How long doOliveslast in the fridge once opened?

The USDA rates 2 kinds of this separately

The USDA files 2 separate entries under this name — from olive bar and black and green — and they do not keep for the same time: Olives, from olive bar holds 2 weeks outside the freezer, Olives, black and green holds 12 months to 18 months.

Why the freezer is not an option here

The USDA marks the freezer as not recommended for every one of the 2 kinds under this name, and for Olives, black and green the whole answer is 2 weeks in the refrigerator after opening. It is not a warning: food held at 0 °F stays safe, so a not-recommended is a verdict on what would come out of the freezer.

Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item

The USDA gives this item a pantry and a refrigerator figure and no freezer figure at all, the pattern behind 79 of the 466 foods in the data. The source also indexes it as bar, black and green.

Olives, from olive bar

• In the freezernot recommended
• Unopened · in the fridge2 weeks

Olives, black and green

• Unopened · in the pantry12 months to 18 months
• Once opened · in the fridge2 weeks

Turning the range into a date

Each kind gets its own dated rows here, 3 rows across the 2 the USDA lists under this name, because a date is only worth printing against the window it belongs to.

Olives, from olive bar

• Unopened · in the fridgeUse by2 weeks after the day you bought it

Olives, black and green

• Unopened · in the pantryUse by12 months to 18 months after the day you bought it
• Once opened · in the fridgeUse by2 weeks after the day you opened it

Is this window about safety or about taste?

The answer at the top of this page reads 2 weeks in the fridge once opened. What decides that is the food: the source files Olives, black and green under Deli & Prepared Foods, a heading it keeps for perishable food. Past it, throw it out rather than taste it: a perishable food can carry enough bacteria to make you ill while it still looks and smells fine.

The figure in the pantry here is a quality window. The same page carries windows of more than one kind, so which sentence applies depends on which row you are reading, not on the food. Every figure assumes the food was sound when you stored it, that your refrigerator holds 40 °F or below and your freezer 0 °F or below, and that the package was handled normally.

It is past the date. Now what?

Say the calculator above puts Olives, black and green past its 2 weeks in the fridge once opened window, or the container sat out on the counter overnight. Throw the container out without tasting it, and count any hours it already spent out of the refrigerator as part of that window rather than on top of it.

The USDA's limit for perishable food standing at room temperature is 2 hours, or 1 hour when the kitchen is above 90 °F, and that clock runs whatever the storage figure says. The FoodKeeper entry this page is built from prints storage times and nothing else, so anything past them here is USDA and FSIS guidance rather than a figure from the source. The whole rule, including the cases the source does not cover, is set out under what to do when the date has passed.

Is that a long time?

Nothing the USDA files under Deli & Prepared Foods keeps longer outside the freezer than Olives, black and green: 18 months. Next is Hummus at 3 months, and the middle of the 25-item list sits at 4 days.

Items that behave the same way

Every one of the 6 nearest items keeps the same or less, 6 days to 3 months against the 18 months of Olives, black and green, which makes it the durable end of the cluster.

• Hummuskeeps 7 days in the fridge once openedcommercial (pasteurized, with preservatives) · up to 3 months sealed in the fridge
• Canadian baconkeeps 10 days in the fridgesliced · up to 80 days sealed in the fridge
• Commercial brand vacuum-packed dinners, with USDA sealkeeps 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Luncheon meat or poultrykeeps 3 days in the fridge once openedpre-packaged · up to 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Salami, pre-packaged, luncheon/deli meatkeeps 3 days in the fridge once openedup to 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Cooked ricekeeps 4 days in the fridge

Products the USDA rates in the same places

No other product in the file is rated in exactly this set of places: pantry from the day of purchase, refrigerator from the day of purchase and refrigerator after opening, and nothing else. That makes the shape of this record unique among the 466 products here, so the closest comparisons available are the entries that share most of it — Hummus, Luncheon meat or poultry and Salami. Their windows are printed beside them below, and none of them is rated in quite the same way.

Nothing carries this exact set of places, so these share most of it.

