Spar Teams Up With Gander To Combat Food Waste

Spar International has teamed up with digital platform Gander to step up food waste reduction measures.

It is another milestone for both companies and will see the use of digital solutions to reduce food waste within the retail sector.

The partnership, initially launched in Northern Ireland, has now grown to become a global agreement, the retailer added.

Gander offers Spar a real-time, automated mobile platform that helps food stores sell more close-to-expiry date, discounted food products.

'Greater Efficiency'

Commenting on the partnership, CEO of Spar International, Tobias Wasmuht, said, "We are delighted to be working with Gander on a global scale and look forward to building on learnings from their collaboration with Spar in Northern Ireland.

"Our food waste reduction strategy leverages technology to achieve greater efficiency at each step, thereby leading to lower levels of food waste. Working with entrepreneurial platforms such as Gander provides sustainable solutions that are important as Spar seeks ways to reduce the environmental impact."

Greater Visibility

Spar's partnership with Gander will play a crucial role in reducing food waste by offering consumers greater visibility to discounted products.

The retailer will adapt Gander's onboarding model by integrating it into the Spar store POS systems and gain access to multiple solutions such as integrated or stand-alone applications for ease of use.

The Gander platform will enable retailers to automatically display to shoppers, in real-time, all reduced-to-clear food on the shelves within their local Spar store.

Ashley Osborne, founder of Gander, said, "We're delighted to launch this partnership with Spar to address the immense challenge of reducing food waste.

Since our launch in the Eurospar and Spar stores in Northern Ireland, we have seen phenomenal results and managed to drastically minimise the levels of food waste at the end of each day."

Significant Savings

Participating Spar retailers can help customers make significant savings and reduce food waste by purchasing the price-reduced products available each day.

During the initial adoption phase, the two companies will take into account market differences and subsequently build on the learnings available from Spar retailers already using the system.

This partnership follows the retailer's recent global collaboration with Too Good To Go. The joint initiative enables customers to buy food - which could otherwise be wasted - at a significantly reduced cost.

Zero-Waste Solution

The Gander and Too Good To Go platforms can combine seamlessly to provide a zero-waste solution for stores, the retailer added.

Gander first enables stores to sell more of their reduce-to-clear product, while Too Good To Go facilitates sales of surplus items in discounted food packages, named 'Magic Bags'.

The retailer added that these strategic partnerships reflect its commitment to reducing the impact of food waste on the environment and executing the brand's tiered strategy targeting this issue at all levels.