Supermarkets play a different game.
Grocery surplus arrives on a schedule, in volume, with a date printed on it. That changes the whole mechanic.
Restaurant surplus is a nightly surprise. Grocery surplus is a rolling certainty: short-date lines move through the store on a known clock, branch by branch, every single day.
That makes the problem more tractable and larger. A chain can predict roughly what will be short-dated on Thursday, which means it can plan the discount rather than react to it.
For a chain the question is never whether surplus exists. It is whether the markdown happens in a system or in a bin.
It also demands different tooling: per-branch listings, central pricing rules, and reporting that a category manager can defend upstairs. That is why groups onboard through a pilot rather than a signup form.
