Local charities and groups across Mayo have received almost 54,000 meals to date from Tesco Ireland through its surplus food donations programme run in partnership with Irish social enterprise, FoodCloud. A wide range of Mayo based organisations including Claremorris Family Resource Centre, St Vincent de Paul Foxford, and Tacáu - Youth Café have benefited from the redistribution of more than 24,000kg (or 54,000 meals ) of surplus food from Tesco stores across Mayo over the past two years.
Speaking about the initiative, Mary Cronolly, area community champion for Tesco in Mayo, said: “My day to day role involves working with the charities and FoodCloud to ensure our partners are receiving food which works for them. I have seen the impact that this initiative has on these organisations and I am delighted to play a role. I would encourage any charity to get involved in FoodCloud.”
Nationally, Tesco’s innovative surplus food donations programme has redistributed more than two million meals to 195 charities since its launch in July 2014. This equates to 20,000 meals distributed to charities and groups every week. At present 109 of Tesco’s 148 Irish stores (73 per cent ) support local good causes with surplus food donations, with the retailer planning to introduce the programme into all of its Irish stores by the end of 2016. With two million meals redistributed to date, equating to 1,000 tonnes of food, Tesco is encouraging more charities across Ireland to sign up and take part in this initiative.
