Newcastle based catering company Fresh Element strengthens its stance on sustainability by being among the first in the North East to sign up to an app aimed at reducing fresh food wastage.
While many people are used to the idea of supermarkets reducing their fresh produce at the end of the day, restaurants and cafes are starting to adopt the same strategy to help tackle the UK’s problem with food waste – which is estimated at £13 billion annually.
Fresh Element, who operates Six at BALTIC and Garden Kitchen in Eldon Garden, has partnered with Too Good To Go, an environmental social enterprise that links their users to local restaurants, cafes and bakeries offering heavily discounted food that would otherwise be thrown away.
Fresh Element was finding that at the end of the day fresh items like sandwiches, cakes and pastries produced in BALTIC Kitchen were being leftover, despite applying discounts in the café itself.
Peter Hunt, co-founder of Fresh Element, said: “One of the problems facing the catering industry has always been wastage.
“It’s impossible to gauge how much you’ll need to produce at the start of the day. Despite most of the food being made to order, products like cakes, sandwiches and pastries – which are made in advance – are generally left over at the end of the day.
“Even if you reduce the items in the café itself, there is no guarantee that you would sell them, as it all depends on how many people come into the premises to eat. Sustainability runs through everything we do, so it made sense to look into how we could reduce the small amount of waste that we can’t avoid.
“Too Good To Go provides us with the ideal solution. Instead of wasting good food we can make local users aware of the discounts on offer through the app and reduce the fresh goods that are leftover at the end of the day, while customers get delicious, fresh food at a bargain price.”
“We’re looking forward to seeing how it can help the food industry to combat some of these issues and we’re hoping more businesses in the North East choose to sign up.”
So far, there are just five eateries in the North East who have signed up to the app, which has over 1.2 million users worldwide.
Chris Wilson, co-founder of Too Good To Go, said: “We’re excited to be working with Fresh Element and look forward to helping them cut down on their food waste at the same time as inviting more people to try their freshly-made baked goods and sandwiches.
“As a nation we’re throwing away far too much food that’s perfectly good to eat – look no further than the 24 million slices of bread we bin every single day as an example – and we hope Fresh Element can lead the way for more businesses to take action to curb this in the North East.”
Users can download the Too Good To Go app on iOS and Android devices now to find discounted food in their local area.
For more information on Fresh Element visit their website at http://www.freshelement.co.uk/ or call 0191 440 4926.