Food donation scheme’s plea

Tesco and FareShare are on the hunt for charities and community groups to register for a donation scheme which sees leftover food become meals for people in need.

The supermarket is now set to extend its Community Food Connection programme to the Tesco store in Maybole Road, which will significantly extend the number of charities reached and meals donated.

Tesco’s Community Food Connection programme with FareShare FoodCloud recruits and supports charities and community groups, linking them to Tesco stores via an innovative app that allows store teams to alert them to surplus unsold food items available at the end of each day.

The food is free and includes fresh produce, such as fruit, vegetables and bakery products. Chilled products like meat, cheese and ready meals are also offered. Groups that benefit across the country include homeless shelters, substance abuse rehabilitation services, after- school clubs, food banks and domestic violence refuges.

Riverside Community Trust and Lochside Mission Outreach are just two of the groups to have already benefited in the town.

The scheme forms part of Tesco’s commitment to help reduce food waste across the food chain, and through the Community Food Connection they have set the target that no food that’s safe to eat will go to waste from their UK retail operations by the end of 2017. Convenience north stores director for Tesco, Karen Doherty said: “We’re so proud to already support local charities and community groups through Community Food Connection from our larger stores in Ayr and to be able to extend that support to our convenience stores is fantastic. We are looking fto forge strong links with local charities and community groups .” www. fareshare. org. ukfareshare- foodcloud