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M&S rolls out 'elite' food scheme to 60 more supermarket stores across the UK

03 June 2024 , 08:17
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The frozen garlic bread scheme is part of the supermarket
The frozen garlic bread scheme is part of the supermarket's plan to cut food waste (Image: M&S)

M&S is expanding its popular food waste initiative to even more stores across the country.

The supermarket scheme sees bread - which is freshly baked in stores daily - turned into frozen garlic bread if unsold at the end of the day. M&S fills the unsold items with garlic butter and freezes them. Over 60 new stores introduce this scheme over the coming few months.

Since its launch in 2020, M&S now uses various loaves as part of the scheme, giving customers a choice of Garlic Baguette or Boule, San Francisco Sourdough Garlic Bread or West Country Cheddar and Red Leicester Garlic Cob. The price of the repurposed loaves ranges from £1 to £3. M&S says the scheme extends the life of the unsold bread by an additional 40 days.

Overall, there are 450 M&S stores which have the scheme in place, and over the last year, it sold 1.4million of the re-purposed loaves across all its stores. The move is part of M&S' plan to halve food waste by 2030 and redistribute 100% of its edible surplus by 2025.

Andrew Clappen, Technical Director at M&S Food, said: "When we launched this scheme back in 2020, we had no idea how popular it would become. We’ve had such a fantastic reaction from customers the more stores we’ve launched in. Our delicious loaves, baked in-store daily, really are too good to waste and to be able to repurpose them by offering customers a fantastic product that doesn’t compromise on quality while tackling food waste is what M&S is all about."

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Catherine David, Director of Behaviour Change and Business Programmes, WRAP, noted that bread was one of the most wasted food items in UK homes with more than one million loaves of bread binned daily. She added: "It’s great to see a simple and effective idea grow in this way and become a big hit with shoppers. It can easily become surplus at the end of trading so giving a second life to a surplus loaf is an excellent way to reduce waste, make our food go further and feed families.”

M&S shoppers have shared their love for the service with one shopper taking to X to say the garlic break was "levels better" than anything they had ever had. They said: "M&S have started selling their own made garlic bread. Both sticks, slices and bloomers and they freeze them. And they are levels better than any I've ever had. Sticks and slices on £1.10!!!"

Another shared: "My local M&S has this daily fresh bread that's turned into garlic bread in some small fridge in one of the sections if you see then it buy it its life changing". A third said, "All I can think about is the M&S garlic bread they make with the left over bread." A fourth said: "M&S freshly made garlic bread is elite!" Another shared: "M&S Garlic Bread....it's the future! not only does it taste amazing, it also cuts down on food waste."

As part of its efforts to tackle food waste in-store, M&S also launched 25p banana bags in 2021 to encourage customers to buy ripe bananas perfect for baking. The upmarket retailer also has a partnership with Neighbourly, whereby any edible food surplus from stores is redistributed to local causes and community groups. Since 2015, the equivalent of around 80million meals has been redistributed to local causes and charity groups. M&S' Andrew Clappen said the retailer was always on the "lookout" for innovative ways to reduce their food waste.

Ruby Flanagan

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