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Type | Private |
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Industry | Mobile app |
Founders | Tessa Clarke, Saasha Celestial-One |
Headquarters | , |
Areas served | Worldwide (currently in 49 countries) |
Products | Food-sharing app |
Number of employees | 100 (2023) |
Website | olioapp |
Olio is a mobile app for sharing by giving away, getting, borrowing or lending things in your community for free, aiming to reduce household [1] [2] and food waste. It does this by connecting neighbours with spare food or household items to others nearby who wish to pick up those items. The food must be edible; it can be raw or cooked, sealed or open. Non-food items often listed on Olio include books, clothes [3] and furniture. [4]
Those donating surplus food can be individuals or companies such as food retailers, restaurants, corporate canteens, food photographers etc., and donations can take place on an ad-hoc or recurrent basis. For example, some supermarket chains in the UK, including Tesco, [5] the Midcounties Co-operative, [6] [7] Morrisons, Sainsbury's [8] [9] and Iceland [10] have piloted Olio as an 'online food bank' to donate food and to reduce their waste. In March 2022, Olio partnered with Pandamart in Singapore. [11]
First launched in early 2015 by Tessa Clarke and Saasha Celestial-One, [12] [13] by October 2017 the company had raised $2.2 million in funding. [14] Olio's Series A funding was led by Octopus Ventures, with investors such as Accel, Quadia and Quentin Griffiths contributing towards the $6 million that was raised. [15] The Olio app had around 7 million registered users as of May 2023. [16]
A supermarket is a self-service shop offering a wide variety of food, beverages and household products, organized into sections. This kind of store is larger and has a wider selection than earlier grocery stores, but is smaller and more limited in the range of merchandise than a hypermarket or big-box market. In everyday U.S. usage, however, "grocery store" is often used to mean "supermarket".
Tesco plc is a British multinational groceries and general merchandise retailer headquartered in Welwyn Garden City, England. In 2011 it was the third-largest retailer in the world measured by gross revenues and the ninth-largest in the world measured by revenues. It has shops in Ireland, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia. It is the market leader of groceries in the UK.
Safeway Limited is a British groceries brand, and former chain of supermarkets and convenience shops. The British Safeway was founded in 1962 by the American Safeway Inc., before being sold to Argyll Foods in 1987. It was later listed on the London Stock Exchange. It was purchased by Morrisons in March 2004. Most of its 479 shops were rebranded as Morrisons, with others being sold. The brand disappeared from the United Kingdom on 24 November 2005.
Wm Morrison Supermarkets Limited, trading as Morrisons, is the fifth largest supermarket chain in the United Kingdom. As of 2021, the company had 497 supermarkets across England, Wales and Scotland, and one in Gibraltar. The company is headquartered in Bradford, England.
A grocery store (AE), grocery shop (BE) or simply grocery is a foodservice retail store that primarily retails a general range of food products, which may be fresh or packaged. In everyday U.S. usage, however, "grocery store" is a synonym for supermarket, and is not used to refer to other types of stores that sell groceries. In the UK, shops that sell food are distinguished as grocers or grocery shops.
John Davan Sainsbury, Baron Sainsbury of Preston Candover, was a British businessman and politician. He served as the President of Sainsbury's, and sat in the House of Lords as a life peer and member of the Conservative Party.
Ocado Group is a British business based in Hatfield, England, which licenses grocery technology. It also owns a 50% share in the UK retail business, Ocado.com. The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
The Midcounties Co-operative Limited, trading as Your Co-op, is a consumer co-operative in the United Kingdom with over 700,000 members. Registered in England under the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014, it is a member of Co-operatives UK and Federal Retail Trading Services.
The Grocer is a British digital and magazine service devoted to grocery sales, published by William Reed Ltd. It has been published since 1862.
Sprouts Farmers Market, Inc., is a supermarket chain headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. The grocer offers a wide selection of natural and organic foods, including fresh produce, bulk foods, vitamins and supplements, packaged groceries, meat, poultry, seafood, deli, baked goods, dairy products, frozen foods, natural body care, and household items. Sprouts employs 35,000 workers and operates more than 380 stores in 23 states.
An online grocer is either a brick-and-mortar supermarket or grocery store that allows online ordering, or a standalone e-commerce service that includes grocery items. There is usually a delivery charge for this service. Brick-and-mortar supermarkets that have built internet channels to better service their clients are known as online grocers. Online grocery delivery services are available throughout Europe, Asia and North America, mostly in urban centers. The online ordering is done through e-commerce websites or mobile apps.
Lidl Stiftung & Co. KG ; LID-əl) is a German international discount retailer chain that operates over 12,000 stores across Europe and the United States. Headquartered in Neckarsulm, Baden-Württemberg, the company belongs to the Schwarz Group, which also operates the hypermarket chain Kaufland.
FareShare is a charity network established in 1994, which aims at relieving food poverty and reducing food waste in the United Kingdom. It does this by obtaining good quality surplus food from the food industry that would otherwise have gone to waste and sending it to frontline charities and community groups across the UK.
In the United Kingdom, it is common practice for retailers to have their own value brand in an effort to compete on price. These brands have become more popular in the UK with shoppers since the Great Recession caused food prices to rise.
Discount stickers are a price markdown that are used to alert shoppers to goods which have been reduced in price, such as food approaching its sell-by date or inventory in discount clothing or outlet stores. Some stores, especially discount clothing stores, have been accused of using discount stickers to create the impression of price markdowns when there is none.
Too Good To Go is a service with a mobile application that connects customers to restaurants and stores that have surplus unsold food. The service covers major European cities, and in October 2020 started operations in North America. As part of the initiatives taken on the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste to reduce food loss and waste, the app is suggested alongside OLIO among many others.
Supermarket Income REIT is a property company which invests in retail property and holds a large portfolio of supermarkets. The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.