Daily Bread/Stocked
A food waste organization is ‘rescuing’ bread from Countdown and turning it into cake mixes. (File photo)
A partnership between Countdown supermarkets and a food ‘rescue’ company has resulted in 800kg of old bread being turned into cake mix.
The supermarket has reached an agreement with Rescued, which takes surplus food that is still edible but cannot be sold, and “recycles” it into a different form.
Diane Stanbra, founder of Rescued, said she took in-store bakery white bread products from two Countdown stores that had not been collected by other food charities.
The bread was then made into vanilla, chocolate, lemon, and gin botanicals and flavorful baking mixes, as well as breadcrumbs. Baking mixes are sold at Countdown.
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“We have salvaged and processed over 800kg of Countdown bread to date. As we scale, we will increase our reach to salvage and recycle grain breads and other baked goods, we have ideas for all of that,” Stanbra said.
New Zealanders waste more bread than any other food, according to waste minimization organization Love Food Hate Waste. About 20 million loaves of bread end up in our landfills each year.
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Rescued also collects from George Weston Foods, which makes Tip Top and Ploughmans, as well as other brands.
“This is used primarily for our foodservice range, including baking mixes, giving catering and hospitality businesses an avenue to support recycled food and use their own surplus ingredients,” Stanbra said.
Steve Mills, Countdown’s chief commercial officer, said Rescued had been part of his Kete business accelerator, a 12-month “support toolkit” valued at up to $250,000 per business, to empower small businesses and help them grow their potential in Countdown.
“Our absolute priority is to avoid creating food waste in the first place, but the nature of fresh food and serving more than three million customers per week means that some level of waste is inevitable, particularly with shelf-life products. cut like bread and others. baked goods,” she said.
supplied
The bread is made into vanilla, chocolate, lemon and gin botanicals and savory baking mixes.
Countdown partners with more than 25 food rescue organizations to divert bread and other baked goods that it can no longer sell but are still edible to people in need.
“However, they cannot accept all of our volume with everything else they receive from hospitality and other businesses, and therefore we still have plenty of bread and other bakery products for animal feed and organic waste for composting.”
The partnership with Rescued had given the supermarket the opportunity to find “circular solutions”.
“In the coming months, we look forward to expanding the partnership to more of our stores and giving more bread and baked goods a second life with Rescued.”