Tesco set to provide more than 250,000 meals of surplus food to local groups this Christmas

Festive vegetables are expected to top the donations during the week of Christmas

More than a quarter of a million meals of surplus food are set to be donated to charities and community groups by Tesco this Christmas.

It comes as the supermarket looks to end 2018 with more than 36 million meals given to good causes through its Community Food Connection scheme, which distributes surplus food from its stores at the end of the day in conjunction with leading food charity FareShare.

Festive vegetables are expected to top the donations during the week of Christmas once again this year. Last year Tesco donated more than 14 tonnes of sprouts (around 750,000 individual sprouts in total).

The supermarket also donated 8.7 tonnes of parsnips, 1.7 tonnes of clementines and half a tonne of mince pies in Christmas week last year.

Every one of Tesco’s 2,600 stores are able to participate in the scheme, with some 7,000 charities and community groups being supported by the donations.

Tesco’s Head of Community, Alec Brown said: “Christmas is a time of year when people think about others in their community, and our colleagues working in stores across the UK see for themselves the charities and community groups that benefit from the donations.

“These groups support people in need of food throughout the year, and our Tesco food surplus donations really are for life, not just for Christmas.”

Groups that are signed up to the scheme are allocated days to collect food from their local stores. Stores input the details of the food available at the end of the day into an app developed by social enterprise FoodCloud, which generates a text to the charity to tell them what is available.

FareShare chief executive, Lindsay Boswell congratulated the leadership shown by Tesco in tackling food waste from its stores: “Tesco has really embraced the opportunities available in working with FareShare to provide millions of meals using food that would have otherwise gone to waste; and it is set to have donated an incredible 36 million meals by the end of the year.

“Now FareShare is starting to roll out the technology from FoodCloud that Tesco has pioneered to other retailers, helping us to feed thousands more people in food poverty.”