In a bid to reduce both food waste and food poverty, One Stop and its customers have collectively donated one million equivalent foodbank meals through various partnerships and initiatives since 2021.
The three key partners of the retailer in this area are FareShare, OLIO and Too Good To Go. All three of these organisations are aligned in their goal to help combat food poverty and save as much food as possible from being wasted. Customers donate food throughout the year to the charity, with collection points available in all One Stop stores. FareShare will then redistribute this to local charities throughout the UK. One Stop also fundraises and donates to FareShare, with campaigns running throughout the year. The company has donated and raised nearly £100,000 over the last year alone for the charity.
OLIO and Too Good To Go are two organisations bringing a very technology-focused approach to these issues, by offering local communities’ food close to its sell by date on their apps. OLIO sees “Food Waste Heroes” collect the surplus food from stores and then redistribute it to their local community using the app, while the Too Good To Go app offers people in the community the chance to purchase a variety of surplus food at a heavily discounted rate through “Magic Bags”.
To ensure that these partnerships are as coordinated as possible, One Stop implemented an initial trial with both of the app-based partners, beginning this last year, with the trial running for three months across 130 One Stop Stores. The surplus food saved during that trial alone was the equivalent of 7,000 food bank meals. The success of the trial convinced the convenience retailer to roll this out across all of its stores.
The trial was an opportunity for One Stop to develop internal processes, to make sure that food collections either by customers or volunteers ran as smoothly as possible. This has involved employee training and in June 2022, One Stop created a surplus food waste process. This new approach has allowed the company to effectively manage OLIO and Too Good To Go orders in all 700 company owned stores. To date this process has saved over 20,000 meals through Too Good to Go and over 90,000 meals via OLIO.
Neil Thomas, One Stop head of transformation said: “Over the last couple of years, we have really accelerated our food waste reduction activities. As a company, we believe in the many social and environmental benefits of eliminating unnecessary food waste. The partnerships we have formed will allow us to effectively redistribute this food and strive towards this goal.”
The company has further strengthened its bond with both OLIO and Fareshare, joining their campaign to redistribute 200 million meals over the next year.
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