• Hummus7 days in the fridge once openedcommercial (pasteurized, with preservatives) · up to 3 months sealed in the fridge
• Luncheon meat or poultry3 days in the fridge once openedpre-packaged · up to 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Salami3 days in the fridge once openedup to 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Canadian bacon10 days in the fridgesliced · up to 80 days sealed in the fridge
• Commercial brand vacuum-packed dinners2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Fruit, cut4 days in the fridge once opened
• Main dishes or meals3 days sealed in the fridge
• Pate1 day sealed in the fridge

The rest of the Deli & Prepared Foods shelf

Nothing else on the Deli & Prepared Foods shelf keeps longer outside the freezer than this one. The other 24 products there run down from Hummus at 3 months to Pate at 2 days, and the ones nearest this product by window are Hummus, Canadian bacon and Commercial brand vacuum-packed dinners. That makes this page the top of its own shelf rather than a middle entry. Across the whole of Deli & Prepared Foods the same product ranks 1 of 25. The middle of the shelf is Fruit, cut, at 4 days.

• Hummus3 months7 days in the fridge once opened
• Canadian bacon80 days10 days in the fridge
• Commercial brand vacuum-packed dinners2 weeks2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Luncheon meat or poultry2 weeks3 days in the fridge once opened
• Salami2 weeks3 days in the fridge once opened
• Cooked rice6 days4 days in the fridge
• Cooked pasta5 days3 days in the fridge
• Potato salad5 days3 days in the fridge

If it has to keep longer than this

Nothing the USDA files under Deli & Prepared Foods keeps at least twice as long as this one outside the freezer. It runs the other way: 24 entries in the category keep half as long or less, among them Hummus, Canadian bacon and Commercial brand vacuum-packed dinners. So the question this page answers is not what to buy instead, but what this product outlasts on the same shelf, and by how much. Twice as long is the cutoff used here, so a product a few days apart from this one is not treated as a step.

• Hummus3 months7 days in the fridge once opened
• Canadian bacon80 days10 days in the fridge
• Commercial brand vacuum-packed dinners2 weeks2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Luncheon meat or poultry2 weeks3 days in the fridge once opened
• Salami2 weeks3 days in the fridge once opened
• Cooked rice6 days4 days in the fridge
• Cooked pasta5 days3 days in the fridge
• Potato salad5 days3 days in the fridge

The record this page is built from

The USDA publishes 2 separate rows under this name — records 187 and 352 — and this page carries all of them rather than picking one, because their windows differ. Between them they fill 3 of the nine storage slots with a time. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for Olives, black and green, which is the kind the plain name means here, chosen kind by kind rather than by the order the source happens to list them in. 1 slot is marked not recommended, which is an answer rather than a gap.

Where these numbers come from

Every range on this page is published by the USDA FoodKeeper and reproduced unchanged. The multipliers, the rankings, the percentages and the dates are ours, computed from those ranges. Where the source gives a span such as 3 to 5 weeks, comparisons use the upper figure, and the full span is always printed.

Rankings cover only the items the USDA gives a usable figure for, and identical ranges share a place rather than being ordered arbitrarily. Neighbors are chosen by nearest storage time within the same category, never alphabetically: two foods filed next to each other by name usually have nothing to do with each other. The freezer is excluded from ranking because it flattens almost everything.

Where the USDA lists several kinds under one name, they share one page here and every kind keeps its own windows: the source prints them as separate rows, and a page that merged them would be inventing a figure the source never published. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for the kind the plain name means — the shell egg for eggs, the can for tuna — which is settled name by name rather than by the order the source lists its rows in, and the page names it. Where the plain name means no single kind, the page prints no single figure at all and lists the kinds instead.

Source: USDA FoodKeeper, retrieved 1 September 2026. This site computes every comparison on this page and takes responsibility for it. Found a figure that does not match the source? Tell us on the contact page, with the page and the row — the parsing is mechanical, so a mismatch is our bug and we want it. How the whole site is built, which figures are ours and where the source can be checked is on the method page.

USDA index terms: bar, black, green, olive

KeepsUntil is an independent reference built on public USDA data. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the Food and Drug Administration. Whether a given window is a safety limit or a quality window is stated on the page that prints it.