Aldi Ireland today announced it has reached a significant milestone in donating 500,000 meals to charities through FoodCloud since the partnership began.
This equates to a saving of over €700,000 for the charities and community groups involved.
In May Aldi announced a new national partnership with FoodCloud whereby surplus food from Aldi stores across the country would be redistributed to charities and community groups. A total of 79 Aldi stores are now participating in the programme, donating over 500,000 meals or 234 tonnes of food so far.
Charities and community groups across Ireland have benefited from this initiative including the Doorway Project in Letterkenny, Irish Wheelchair Association Sligo, Cashel Social Services and Drogheda Homeless Aid.
FoodCloud is a social enterprise set up to ensure that no good food goes to waste. It connects businesses with surplus food with charities in their local communities that need it through an innovative software platform.
Using the FoodCloud platform, Aldi staff in a store can, in seconds, upload a description of the products available. There are charities linked up to the store through the platform and one of these charities will receive a text saying the food is available for collection. The charity then collects the food and redistributes it to people in the community that need it.
FoodCloud Hubs in Cork, Galway and Dublin rescue, store and redistribute large volumes and a great variety of surplus food from the food industry to charities across Ireland. Aldi's Regional Distribution Centre in Cork is working with FoodCloud Hubs, enabling Aldi to help even more charities.
Aldi’s Group Buying Director, Finbar McCarthy said, "We are delighted to reach this milestone of donating 500,000 meals to charity through FoodCloud, helping charities to make a €700,000 saving in the process. Even across an efficient retail operation such as Aldi, there will unavoidably be some unsold, surplus food each day. By partnering with FoodCloud such surplus food goes to a good cause."
Source: www.businessworld.ie
