UK retailer Waitrose has announced that it is extending its partnership with FareShare - an IT platform that helps local charities collect surplus food from supermarkets for free.
Waitrose is adding 22 stores to its trial of the service, bringing the total number of stores using FareShare to 25, and has also committed to making funds and employee volunteers available to local charity groups that use the service.
FareShare aims to provide charities with the exact type of product they need to maximise support to communities. This includes funds to buy kitchen equipment or storage, or volunteers to help serve food.
Subject to the success of the trials, Waitrose plans to extend the FareShare service to all its branches by summer 2018.
Easy Access
Lindsay Boswell, CEO of FareShare, said, "So far the trial has got off to a great start, with charities lining up to collect good quality surplus food from their local Waitrose store for free. We're delighted by the support Waitrose partners have shown for the scheme.
"Quite rightly, they believe there's no reason food should be thrown away when it could go to feed hungry people, and already that food is doing a tremendous amount of good."
Since launching the trial in March with three stores initially, an equivalent of 4250 meals have been donated to 12 charities.
Support
Laura Strangeway, sustainability manager at Watirose, added, "In the five years we’ve been donating surplus food prior to these trials, we’ve found one of the main challenges is letting local charities know what food we have available for them to collect and when. And, with many local groups being very small, they can have limited resources to make the most of the food donations we can offer.
"The ease of FareShare - coupled with the additional equipment and manpower we’re offering - should make it much easier for groups to help many more people in the local community."
© 2017 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Aidan O’Sullivan. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
