FareShare Go provides charities and community groups with direct access to surplus food from local supermarkets, including Tesco, ASDA and Waitrose & Partners, wholesaler Booker, and restaurants KFC and Nando’s.
The food is good quality food that can no longer be sold for a variety of reasons, such as damaged packaging or a short-shelf life. This doesn’t have an impact on the standard or safety of the food items available. Food available often includes bread, eggs and fresh fruit. It will always be within its use by date and is perfectly good to eat.
You can submit an expression of interest by using the form on the getting food page.
FareShare Go operates with multiple Food Partners who offer a wide array of nutritious surplus products. Depending on what is available in your local area, you might expect to receive fruit and vegetables, frozen chicken, bread and bakery products, and chilled use-by products for freezing and for eating on the same day.
Signing up to collection slots from a variety of our retail and restaurant partners will mean you get the opportunity to collect a wider variety of products.
Community groups cannot sell items that have been collected for free through FareShare Go. Selling items is strictly prohibited and will be considered a breach of contract between FareShare and the community group.
However, you may arrange certain models in which it is permissible to ask for voluntary donations from service users. Models could include:
If an individual does not wish to pay a voluntary donation for items collected through FareShare Go, they should not be barred from receiving said items. Items received through FareShare Go are collected by community groups for free and services should not exclude anyone in the local community, for example, it is permitted to use food as part of a workshop, religious service, or therapy session, however food or meal provision must not be tied to attendance. Access to food must also not be tied to volunteering or other work for the charity or community group.
Yes, but you will have to become one of our CFROs – Community Food Redistribution Organisations. We created this model to help ensure that the food that travels further than your immediate users can still be distributed safely and legally. This does come with some additional requirements, but don’t worry – we have a system in place! Read more about becoming a CFRO.
Olio is a business that operates a sharing platform, which allows people to share their pre-loved items and give away their surplus food. Olio also has thousands of trained volunteers who collect unsold food from local businesses and redistribute it to the community via the Olio app.
FareShare partners with Olio to prevent surplus food being wasted, by connecting local volunteers, known as Food Waste Heroes, to surplus food. When FareShare can’t find a charity or community group to collect unsold food, Olio alerts volunteers who collect and redistribute the food through the Olio app, ensuring it reaches the community. Charity organisations are given preference on the available collections in their area to ensure that we are maximising the social good of the surplus food.
Some food from our partners may not be usable by certain organisations due to lack of chilled storage or time to redistribute before expiration. In these cases, Olio Food Waste Heroes collect the surplus food alongside charities and community groups. If your organisation cannot collect chilled food, you may see Olio volunteers collecting at the same time at some of your collections. Store staff will know which food to give to Olio, who should only receive what your organisation cannot use. If your organisation should be receiving chilled food but is only receiving ambient food, please contact FareShare so we can help with this.
Meals are calculated using the WRAP for an average meal size, estimating 1kg food = 2.381 meals. CO2 is calculated using the following equivalents, wherein 1kg of collected produce is equal to the following C02e:
Meat – 14.165 KG CO2e
Fish – 5.175 KG CO2e
Fruit – 1.8 KG CO2e
Vegetables – 1.8 KG CO2e
Prepared fruit – 0.752 KG CO2e
Prepared vegetables – 0.978 KG CO2e
Dairy – 4.64 KG CO2e
Eggs – 2.929 KG CO2e
Products with dairy and eggs – 0.978 KG CO2e
Bread and bread products – 2.53 KG CO2e
Sweet and savoury bakery – 2.53 KG CO2e
Whole or milled grain – 1.8 KG CO2e
Pasta and noodles – 2.269 KG CO2e
Cereals – 0.903 KG CO2e
Soy products – 1.8 KG CO2e
Water – 0.878 KG CO2e
Juice – 0.878 KG CO2e
Water based drinks – 0.564 KG CO2e
Tea and coffee – 0.878 KG CO2e
Other grocery – 1.8 KG CO2e
Confectionary – 2.53 KG CO2e
Ice – 0.564 KG CO2e
FareShare offers two programmes:
You will not receive a donation offer if a branch is closed, however all information on the opening hours for our retail and restaurant partners can be found by using the following links:
FareShare or our food partners can’t guarantee a specific amount or variety of food on a daily basis. Since this is the food that is unsold on the day, it largely depends on the daily footfall of customers in the store, current demand, and even the time of the year!
