Supermarkets often offer ‘yellow sticker’ discounts at the end of the day on foods about to go out of date
Tesco is going to start giving away ‘yellow sticker’ food for free in a major change taking place in certain stores.
The supermarket chain has announced it will give the discounted food away to customers free of charge if it has not been sold by 9.30pm.
Yellow sticker items are products that are about to go out of date and so are sold at a discounted price – with Tesco offering up to 90 per cent off original prices.
But now, if these products still have not sold by 9.30pm in certain Tesco Express shops, the supermarket will offer them to customers for £0. This is to avoid food waste and help the chain with its goal of being net zero by 2050.
Some food will continue to be donated to charity, and staff who work at the stores will get priority over the discounted food. However, any reduced food that is still in stores ahead of closing time will then be offered to shoppers for free, the Mirror reports.
A spokesman for the supermarket said: “We are constantly looking for innovative new ways to reduce food waste. This trial, in a small number of our Express stores, will allow customers to take any remaining yellow stickered items for free at the end of the day, after they have first been offered to charities and colleagues.”
As well as aiming to be net zero by 2050, the chain has a goal to cut its food waste by 50 per cent by 2025, and to become ‘carbon neutral’ by 2035.
The CEO of Tesco, Ken Murphy, has his share bonus package partially linked to the company’s food waste reduction targets. It comes after Tesco cut ties with a food waste processor last year, after it was discovered that food it thought was going to feed animals was used to generate energy.
So this meant that Tesco had to revise its food waste figure from 45 per cent to just 18 per cent between 2016 and 2023.
The yellow sticker shake up comes after Tesco apologised online last week after it had to confirm that it discontinued its six-pint bottles of milk to reduce store wastage.
A spokesperson for the store said: “We phased out six-pint bottles of milk back in 2023 to reduce wastage, as there were higher levels of waste on that product size.”
