Making a meal of surplus food

Stores involved locally in the Community Food Connection initiative include Tesco Ballymena, Antrim Massereene Extra, and Carniny Ballymena Express store.

This work is a key part of Tesco’s target to ensure no food safe for human consumption will go to waste by the end of 2017. Charities benefitting from the scheme include homeless hostels, breakfast clubs for disadvantaged children, domestic violence refuges and lunch clubs for older people.

Launched in February 2016, Tesco’s Community Food Connection scheme plays a key role in helping charities feed people and in doing so, enabling the money saved to be invested back into services in communities across the whole of the UK. The scheme, run in partnership with food redistribution charity FareShare, enables Tesco stores to donate unsold food to feed people in need through an app developed by Irish Social Enterprise, FoodCloud. The app lets local charities know there is surplus food available at the end of each day. Community groups can then collect and use the food to provide nutritious meals to vulnerable people. Working with FareShare, Tesco colleagues in County Antrim have helped enlist local charities to join the initiative.

Charities or community groups that could benefit from Community Food Connection can visit www.fareshare.org.uk/fareshare-foodcloud to register.