Expected controls for donated products
Hello All,
Is anyone here giving out products as donations? How does your company protect themselves from liability when they donate their products?
Record the Product, the Flavor, the Date Code, etc. just like you would if it were a sale.
Do not donate old, out of date, or otherwise unwholesome product, just like you would not sell it.
My company owners donate products for my church (they're Orthodox Christians, same as I am). No liability protection: I just bring products to church and give out to our parishioners. So far, no complaints from people.
Agree with Setanta---there isn't any liability (no different than retail) as long as what you are donating is wholesome
Your question makes it sound like perhaps something isn't quite above board?
Same as people from working taking home extra product. We do both, donate and let employees take stuff. However, it has to be through the entire line. For example, I saw employee bagging up some stuff to take home from the leftovers of a run, and had to tell him no, you can't do that, it hasn't been metal detected, date coded, lot tagged, etc and so on and so forth and etc... Gotta take a bag off the END of the line. So nothing shady like that.
But if it's something we're comfortable selling, we have no worries giving it away.
We donate useable product, tracking whom we donated to for traceability purposes.
We donate useable product, tracking whom we donated to for traceability purposes.
We rarely donate, but we do this with employees that are taking finished products home. We have a form that they fill out with their name, the item they are taking home, the lot number, and the amount. This is included in our traceability program.
As said before, you should treat it like any other product that you would put on the market. You also don't want to put lower quality products on the market with the brand labels. Consumers can confuse your off-batch for the real thing, and it can hurt brand image.
If you are planning on including brands not owned by yourself (private label) that you should adhere to the brand owners' guidelines. Some private label owners allow putting left over stock on the market, others don't.
I remember a case where supermarket private label goods were donated to a food bank. The supermarket would allow returns with- and without receipt.
What would you rather have? Some food that you did not pick out yourself or the cash equivalent.
You can imagine that the returns for this product skyrocketed.