Making a (great) meal out of surplus food

Making a (great) meal out of surplus food

With food poverty on the rise, there’s no good reason to waste food we can’t sell. So we’ve built more than 2,100 ‘Food Donation Partnerships’ with local charities.

Food poverty is a major problem in today’s Britain with food bank use at record levels, according to food charity, the Trussell Trust.

So we’ve built more than 2,100 Food Donation Partnerships across our stores – helping to ensure food goes to those who need it most.

Cooking meals for vulnerable people at FoodCycle’s Peckham hub

Customer donation points

As well as donating surplus food, as of March 2017 we also have 1,082 ‘front of store’ food donation points. This way, customers can donate food they’ve bought in store – usually packaged or tinned products – to support local causes.

Widening our network

We’re actively trying to enter into partnerships with more local charities – and our goal is to match all of our stores with a suitable local partner by 2020.

We encourage charities to contact local stores or our Community Affairs team – so we can do even more to donate surplus food.

Donating fresh, unsold food

If we have unsold food that’s approaching its best before or use by date, we try to donate it to a local charity through one of our ‘surplus back of store’ food partnerships. And we’ve been doing this since 1998.

Usually, the food we donate includes fresh fruit and vegetables, dry goods such as sugar and pasta, and bakery items made in store.

In March 2017, we had 1,114 of these partnerships across 970 stores – with partner charities including food banks, soup kitchens, homeless centres and community cafes.

They include our Dulwich store’s partnership in south east London with FoodCycle in Peckham. FoodCycle cooks nutritious, three course meals for vulnerable people – and we were the first supermarket to work with them when they started cooking in 2009.

2,100+

Food Donation Partnerships – and we want the number to grow