Rapid delivery player Gorillas has prevented more than 100 tonnes of food waste through to its partnership with Too Good To Go.
Gorillas first went live with the anti-waste app in eight countries across Europe in October last year, and in the UK in March.
More than 17 tonnes of the surplus stock was saved in the UK, which equates to the same volume of CO2 emissions emitted from charging a smartphone 7.6 million times.
The partnership forms just part of Gorillas’ strategy in reducing food waste across its warehouses globally, it told The Grocer.
“Our customers use our service by only buying what they need throughout the week, as opposed to doing bigger weekly shops,” said a Gorillas spokeswoman. “This reduces the chances of food going to waste in the fridge, particularly when it comes to fresh produce.
“Our internal teams are also always optimising data collection in the warehouse to make sure we can predict how much stock we’ll need each day, meaning we can minimise the amount of food that goes to waste. If food is close to its expiry date, that’s when our partnership with Too Good To Go comes into play.”
Such procedures were necessary given the immediate nature of the rapid delivery sector in which food waste could “all too easily happen”, explained Paschalis Loucaides, UK MD at Too Good To Go.
Without a store to place food that is at risk of expiry in yellow sticker sections, as commonly seen in a grocery store setting, or the ability to drive demand with special offers, dark store operators faced a challenge, he said.
“Food waste has long been a natural byproduct of a grocery industry looking to fulfil consumer demand,” he added. “And as consumer demands get greater – wanting more variety and more convenience – the risk of increased food waste gets greater.
“But companies like Gorillas are leading the way in introducing practices and processes to actively prevent the chance of perfectly edible food ending up in the bin simply because it hasn’t sold in time. Through our partnership we’re ensuring that food ends up being eaten rather than wasted and we’re having a huge impact so far. I’m looking forward to continuing to expand our partnership and working together to fight food waste.”
Gorillas also works locally with London-based food distribution charity The Felix Project.
Gorillas UK general manager Eddie Lee said: “At Gorillas, reducing food waste has been a key brand value from when we first started our operations in Berlin in June 2020. Our partnership with Too Good To Go has been a huge part of this strategy and has allowed us to establish a really effective way of reducing food waste.”
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