I can tell you factually, that here in California if I had expired product in use, or not in process of being thrown out and the Health Dept. showed up, I would have been written up and subject to fines if I did not rectify immediately. And of course all the grocery stores either throw out food past it’s sell by/use by dates or the more charitable donate to food banks when product is close to the date because it’s good customer relations.
Then that’s a state law that I don’t know about. Sounds like you’re running a restaurant, not a grocery store? I’ll say again that “expired” is a magic word with a specific meaning that applies only to baby food and baby formula. Here’s the most relevant excerpt from the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service:
“Except for infant formula (see below), product dating is not generally required by Federal regulations.”
Which means the feds have no directives on how to deal with stuff being out of date, or what “out of date” even means.
When I worked at a grocery store and an expired/damaged item couldn’t get “credit” from the manufacturer we would be allowed to take some home. lol.
We would sell the bread at a pretty good discount, like quarter a loaf. (early 90’s). A guy who owned one of those mobile BBQ trucks was a customer who would come late at night or early in the morning to buy up these quarter loaves.
He did make good sandwiches too.