Supermarket giant offers charity food help

As part of its ongoing pledge to cut food waste, Tesco’s Community Food Connection programme recruits and supports charities and community groups, linking them to stores via an app which allows store teams to alert them to surplus unsold food items available at the end of each day.

The unsold food is free and includes fresh produce, such as fruit, vegetables and bakery products. Chilled products like meat, dairy and ready meals are also offered.

There have been 350,000 meals donated to people in need via Community Food Connection to date, following a successful pilot in 14 stores last year and a national rollout from March this year, which has seen more than 1,000 charities sign up to the scheme so far.

Rifka Chakkalakal, for the scheme, said: “No food that can be eaten should go to waste. We’re excited to start working on this initiative to ensure any unsold food we have is made use of. We are looking forward to forging strong links with local charities and community groups in Mansfield, and to use this initiative to support their efforts to help vulnerable people.”

Any charities or groups in Mansfield using food to support people that would like to access the scheme, should register their interest by visiting www.fareshare.org.uk/fareshare-foodcloud

Stores participating are Mansfield Jubilee Extra, New Ollerton and Mansfield Chesterfield Road Extra.