'˜No food that can be eaten should go to waste'

The ‘Community Food Connection’ programme will see the local store making any surplus edible food available to local charities and community groups working to feed those in need in the Coleraine area.

It is hoped that the store will donate a wide range of products – bakery, fruit and veg, eggs and even chilled products like meat, ready meals and dairy products.

Store Manager, Derek Loughlin explained: “To help us with this programme, we have partnered with FareShare FoodCloud.

“FareShare will help find and match charities to our store and then help oversee the relationship once it is up and running.

“FoodCloud operates a simple app that supports the day-to-day donations by letting charities know how much food a store has on any given day,”

The store is now calling on local charities to register for the scheme.

Derek adds: “Tesco and FareShare are calling out for charities and community groups in Coleraine to register to benefit from the scheme in the lead up to its launch in mid June

“Signing up to Community Food Connection with FareShare FoodCloud means charities will be fully supported in the process of preparing for, and arranging, their collections,” he explained.

There have been 275,000 meals donated to people in need via Community Food Connection to date, following a successful pilot in 14 Tesco stores last year, and a national rollout from March this year, that has seen 712 charities sign up to the scheme so far.

Any charities or community groups inLeedsusing food to support people that would like to access the scheme,should register their interest by visiting www.fareshare.org.uk/fareshare-foodcloud.

Rachel Finn, Head of Community Food Programmesat Tesco said: “No food that can be eaten should go to waste.”