-empty shelves that suggest abandonment.
The Cost of Pulling Back
Winter doesn't kill fresh food categories. It reveals who understands their customers and who's guessing.
When you pull a product for four months, you don't hit pause—you reset to zero. Next spring isn't a comeback. It's a relaunch. And the shelf space you gave up? Someone else took it. I've seen stores lose salad footage to hummus, to cheese, to whatever category manager got there first. Good luck getting it back.
There's also the customer habit problem. If someone shops your store for fresh options twice a week and you remove those options for a quarter of the year, they find another store. Maybe they come back in April. Maybe they don't. Loyalty isn't automatic.
The stores that maintain salad assortment year-round—even if it's a smaller selection—are the ones that become the default. Because when you need a salad in February and only one store consistently has them, that's where you go. And while you're there, you buy other things too.
Managing Fresh Food Through Winter: What Works
People want fresh food options in winter. Not all the time, not in the same quantities, but they want the option. That means retailers need to stop treating winter like a binary: hot or cold, comfort or fresh. Customers don't think that way.
It also means rethinking the cold case. If people are moving faster through refrigerated sections, make the salads easier to grab. Better lighting. Clearer signage. Don't bury the best sellers behind the kale that nobody's buying in January anyway.
And it means accepting that some waste is the cost of being a fresh food destination. Not reckless waste—smart rotation, good forecasting, tighter ordering. But if your shrink is zero, you're probably under-ordering. And if customers can't find what they want, your shrink savings don't matter.
The retailers who keep fresh salads available—in January, February, the long grey March—those are the ones who build customer loyalty.
Because seasonal is the weather. Appetite is year-round.
