Boots: New policy trial with Food Waste Heroes keeping small and late collections

Our first priority, as always, is to save as much food as possible from going to waste. We've had lots of positive feedback from Boots Food Waste Heroes saying the staff are friendly and helpful and there’s rarely food unrequested. However, we've also received feedback that some Boots collections aren't appealing because they are late at night and/or small collections.

For this reason, we’re trialling a new policy starting on 24th April where Boots Food Waste Heroes have the option to keep up to all the items they collect from late collections (10pm or later) and up to all the items in small collections (5 items or less).

What do I need to do for these collections?

If you’re collecting after 10pm or the collection is 5 items or less, then you can keep as much of that collection as you want. We want to ensure the food is saved and not thrown away! Of course, please do add anything you don’t want to keep to the app in the usual way.

If you decide to keep the food we still need to record how much food is saved, so we can share the impact data with Boots. Please follow the steps below to help us to do this:

1. Take a photograph of the entire food haul you are keeping so you can see all items in 1 shot
2. Add a listing on the app. In this listing please:

a) Select the correct collection slot in the drop-down menu

b) Add the number of items in the quantity section

c) Add the listing title:

-for late (10pm or later) add the listing title “Boots late collection”

-for small (5 or less) add the listing title “Boots small collection”

• Mark your listing as picked up straightaway. To do this, go to the hamburger menu on the home page (the three lines in the top right-hand corner) > go to “My Listings” > “Someone is collecting this”:

Please note: If you are assigned to one of the special collections that allows FWHs to keep the items (i.e. Boots late collections or Boots small collections), you can upload your listing without following the usual FWH listing rules. For example, you don't need to show Best Before/Use by dates in the photo or list items on a suitable surface.

How do I know how many items I can keep?

If you have a scheduled collection from Boots which is 10pm or later, you can keep up to all the items.

For scheduled Boots collections before 10pm that have 5 items or less, you can keep up to all 5 items. For example if your collection has a total of 5 or less items you can keep up to all 5 items. If your Boots collection has 6 or more items, the 10% allowance policy still applies as detailed here.

How do you define 1 item?

Any individually packaged food item is considered as 1 item. For example, if you receive 5 tuna mayo sandwiches, they count as 5 items.

What is Olio doing to ensure Food Waste Heroes follow the correct process?

Throughout the trial, we’re closely monitoring FWH behaviour and collating feedback as part of the survey that will go out to Boots volunteers.

We appreciate that this policy isn’t perfect and could lead to Food Waste Heroes taking advantage of the new allowance. This is why we are keen to trial this and based on the data we collect, decide whether to invest our limited tech resources in making this process more robust.

What will you do after the trial?

We’ll review the number of collection slots claimed, the amount of food distributed, and feedback from our community and decide if we’ll continue the trial or test another solution.

Will you be applying this policy to other stores?

For now, this trial applies only to Boots stores. However, depending on how the trial goes, we may roll this out to other stores/locations.