Outstanding Collaboration
2023 AWARD COMMENDATION
Sponsored by the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment
High-end Auckland grocery chain Farro Fresh has been collaborating with food rescue organisation Fair Food for more than a decade. Together they’re extending the life of healthy food that would have gone to landfill and taking climate action by reducing emissions.
Fair Food collects excess fresh produce, bread, meat and dairy from the six Farro Fresh stores across Auckland. This kai is sorted by volunteers and shared at no cost to more than 50 community groups including women’s shelters, transitional housing, school community hubs, asylum seekers groups and social service agencies.
Daily food collections add up to about 8,700 kilograms of fresh kai being rescued every month. That equates to more than 275,000 meals per year. When West Auckland homes were hit hard by extreme weather at the start of 2023, the collaboration was able to provide fresh ingredients for more than 90,000 meals.
The greenhouse gas savings from Farro Fresh’s rescued food are equivalent to the carbon emissions from driving the length of Aotearoa New Zealand 260 times.
In 2022 Farro Fresh helped Fair Food launch Conscious Kitchen. This initiative takes food that’s still edible but not fit for a food parcel and upcycles it into chutneys, jams, soups or meals. Conscious Kitchen now provides an additional 2500 meals every month.
The two organisations also collaborated on an e-cookbook last year. Too Good to Waste provides zero waste recipes tailored to match the food parcels that are shared with community groups.
This collaboration has served as a model for other supermarket chains wanting to reduce food waste and has elevated the profile of food rescue.