To help you plan, you will receive a weight estimate with every donation – but please keep in mind that these numbers are an automated calculation so they might not always be accurate.
FareShare Go operates all across the UK, including England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, facilitating surplus food donations from over 3,500 stores across the UK. The programme is active in virtually every local authority, ensuring widespread coverage and accessibility for community organizations.
In addition to the FareShare Go programme, FareShare operates 35 distribution warehouses across the UK – you can find the locations here.
FareShare facilitates the redistribution of surplus food across the country. It does not provide grants or offer financial support directly to community groups as part of this service.
If you are looking for ways to increase your income, to access more food through FareShare Go, you may be interested in accessing funding from grant making charities, whose grants help bolster the capacity of service providing charities across the UK.
Tips for Trusts and Grants Fundraising when you are looking to apply to funding from these organisations.
What conditions must a group meet to be signed up with FSGo?
To receive food, your organisation must demonstrate that you are fit to provide a safe food service to your users and the way that the food is used will deliver social value in your community.
You must:
You don’t need to be a registered charity to receive food from FareShare. However, the food cannot be used to subsidise a funded programme. For example, if you’re a school, the food should be used in activities like a community box or breakfast club, not as part of a government funded lunch programme.
Please search for ‘Level 2 Food Safety & Hygiene’ training online. Here is an example of an affordable online course – https://www.hsedocs.com/courses/all-food-courses/
Unless you are a governed by a higher authority, you must be registered with the EHO. You can find out further information about your local EHO and register here.
You’ll hear from our support team within 10 working days of your application, to review your needs and available collections in your area. If there are suitable collections available, you’ll need to provide your EHO registration, level 2 food safety certification, and attend a welcome webinar. If no collections are available, you’ll be placed on the waiting list and contacted when one becomes available.
We can’t sign individuals up to make collections through FareShare Go. We facilitate the redistribution of surplus food from retailers and restaurants to community organisations across the country. Organisations that are signed up with FareShare Go must have passed specific food safety checks and be registered with the EHO as a food business.
An annual review is a short meeting – virtual or in-person – where your community coordinator will carry out a full review of your account. We will be covering your current schedule and how it works in conjunction with your services, making sure all your account information is correct and up-to-date, and we will conduct a Food Safety Check to ensure that the surplus food you receive is being stored in accordance with health and safety standards.
An easy reminder to ensure you are thinking through all thing’s food safety is to remember your ACES and we are sure you will ace food safety!
Use by and best before dates mean different things. The “best before” is a marker of quality and tells you the date after which the food might not feel, look, or taste the same while still being perfectly safe to eat.
On the other hand, the “use by” is an indicator of safety and you should never distribute or eat food past this date. It’s also worth remembering that food can go off before either “best before” or “use by” dates, especially if not stored properly. Always check the food you are working with!
Natasha’s Law is a 2021 legislation that requires all food businesses to clearly label their pre-packed products with the full list of ingredients and allergens. This means that any food you are distributing, whether it came from the store or was made on your premises and then packaged, must have an ingredient label.
If your issue is to do with a donation’s quantity, variety or any other general query, please contact our support team by email on support@fareshare.org.uk or by phone on 0131 608 0967 between 9AM – 5PM, Monday – Friday.
Thousands of surplus food collections take place each day across our network. The vast majority of these are made without issue, however there are occasions when we receive complaints.
If you believe the food is not suitable for human consumption, please reject the items on site and also please let us know following our issue escalation process below.
Please ensure that all questions or complaints concerning your FareShare Go collections are directed towards FareShare Go, not our Food Partners, as FareShare is best placed to deal with these matters. You can rely on the FareShare Support team to appropriately log and report any issues with their collections, provided that the information is supplied to FareShare within 2 weeks of an incident occurring.
If you are experiencing issues receiving notifications from Foodiverse, our first suggestion would be to first log out of the app, uninstall then download and reinstall the app from the Apple or Google Play store before signing back in.
If this does not work, you may need to adjust the notification settings on your phone. Please follow the suggestions in the video tutorial for iOS or android devices by using this link if this is the case:
If you are still not receiving notifications from Foodiverse after attempting these troubleshooting steps, please contact our Support team.
Changes to collection schedules are updated each week by FareShare’s Scheduling team. If you wish to make an amendment to your collection schedule, please contact our Support team.
