ECR Community's Sell More, Waste Less group is to launch a new programme to assist retailers and producers with tackling food waste at its next working group meeting in Lisbon, on 23 and 24 October.
The 2019 Retail Food Waste Prevention Innovation Challenge will build on the successful 2018 ECR Retail Loss Challenge and will seek out new ways of thinking and technology ideas that can help tackle retailers' most pressing food waste prevention problems.
The focus of the search will be to find entrepreneurs and innovators that are free from the structures of the existing retailer paradigms, which could contribute ideas for food waste prevention.
The launch of the initiative will be one of five sessions to take place during the working group meeting on 24 October, which will be attended by retailers, suppliers and academics. It will be hosted by Portuguese retailer Sonae, which will host an introductory conference and store visit programme on the preceding day (23 October).
ESM is the media partner for this event, and we will be featuring a full review of the event in Issue 6 - 2018, going to press in November.
Session Structure
The first session – 'Wrestling with Waste Prevention in Production Categories – In-Store Bakery Focus' – will examine the strategies that retailers are adopting to manage often high levels of bakery waste. Studies indicate that bakery accounts for 44% of the food surplus made available for donations to charity.
Following this, the second session will examine the 'Scale and Nature of Online Grocery Food Waste', drawing on research data gathered by Cardiff Business School, WRAP and Ocado, which will offer insights on the nature of the online grocery waste problem relative to traditional grocery retailing.
This session will also feature a discussion on how online retailers can respond to the unique challenges of online grocery waste.
The third session, a 'Start-Up Showcase', will see another promising start-up in the food waste arena given the opportunity to pitch its waste prevention idea and new technology to the group for feedback.
This will be followed by the fourth session, which will see the launch of the aforementioned 2019 Retail Food Waste Prevention Innovation Challenge.
The final session, entitled 'Expiry Date Visibility Business Case & Developments', will see the working group road test a new Excel-based model that can help retailers and manufacturers better articulate the financial benefits of increased system-wide visibility around expiry dates. Based on these insights, the group will examine how better management of expiry dates can be implemented across a retailer's inventory using technologies such as RFID, 2D bar codes, and so forth.
The full itinerary can be found here. The event is free to attend for retailers and manufacturers. To register, click here.
© 2018 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.
