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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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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 2019 and was slated for a wider expansion in 2020. That expansion was delayed when COVID-19 hit, but Meijer is now expanding the program from its original Detroit, Michigan location to Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio, Wisconsin, and the rest of Michigan. 

Flashfood, headquartered in Toronto, Ontario in Canada, also has “Flashfood zones” available in multiple provinces across Canada as well as in New York and Pennsylvania. The company works with grocery retailers to rescue surplus or cosmetically imperfect foods that would ordinarily go to the landfill.

From the consumer side, users first select their grocery store on the Flashfood app and set it as their location. They can then browse the foods available for purchase via the Flashfood program. Since these items are either surplus or unsellable (for cosmetic reasons) on the stores regular shelves, they are usually priced at a discount, sometimes 50 percent lower.

After selecting and paying for food, the user heads to their designated grocery store and confirms their order with a customer service or staff person. From there, they can retrieve their items from a Flashfood fridge, which is usually kept at the front of the store. As of right now, the process is somewhat manual, since users have to confirm their order with a human being at the store, rather than simply unlocking the fridge with a QR or text code via their smartphone.

The concept of rescuing then reselling cosmetically imperfect produce from the grocery store was, until recently, a fairly niche market in the U.S. The last year has seen the category expand, however. Too Good to Go launched in certain U.S. markets, while Imperfect Foods expanded its grocery e-commerce platform to include pantry staples, meat, and dairy items, in addition to rescued produce. Likewise, Misfits Market runs a robust e-commerce platform in the U.S. for reselling surplus food from grocery stores.

Flashfood’s partnership with Meijer, and this current expansion, will give Flashfood substantially more visibility in parts of the U.S. While the company has not confirmed as much, this could lead to partnerships with other major American grocery retailers in the future.

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

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.