Primary offers – when a donation is released, the primary slot holder will get priority to respond to the offer. The priority window varies between stores, but you will always get at least 20 minutes before it is opened up to other organisations. To get one of these slots, you must be able to commit to weekly collections.
Waitlist offers – if the primary collector misses their window or rejects the offer, the donation is released to the waitlist. This means that this can then be picked up by either the primary or waitlist organisation, depending on who accepts the offer first. You can sign up to be on the waitlist without having to commit to regular collections.
Foodboard – these offers are released at the same time as the waitlist but are not limited to organisations on the schedule. They are visible and open to everyone in the region (TIP: you can manually change your foodboard radius to adjust for how far you can travel!).
If you missed the donation, you must not try to collect it anyway. Firstly, because it may have been accepted by a waitlist or foodboard organisation, in which case you would be mistakenly collecting food that is expected by someone else. Much more importantly however, it’s due to traceability.
We insist on all donations being accepted via the platform before collection, as if there is a product recall, these acceptances are how we trace who has received which product. If you make a collection without accepting, we will not be able to alert you to potentially dangerous products you may have received, which will put your service users at risk and potentially cause them harm.
If a donation is posted and you successfully accept the offer, there should always be food available for you, except for exceptionally rare circumstances where the food has sold out, or there has been a misunderstanding over the process. If this happens, please ask for the Duty Manager at the store or restaurant who should be able to help. We also encourage you to leave feedback on the Foodiverse app when you experience any issues with collections – you can do that by tapping the ‘Leave feedback’ button on the related offer
Whilst most collections go smoothly, there can sometimes be hiccups in the process that can result in problems with a small number of donations, such as the donation being given to another organisation. If you do arrive and are advised that the food was given to another organisation, please contact FareShare to report this immediately so that we can investigate this.
This means that the store does not have a donation available to collect. Please do not visit a food partner with the intention to collect in these circumstances. If this becomes a regular occurrence, please let us know and we can explore other collection opportunities.
Yes, you should only sign up for collections that you know you can commit to collecting every week. However, we know that occasionally things can happen that mean you will need to skip one of your regular collections. As long as this doesn’t happen regularly and you can otherwise maintain high collection rates then you will be able to keep your slots in most cases.
If you know in advance that you will need to skip a collection, you can use the ‘manage calendar’ feature up to two days before the collection – please see the video tutorial here .
If you are receiving too much food from some collections please get in touch with our Support team.
It can be worrying to get that email, but no need to panic – our team is here to work with you to make sure that your scheduled slots work well for your organisation. We will always try to call you first, but if we can’t reach you, we will send you a quick email explaining what flagged up on your account.
It is possible that a slot will be removed from your schedule if it has consistently remained uncollected, but we are always keen to try and make the donations work for you. Drop us a line and we can discuss how to get your collections back on track!
If you know you won’t be able to get to your collections, for example when you are away or during school holidays, please use the managed closed dates feature on your app to notify us when you are closed. This can be done in “Schedule” tab of your app by clicking the three dots in the right-hand corner and selecting “Manage Closed Days” and marking the dates. This will pause your organisation on your selected days, and you won’t receive any offers while also not being penalised for missing them.
Please bear in mind that we recommend planning your closures in advance because setting closures for the same or next day may not take immediate effect.
FareShare Go donations generally consist of surplus food items that are nearing the end of their shelf life. However, it is possible that you might receive some non-food items, such as flowers or products that can no longer be sold on occasion.
If you wish to receive non-food items for free on a consistent basis, please take the time to have a look at our partner Olio. Olio is a brilliant free sharing platform for a wide variety of products, including non-food items. You can see more about Olio and how to receive items on their app for free.
If you are interested in receiving additional collections from FareShare Go, please reach out to our Support team who will be able to assist you in reviewing what slots may be available in your area.
Whilst you can log in to the Foodiverse app using the same username and password as another team member at your organisation, we would recommend having a personal account for each user of the Foodiverse app. The reason for this is because logging in with the same details as someone else can create password confusion, notification issues and update errors.
We would advise adding new users to your organisations Foodiverse account to avoid any such issues.
Please let us know when you’ll be closed by using our ‘manage closed dates feature on the Foodiverse App:
Using the calendar is simple and easy and helps food to reach your community when you can’t collect your regular offers, and it’s especially important at times when extra food is available, like the school and bank holidays. Using the calendar prevents good food being wasted and helps other community groups to meet ever growing demand.
