Butcombe Pubs & Inns partners with Too Good To Go to combat food waste

Published by

Peter Davison

Regional pub operator Butcombe Pubs & Inns has joined forces with surplus food app Too Good To Go in an attempt to reduce its food waste.

The app gives users the opportunity to buy surplus and unsold food from cafes, pubs, restaurants, supermarkets and producers to stop it from going to waste.

The initiative will initially be implemented at eight pubs across the South and South West, including The Whitmore Tap, Clifton, Bristol; The Crown, Dyrham; The Horse & Groom, Malmesbury; and The Royal Oak, Prestbury, Cheltenham.

Consumers simply download the free Too Good To Go app and search for nearby businesses with unsold produce. They then purchase a Magic Bag, collect it at an allotted time and enjoy it.

Alice Bowyer, executive chef at Butcombe's parent company, Liberation Group, said: “We take the issue of food waste incredibly seriously and the Too Good To Go app goes a long way in helping us find good homes for unused food and drink products.

"To begin with we’ll be focussing on Sunday roasts, cask ale and surplus kitchen ingredients.”

Too Good To Go has a simple mission: to make sure all food gets eaten, not wasted.

In 2016, a group of entrepreneurs witnessed restaurant staff throwing away fresh food. The food’s only problem? It hadn’t sold in time, and no one was around to take it off the restaurant’s hands. The group pioneered a seamless solution: an app that lists businesses’ unsold food so local diners can find, buy and enjoy it.

Now, thousands of Magic Bags are rescued from businesses such as supermarkets, restaurants, and bakeries every day. The success of the app powers Too Good To Go’s wider efforts to drive a food waste movement, working with schools, industries and governments to build a planet-friendly food system

Andrew Furness, account manager at Too Good To Go says: "We are thrilled to work with the beautiful Butcombe Pubs & Inns sites to help them reduce their food and drink waste and bring sustainability further into the core of their businesses.

"Focusing on Sunday Roasts, cask ale and any potential kitchen surplus, we're excited to further entrench the pubs within their communities as key environmental advocates."

Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country. An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts. Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.