Tesco must start a trial giving free food expired to customers at the end of the day while it tries to reduce food waste.
The supermarket will offer “yellow stickers” items already reduced after 9:30 p.m. in some of its small express stores in the coming months.
Tesco is already donating to the expiration of food to charitable organizations and food banks. He says that he is doing this step to try to reach his goal of half revising food waste in a decade.
The company said, however, that expired foods would be offered free of charge to charities and employees before customers can take it.
A spokesperson said the trial would start in a small number of its express stores in the United Kingdom. The locations have not been specified, nor the start date.
“This trial will allow customers to take all the mortal items at the end of the day for free, after being offered to charities and colleagues,” added.
Tesco is the largest supermarket chain in Great Britain, with a market share of 27.8%. It has 3,700 British stores and around 750 others abroad.
All large supermarket chains have partnerships to send excess food to food banks and community groups and offer strong discounts on expired foods.
But the Tesco trial seems to be the first direct policy to the customer in the United Kingdom.
The company aims to reduce its food waste by 50% this year, as part of its net-zero emissions.
Until February of last year, he said he had reduced food waste by 45% in the five years since 2017.
However, he was forced to correct this figure at 18% after reporting that a contractor had used some of the waste to generate gas that was burned for energy.
Inflation and the increase in the cost of living mean that basic foods such as meat, eggs, butter and cereals are more expensive than a year ago, while households are also faced with higher energy and water bills later this year.
More than seven million people, or 11% of the British population, were in “food insecure households” in 2022/2023, an increase of two million compared to the previous year, according to data from the Department of Labor and Pensions.
Many more people have also turned to food banks lately. The Trussell Trust Food Bank has reported more than 1.4 million new users in the past two years.
The most recent sales figures in Tesco in January were strong on the back of what he called his “greater Christmas of all time” and most of the grocery market since 2016.
He reported that the United Kingdom and Ireland as for type sales, excluding fuel and VAT, increased by 3.7% over the six weeks to January 4 and there were record exchanges during the week before Christmas.
The Tesco share price was slightly down 0.5% on Thursday.
