Wednesday, March 24th, 2021
The Heart of England Co-operative Society has joined forces with mobile app Gander to enable customers to snap up cut-price bargains from the shelves and to reduce food waste from its stores.
Following a hugely successful trial of the award-winning app in a number of the Society’s stores including Hinckley, Stoney Stanton, Coniston Way and Attleborough, the scheme is now being rolled out across the Society’s 35-strong network of stores across Coventry, Warwickshire, south Leicestershire and Northamptonshire.
Available for customers to download on their smartphones, Gander uses real-time to highlight yellow-sticker, reduced-to-clear food items on shelves near their homes.
Instead of reaching relatively few customers who happen to be in the store at the time the products are nearing the end of their shelf-life, Gander has the potential to reach thousands of people in the local vicinity, allowing shoppers to nip in and bag a bargain, while enabling retailers to vastly cut their food waste.
Furthermore, the app also sends personalised notification alerts to shoppers, ensuring they are among the first to know about reduced-price local stock.
Steve Browne, General Manager of the Food Division at the Heart of England Co-operative Society, said: “Food waste is a real issue in the UK. As well as a social and economic issue it has a devastating impact on the environment.
“When we throw food away, all the energy and water that has gone into growing the food, harvesting the products and transporting and packaging have been totally wasted. And if unsold food is sent to landfill it is left to rot – producing methane which is far more harmful on the environment than carbon dioxide.”
Steve added: “Reduced food deals have always been popular in our stores, but only when the right products are on the shelves at the right time.
“Through Gander, we now have the perfect platform to help us reach thousands more people, enabling us to prevent substantially less food from going to waste in the future.”
Gander is available for download via the Apple and Android app stores.