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Flashfood Teams Up With Meijer Grocery Chain to Cut In-Store Food Waste

by Jennifer Marston
November 13, 2019November 14, 2019Filed under:
  • Business of Food
  • Delivery & Commerce
  • Food Waste
  • Future of Grocery
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U.S. grocery chain Meijer has teamed up with the folks at Flashfood to cut down on food waste in its Detroit-area stores.

Using Canada-based Flashfood’s app, grocery stores can sell surplus food nearing its expiration date at discounted prices, including not just produce but also meat, seafood, dairy, and bakery items. Customers can download the Flashfood app, choose a store, then select and pay for items from their phone, much as they would with any other online grocery platform. Items are available for pickup at the store. As of yet, Flashfood has no accompanying delivery service.

For the Meijer deal, Flashfood will sell items at up 50 percent off the original price. The two companies are testing the program in Metro Detroit, where Flashfood currently works with four Meijer stores.

The model of selling near-expired food items at discounted prices to consumers comes with a number of benefits. Stores waste less inventory and therefore waste less money, and consumers can save some cash by choosing the discounted food items. There’s also the fact that 40 percent of food in the U.S. goes to waste, a truth uglier than a misshapen tomato. Companies like Flashfood and Meijer, who are working to redistribute unused inventory, are in part targeting that issue with their solutions.

Flashfood’s approach to food waste is not unlike that of Karma, a Swedish company that helps retailers sell excess food via a mobile app and which recently teamed up with Electrolux to store that unsold food in smart refrigerators at retailers.

However, Karma is only available in Europe — as are the majority of other food-surplus startups. In the U.S., the concept remains a fairly niche one, and the market is, as my colleague Catherine Lamb recently wrote, “far less saturated” in the States than in Europe.

Meanwhile, Flashfood itself has more a presence in Canada, where it is based, with just the Detroit locations and a few Hy-Vee stores in Wisconsin. The hope is that the deal with Meijer, a chain that operates throughout the U.S. Midwest, can familiarize more of the population with new ways to curb food waste. Helping them save money in the process never hurts.


Related

Meijer and Flashfood Expand Food Waste Program Across Grocery Stores

Grocery chain Meijer announced this week it is on track to complete its food waste reduction program with Flashfood this year, with plans to expand the initiative across all Meijer stores in the Midwest. The program, which involves customers buying surplus Meijer food via the Flashfood app, originally launched in…

Flashfood Partners With Giant to Bring Its Food Waste App to More Grocery Stores

Up to now, Flashfood’s surplus grocery/food waste-fighting service has enjoyed a noteworthy but fairly small presence among American consumers. New developments are set to change that. The Canada-based company recently announced an expansion with The Giant Company that will make the Flashfood app and service available in many more grocery…

Food Waste App Too Good to Go Makes Its U.S. Debut in NYC

Food redistribution app Too Good to Go made its U.S. debut today in New York City. With it, restaurants, cafes, and markets in the Big Apple can redistribute to consumers their surplus goods that would otherwise go to the landfill. Copenhagen, Denmark-based Too Good to Go already has a presence…

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