August 13, 2020
Blakemore Retail has extended its trial of the Too Good to Go food waste fighting app, with 57 SPAR stores now registered on the platform.
The app launched in the UK in 2016 to help tackle the 10 million tonnes of food wasted each year by saving fresh and short-dated meals and products thrown away by restaurants and retailers. It enables people to buy short-dated food for a reduced price.
Blakemore Retail first signed up to the app in January this year, when it began a trial with 15 stores based in Lincolnshire.
In the last week of June, a further 42 sites across England and Wales were registered on the platform, and now stores overseen by Area Managers Ian Bailes, Donna Cooper, Mark Paddison and Deborah Smith have all been signed up.
Towards the end of each day, stores registered on the app make up bags of surplus fresh food and groceries, which Too Good to Go’s 2.5 million app users in the UK can then find and purchase.
Each bag must contain a minimum of £10 of food at full retail price. This is then sold to customers for £3.09.
Bags can consist of a range of groceries, fruit, vegetables, baked goods, sandwiches, cakes, fresh and cooked meats, pizzas, ready meals and sometimes even a pudding.
After placing an order for a bag on the app, customers are allocated a time to collect their bag of goodies from their chosen SPAR store.
Blakemore Retail Area Manager Mark Paddison, who is championing the Too Good to Go platform across the store estate, commented: “This app is a great way to help the business reduce the amount of food that goes to waste every day.
“It enables customers to get some fantastic deals as well as try new products. In stores across my area, this practice of reducing food waste has now become the normal way of working.
“Blakemore Retail is still in the trial stages of using the app, but the early signs are positive. After a strong start, the bags’ popularity did dip during the peak of the coronavirus as people avoided shops, but since then things have picked up, and overall they have been well-received by customers.
“In the week ending 27th July, 82% of all prepared bags were sold, which is an excellent amount of food waste saved.”
Since the trial was extended to 57 SPAR stores, circa 500 bags of food have been saved from going to waste across the retail estate each week.
If the platform continues to perform well, Blakemore Retail will continue to register more stores on the app.
A few screenshots of SPAR on the Too Good to Go food waste app
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