With concerns around food waste continuing to be a major concern in the food industry, Tesco is set to introduce “Colleague Shops” in all its UK stores to give colleagues the opportunity to take food approaching its expiry date, as part of its wider work to prevent good food from going to waste.

Last year, Tesco made several efforts to target food waste for its customers. In May, the retailer launched resealable salad bags and a new style of pulp packaging for mushrooms to keep them fresher for longer and to reduce the food waste associated with condensation getting into plastic packaging.

Now, Tesco is inviting their colleagues to dedicated storage areas and fridges that will be set up in back-of-store colleague rooms to safely store quality food on its use by or best before date, and has the added benefit of providing Tesco colleagues with food for less and helping to reduce food waste.

The move is part of Tesco’s ongoing drive to ensure that no food safe for human consumption will go to waste in its UK retail operations by the end of 2017/18. Colleague Shops will form an additional part of Tesco’s established approach to managing stock instore:

Tesco uses sophisticated systems to predict and order the amount of food that customers are expected to buy in stores.

The price of products is ‘reduced-to-clear’ as they approach their expiry date, to minimize surplus.

If food cannot be sold, it’s offered to local charities and community food groups via Tesco’s surplus food redistribution initiative, Community Food Connection.Charities don’t always need everything offered to them, so any food left over will now be made available to colleagues.

Tesco’s Head of Food Waste Reduction Mark Little said: “We want to do everything we can to make sure perfectly good food doesn’t go to waste. Our Colleague Shops are a win-win, providing an additional step to support our efforts to tackle food waste in our own operations, and offer colleagues an extra little help at the end of their shift.”

Colleague Shops will be introduced to Tesco stores by the end of February. The surplus food will initially be made available for 1p before becoming free of charge in a few months’ time.