The rising popularity of surplus supermarkets

Company Shop is an award-winning social enterprise, which sells surplus food in its own supermarkets, and deeply discounted prices. There are presently 14 branches:

• Athersley
• Beechwood
• Bewsey (Warrington)
• Eastfield (Scarborough)
• Goldthorpe
• Grimsby
• Halton
• Hoyland
• Kirkdale
• Knottingley
• Lambeth
• Stocking Farm (Leicester)
• Swarcliffe (Leeds)
• Tong Street (Bradford)

For tinned foods, rinse/remove lids (or pop ring-pulls over holes) then step on cans to pinch the inner rims together, to avoid wildlife getting trapped at recycling points.

Affordable membership groceries

Your Local Pantry is a small membership supermarket (sign up, then choose at least 10 fresh, chilled and frozen food items, to save around £21 per week).

There are now 120 outlets nationwide (you can set one up, if there are none near you, running from churches, schools, community centres etc).

Member communities get a pantry handbook and documents, and access to marketing posters and bespoke software, to keep records of finances and volunteer training. Already there are over 44,000 members. Find a list of present locations (there are particular clusters in Merseyside, Manchester, Kent, London, the West Midlands, Reading and Portsmouth).

Community Grocery is another member grocery that redistributes surplus food, and keeps over 65,000 local families well-fed. With nationwide branches, it has so far saved over 5000 tonnes of food from going to waste.

Again you sign up (around £5) then shop several times a week to buy fresh fruit and veg, and grocery items. Anyone on low income is welcome to shop once daily (no proof of income required, it relies on honesty, and not taking advantage of others who need help).

This was set up after lockdown, when a local church that was delivering 60,000 meals to families in Manchester, found that people still needed help, when the pandemic ended.

Support The Food Waste Inspector’s Petition

Food Waste Inspector posts photos online of good food that has been thrown out (he’s a bit of a ‘green guerilla’, taking his camera behind the scenes, when the supermarkets close).

His investigations led some major supermarkets in January 2026 to launch major investigations, after he posted photos of perfectly edible food being thrown in the bin (not even having been reduced in price).

All in a country where supermarkets make mass profits, and yet many people (especially children and older people) go hungry. The photos and videos included:

• Strawberries, potatoes and sausages being thrown out (in date)
• Cans of tuna being thrown out (not expiring until 2030).
• Bakery items and sliced meats (and whole chickens) being thrown, before expiry date.

His site and petition is now supported by tens of thousands of people, as he argues that this food should be donated to food banks:

Every day, countless individuals and families across our nation find themselves struggling to make ends meet. Bills pile up, and many are forced to make heart-wrenching choices, between paying for utilities or putting food on the table. Food Waste Inspector

True Food Co-op (a low-cost zero waste grocery)

Despite its ‘posh image’, obviously some people in Berkshire struggle financially. A great idea here is True Food Co-op, an ethically-run zero waste supermarket, where members pay a one-off £5 fee for exclusive discounts (volunteers also earn up to 15% discount off food).

The shop has a zero-waste refill station, organic alcohol and orange stickers for value basics, to help people on tight budgets. These are not ‘cheap inferior products’ but organic foods that still work out cheaper than the same brands in major supermarkets.

As members have shares in the shop, you can order in anything you like (if it comes in a pack, they’ll sell the rest in the shop).

Michael’s 64 Food Rules (in summary)

Michael Pollan is a US food campaigner, whose book 64 Food Rules makes good reading. It’s also small, so you can even carry it in your pocket to the grocery store, to learn while you shop!

He’s not vegetarian, so you can use this whatever your diet. It basically encourages you to eat natural and more ethical food, and not be fooled by supermarket greenwashing.

He also is clear that food companies and groceries only change due to consumer habits. Michael writes: ‘The food industry is terrified of you!’

Read up on food safety for people and pets. For tinned ingredients, rinse/remove lids (or pop ring-pulls over holes) then step on upper cans to pinch rims together, to stop wildlife getting trapped. 

Unless you have food waste bins, just bin pepper and allium scraps (onion, leeks, garlic, shallot, chives), citrus/tomato/rhubarb scraps. To avoid acids harming compost creatures.

Here are just a few of Michael’s rules. Could you imagine if everyone in England followed these? The food industry (and what supermarkets offered us) would change overnight.

Even farm shops and health shops would change what they served people (not expensive cuts of meat at a farm shop with a few veggies, or aisles of supplements and dried goods at health stores).

They would all have to serve proper affordable organic food for the masses, and the NHS would save a fortune as a result:

• Don’t eat anything your great grand-ma wouldn’t recognise as food. Or anything a child can’t pronounce.
• Avoid foods with sugar (or sweeteners) as one of the top three ingredients. Salt and sweeten food yourself.
• Avoid products with more than five ingredients. And anything with high-fructose corn syrup or with ‘low-fat’ or other health claims.
• Avoid foods you see advertised on TV.
• If it came from a plant, eat it. If it was made in a plant, don’t.
• It’s not food, if it arrived through the window of a car.
• It’s not food if it’s called the same in every language.
• Eat well-grown food from healthy soil.
• Don’t eat breakfast cereals that change the colour of the milk.
• The whiter the bread, the sooner you’ll be dead!
• Occasional junk food is fine, if you cook it yourself.
• Pay more, less less. And enjoy a glass of wine with dinner!
• Serve a proper portion, and don’t go back for seconds.
• Don’t get your fuel from the same place your car does!

How to know what to eat

Good nutrition is not just about avoiding sweets at the checkout. Michael gives you the knowledge you need that you likely already knew – supermarkets don’t really care about your health, they care about profit. He gives a few indicators that you can try looking for yourself:

When we watch TV, our brains go into ‘alpha mode’ (like meditation). Surveys have asked people in supermarkets why they have certain brands in their trolleys, and many have no idea! Think about which foods the big supermarkets advertised last time you saw an ad. Were they advertising special offers on organic broccoli? Not likely.

Bit supermarkets have no clocks or supermarkets, so you lose track of time. They are designed to make you stressed, so you buy more to eat more. Co-op blasts loud music (which could cause pain for older customers with hearing loss). Same reason why McDonald’s is bright red and yellow.

Supermarkets have a couple of aisles of fresh produce, then aisles of processed high-profit foods plus:

• ‘Tanning salons’ for part-baked bread
• Milk at the far end (so you have to pass lots of junk food)
• Porridge not at eye level (Frosties are)
• More aisles of alcohol than fresh greens

How did humans manage to choose foods and stay healthy, before there were nutrition experts and food pyramids or breakfast cereals promising to improve your child’s focus, or restaurant portions bigger than your head? We relied on accumulated wisdom (your mum). Michael Pollan