Lotte Mart and Lotte ON Strengthen Food Hygiene Management... "Indication and Guarantee of Remaining Shelf Life"

Refunds Possible Without Product Recall for Fresh Food Quality Complaints

Lotte Mart and Lotte ON are significantly strengthening food freshness management to welcome the full summer season.

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Chunhan] Lotte Mart and Lotte ON announced on the 5th that they will significantly strengthen food freshness management in preparation for the full-fledged summer season.

Lotte Mart will operate a summer food hygiene focused management period until September. During this period, food products will be intensively managed in three stages in collaboration with the Lotte Safety Center. For seafood, where food poisoning bacteria are frequently detected, the highest grade of washing and sterilization disinfection will be conducted regularly, and decisions on whether to ban sales at stores will be made promptly according to issues to minimize customer damage. The sales time for ready-to-eat foods has been shortened to 7 hours after manufacturing, and the sales period for cut fruits such as watermelon will be managed at 4 hours.

Lotte ON operates a ‘Super Fresh Program’ for customers purchasing fresh food online. To secure the reliability of the expiration date, which is considered most sensitive, an expiration date information service is provided. On detailed product description pages for items sensitive to freshness such as milk, eggs, tofu, and bean sprouts, the guaranteed remaining shelf life of the delivered products is indicated as 5 or 10 days depending on the item.

They also operate a ‘Super Fresh Guarantee Service’ that immediately refunds customers without recalling the product if they are not satisfied with the freshness and quality of fresh food. This service processes refunds immediately without a separate recall procedure and applies to about 15,000 fresh food items from Lotte Mart sold on Lotte ON. These products are marked with a Super Fresh Guarantee label for easy identification.

A Lotte ON official said, "As the importance of food safety increases during the summer season, we are strengthening food hygiene and freshness management," adding, "We will strive to manage expiration dates and freshness so that customer recognition of freshness when purchasing fresh food can be enhanced."