Aldi is donating leftover and surplus food when they close their doors on Christmas Eve, meaning people without will be able to eat over the festive period.
When Aldi shuts its doors on Christmas Eve, staff are going to get a bit of a break as they are not reopening until 27th December. Check out their festive opening hours here.
While this will be a great break for staff, there will be loads of food sitting in the fridges and fresh fruit and veg that may not be fresh enough when the stores open back up.
Instead of chucking the lot in the bin – and in the true spirit of Christmas – Aldi has a far better idea!
Aldi is offering the opportunity for leftover and surplus food to be donated to worthy causes.
Love food hate waste
The stores close at 4pm on Christmas Eve and after that time, there is expected to be a lot of surplus food that customers just haven’t bought.
Aldi wants this food redistributed to support people in less fortunate circumstances and to prevent food going to waste.
What food is available?
Not everything will be up for grabs, so get the thought of a big bottle of gin or washing powder out of your head.
Aldi is focussing on making sure produce that has a short shelf life won’t go to waste.
Read this if you’re not sure of the difference between use by and best before
While they cannot guess how much food will be available when they close their doors, they believe there will be around 20-30 crates expected from each store.
The following types of foods are being donated:
- Fresh fruit and vegetables
- Fresh meat
- Fresh fish
- Bread and bakery products
- Other chilled products (e.g. dairy, desserts, ready meals etc.)
Although these types of food have short shelf lives, