Tangible benefits of retailers’ daily FoodCloud contributions
The efforts of retailers and volunteers to distribute excess food stock to those in need are being felt in disadvantaged areas all over Ireland
Print23 November 2015
Earlier this year ShelfLife reported on the charity efforts of FoodCloud, the app which allows retailers to donate surplus stock (e.g. daily waste, nearing its sell-by date, or otherwise unfit for sale but perfectly good for consumption all the same) to charities for distribution in the community. Now, a few short months later, the positive effects of these donations are being felt all over, thanks to the retailers, FoodCloud and the volunteers who work daily to make sure the donations get to where they are needed most.
According to a report in the Irish Times, volunteers and recipients in certain disadavantaged areas in Dublin are very grateful for the donations, which come from local shops including Tesco and SuperValu, as well as local takeaways.
“It just helps towards the end of the week when the presses are getting a bit bare,” one recipient told the Times as she accepted a box of groceries including tinned soup, pasta, tea bags, bread, vegetables and more. The volunteer reveals that they deliver to “five or six families, five nights a week – a different set of families each night.
“One this road alone, we bring food to six families,” she adds.
The FoodCloud app works like this: businesses uploads details of their surplus food, and the time period in which it can be collected. Local charities in that retailer’s community receives a text alert that goods are available for collection, and the first charity to respond collects it directly from the business a short while later.
FoodCloud was established by two social entrepreneurs – Iseult Ward and Aoibheann O’Brien, and to date more than 300 charities have benefitted from the scheme, to the benefit of thousands of people across Ireland and also the UK, where FoodCloud has partnership with the charity FareShare.
Related Articles
Tesco opens new Limerick store, creates 33 jobs →
Fans 0
Followers