Don’t Throw Your Food Away, Give it to Olio

A food share app in the U.K. is giving restaurant, grocery markets and the general public a  platform to give their food away 100% free. Tessa Clark founded the food share app because she was motivated to decrease food waste.

Olio gives a how-to-share tutorial on their website where you add an edible item, or usable household item, by snapping a photo and setting a safe space or public location for pickup. Members of the public can create an account and give items away for free while  restaurants and grocery stores have to pay a fee. 

There are sharing guidelines listed on the website to set a decorum of how the app will run and hopes to put safety guidelines in place for requesters or sharers. Members looking to request items can browse and message for the item and boom. The cure to food waste might be solved. 

Clarke, is urging consumers to reconsider their food consumption during the holiday season when food waste peaks in-part to big gathering and festive eating. Clarke believes in the time of COVID-19 food waste is at an all-time high.

While Clarke’s perceptive on COVID-19 seems well intended, there isn’t much said on the matter of potentially spreading the actual disease. The sharing of food during  a time where pens need to be disinfected after each use seems wildly ambitious, and maybe even dangerous in terms of health.

With the growth of cases in the U.S. and the U.K., and different variants populating certain corners of the world, it feels cognitively dissonant to focus in on the act of sharing when folks aren’t trying to share much as it is. 

Everything doesn’t live in absolutions, so there is still space to give Clarke praise for her  initiative. After doing a quick search of food share apps in the U.S. and other parts of the world,  Olio seems it’s in a lane of it’s own.

Other apps, specifically in the U.S. don’t offer 100% free food to requesters, a lot of the apps like Flashfood, off food at a discounted rate or significantly reduced price to consumers. Olio puts the act of sharing straight in the consumers hands.  

Tis’ the season for sharing but also safety, so if you find yourself in the U.K. and you don’t like the potato milk, give it away and don’t forget to wash your hands.