Waste-Not Kitchen – an innovative way to tackle supermarket food waste
Two sisters are tackling supermarket food waste and feeding families in need with their new Waste-Not Kitchen charity. The charity is launching a range of tasty soups in Farro Stores in Auckland. Janene Draper (co-founder of Farro food stores) hated seeing meat being thrown away by their stores. “When we sell meat to the public, they need to be able to take that meat and have a couple of days within which to cook it. So we had perfectly good meat being thrown away because it was too close to the use by date.”
Supermarkets in New Zealand waste 60,500 tonnes of food per annum of which 11,500 tonnes is meat and fish. As they started to tackle their food waste at Farro, Janene realised that in any week up to 20 kilos of meat was wasted per store. Though this is not huge for an operation of their scale, it added up to 6 tonnes per year. Conscious of the many families struggling financially Janene and her sister Leysa Ross brainstormed about what they could do. “We wanted to eliminate food waste, feed those in need in our community and have a positive impact on our planet” so the Waste-Not Kitchen charity was born.
The soups are made from New Zealand grown meat and supplemented with “ugly vegetables” (i.e. veges of an odd shape or size which makes them unsuitable for retail) donated by New Zealand food retailers Farro and T&G Global.
Being self-confessed foodies, Janene and Leysa developed the recipes based on their own family favourites and worked hard to make a range of 4 delicious, flavoursome soups: Roast Chicken, Hearty Beef & Bean, Moroccan Lamb and Asian Pork Noodle. Soups retail at $9.99 for a 620ml pottle, serving two people. For every soup bought, the registered charity will donate one to families in need at Auckland Women’s Refuge or to the kids participating in the I Have A Dream Programme charity. “Eating good nutritious food made with love is a sign of how important the women and children in our refuges are,” says Nonga Staples, Refuge Advocate of Auckland Women’s Refuge. Waste-Not Kitchen soups are available now at Farro stores in Auckland.
Check out our great Love Food Hate Waste recipes for winter warming soups
