Tesco donates more than 100,000 meals to feed hungry people in Milton Keynes

The items have been donated through the Community Food Connection scheme, which Tesco operates with food redistribution charity FareShare.

FareShare takes good quality surplus food from across the food industry that would otherwise go wot waste and gets it to frontline charities and community groups.

These include school breakfast clubs, older people’s lunch clubs, homeless shelters, and community cafes.

Every Tesco store in the UK participates in the scheme, and each month more than a million meals of food are donated. This week Tesco hit a milestone of it 50 million meals being donated across the UK.

Since the start of the pandemic hundreds of new groups have signed up to receive food from the scheme nationally.

FareShare’s Chief Executive Lindsay Boswell said the scheme, the largest of its kind in the UK and believed to be the largest in Europe, was making a real difference.

“We are delighted that Tesco has reached this milestone – donating the equivalent of 50 million meals is no mean feat and has gone such a long way in supporting thousands of charities and community groups up and down the country,” he said.

“The scheme is a real game-changer for organisations working with the vulnerable, allowing even more people to access good to eat food which would otherwise go to waste.”

The scheme works by pairing charities and community groups with their local Tesco store. At the end of each day a store colleague works out which food is likely to be unsold and then uses a specially-developed app to tell a local charity or community group what food can be collected.

Across the UK 7,000 charities and community groups have benefited from the scheme, with 223 groups currently receiving surplus food from Tesco stores in Bucks and the surrounding area.

Community Food Connection is just one of the ways that Tesco is tackling the issue of food waste, and it has played a key part in ensuring that 77% of the surplus food from Tesco stores no longer goes to waste.

Tesco UK CEO Jason Tarry said: “Tesco Community Food Connection has made a real difference to communities. Now that we are five years into the scheme the fact that we have donated 50m meals allows us to reflect on its success, and the difference the scheme has made not only in feeding people in communities across the UK but also to tackling climate change. However, there is more to do, and we are looking at how we can divert even more food from waste in future.”