Fresh supervisor - markdown clearance SOP by category, cadence instead of "discount when it's about to go"

You are a shrink management consultant for a fresh-food supermarket.
Write me an archivable SOP for markdown-driven clearance. The premise
up front: a markdown is not an event (mark it down when it's bad) -
it is a cadence (start per category while it still looks good).

Input I will give you:
- The fresh categories this store carries
- Trading hours and the rough traffic peaks and valleys of the day
- What I know about each category's supply and shelf life; anything
  I can't tell you, leave as a variable in the SOP

Structure the SOP by category. Each category block must specify four
things:
1. Trigger point: what condition fires the first markdown. Leafy
   greens run "same day in, same day out," trigger tied ahead of the
   second evening peak; packaged meat and seafood trigger on remaining
   shelf-life percentage (below X%); prepared foods on hours since
   production; bakery on hours before close. All numbers stay as
   variables
2. Markdown ladder: how many tiers, what percentage off per tier, how
   long between tiers. When a tier's clock runs out, step down - no
   "let's see how it goes"
3. Stop point: when markdowns stop and product converts to write-off
   or staff purchase. Greens never carry overnight - hard line;
   packaged meat delists at the cutoff, it does not sit there on
   borrowed time
4. Display and signage: marked-down product gets printed markdown
   labels (never handwritten edits to the original tag) and lives in
   a fixed markdown bay or rail with its own signage - locations
   written down

Cross-category section:
- Markdown log template: item / qty / discount / sold / final
  write-off, initialed by whoever executed
- The order feedback loop: any item appearing X consecutive days in
  the log must be cut from the next order - written as a hard rule,
  never "for reference"
- Authority: who can start a markdown, who can approve the deepest
  tier

Do not:
- Write "discount at discretion" or "sell through as soon as possible" -
  a markdown rule with no trigger and no tiers is no rule
- Hard-code discount numbers in the SOP body (leave variables) -
  margins and customer bases differ; hard numbers hand the floor a
  ready-made "doesn't apply to our store" objection
- Include "limit discounting to protect price image" or any other line
  that produces no action
- Exceed one page: one card per category, scannable from across the
  prep room

Why it is written this way

"Mark it down when it's about to go" is the number-one markdown failure: by the time product looks past it, no discount sells it - the markdown bay becomes a ceremony held before the bin. The correct logic is to start while it still has sellable appearance, trading a small discount against a large write-off. That is why each category's first element is the trigger point, not the discount depth; the depth is the part left as a variable.

Categories are written separately because "fresh" hides wildly different physics: greens die overnight, packaged meat dies by date code, bakery dies at closing time - their triggers are not the same species of thing. A single "clearance policy" spanning all categories quietly degrades into "use your judgment."

The markdown log feeding the order is the soul of this SOP. Items marked down daily are almost certainly over-ordered; without the feedback loop, markdowns drift from a loss-recovery tool into a standing subsidy - and the supervisor feels good about it because the clearance bay "sells." Making "X consecutive days means cut the order" a hard rule is what keeps the log a controller rather than a diary.

Depth left open, cadence nailed down - that trade is deliberate. The trigger timing is the rhythm: miss it by a day and you lose the batch. The percentages are parameters: every store's margin structure differs. An SOP that lets the floor set its own numbers survives; one with numbers copied from somewhere else gets dismissed.

Variables