(Credit: Meijer)Meijer’s Flashfood sustainability initiative has enabled its customers to divert more than 1 million pounds of potential food waste. Since the program’s expansion across the Meijer footprint in 2021, customers have purchased more than 1 million pounds of food nearing its sell-by date at a discount, preventing it from potentially entering landfills.
Meijer launched Flashfood as a pilot program in November 2019 at a handful of its supercenters in Metro Detroit. After reducing in-store food waste by 10%, Meijer expanded the offering to all its stores in 2021. To date, an estimated 255 Meijer supercenters have Flashfood.
Flashfood is a Canadian-based company that allows retailers to upload surplus close-dated grocery items that are available for purchase to an app. Customers can go to the app, select a Meijer store, choose items they want to purchase and pay for them directly on the app. Then, they can go to the store to pick up their items and confirm their order with customer service.
According to RTS, the US discards about 40 million tons of food every year, which is “estimated to be 30% to 40% of the entire US food supply.” This is said to be because food isn’t consumed or bought before its expiration date. Smart Sense says that due to this waste, supermarkets lose $15 billion annually — a number that could be lowered significantly with the implementation of programs like Flashfood.
A number of states have passed laws meant to limit food waste, including California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont. For example, Connecticut requires food waste generators, including supermarkets and food manufacturers, to divert their food waste to an organics processing facility. Rhode Island’s law requires certain businesses and institutions to divert organic waste to authorized composting facilities. In California, the mandatory commercial recycling law requires certain businesses to subscribe to organic waste recycling services.
