How is FoodHero offering 25% to 60% off food? What’s wrong with it?

This is a question we get a lot and it’s frustrating. It’s a perfectly reasonable question to ask as a consumer. That’s not the frustrating part. The frustrating part is… NOTHING IS WRONG WITH IT!

So, why is it so cheap?

What’s offered through FoodHero is surplus food. It’s the same quality and freshness as anything else in the store, but the stores just have too much of it. They know they can’t sell it all before the best-before dates and, when that happens, all of that food ends up in landfills where it produces harmful greenhouse gases. Not to mention all the wasted resources that went into producing it in the first place!

How does surplus happen? Can’t stores plan better?

Over the past few years, grocery stores have done A LOT to reduce waste. Not only is waste harmful to the planet, It’s also harmful to a business’s bottom line. When stock goes in the trash it’s a 100% loss. No good.

But it still happens for a number of reasons, including:

• Rainy weather: In the summer, BBQs are big business for grocery stores and they stock accordingly. But what happens when a weekend gets rained out? Not enough people buy all those meats, buns, veggies, prepared salads, etc. It won’t stay fresh till the next weekend, so… in the trash it goes.

• Cold weather: As Canadians, what do we do when the mercury drops even MORE than we can handle? We hunker down and order takeout instead of trudging to the store. Deep freezes and storms mean slow business for grocery stores, which means all that stock for regular shopping goes to waste.

• Changing moods & tastes: Any time there’s a new “superfood” or trend, grocery stores quickly respond and stock more of what people want. All those other foods we used to buy? They get left on the shelves, then dumped in the trash. And when the trend slows? All those crates of kale or cauliflower or whatever else just sit there waiting for the trash.

• New products falling short: A hot new item comes to market. People are gonna love it! And then… they don’t. It’s good food, but maybe the marketing hit the wrong note, the price was wrong, or people just weren’t into it. What happens? Trash.

• Human error: Someone makes a mistake on an order form, or someone makes a mistake reading an order form. It happens! But the end result is more of a product shipped to a store than is needed. Send it back and it loses freshness before it can be redistributed. So stores do their best to sell it, but ultimately… you guessed it! Trash.

Most of these things just… happen. Stores can’t always control it or undo it after the fact. They can discount items, but if they don’t sell fast enough, the inevitable happens. Trash.

How FoodHero is solving this

Our proprietary technology allows us to integrate with grocery store systems in real time.

What does that mean? Stores enter all of their inventory, including best before dates, into their inventory software. We integrate with that software allowing grocery stores to immediately list surplus items, at deep discounts, on FoodHero.

Wider audience = more rescues

Through the FoodHero community, those deep discounts reach a much wider audience than simply marking down items in-store. That means more consumers can come to the rescue, purchasing quality food, rescuing it from landfills and saving 25-60% in the process.

Food never leaves the shelves

Items discounted on FoodHero never leave the store shelves, display, refrigerators or freezers. They stay exactly where they are for optimal freshness and quality, until you reserve your items and store staff prepare your order.

You get the exact same food you would buy straight off the shelves

Thanks, @amal.amamou on Instagram for the photo!

Sometimes, items may be a day or two closer to the best before date (but never past), but otherwise, you’re getting the exact same quality and freshness of food as you would during your regular shopping, just at a deep discount.

Why would stores offer such big discounts?

If inventory ends up in the trash, it’s a 100% loss. Sometimes more. Many stores pay for waste removal, often by quantity or weight. So they end up paying for that wasted inventory to be hauled away and disposed of.

By deeply discounting surplus stock and sending those deals out to the FoodHero community, they can recoup those losses. They may only break even, or even still lose money, but it’s far better than taking the full financial hit of the loss.

Ready to be a hero just by grocery shopping?

Because why pay full price for groceries when you can save big while saving the planet?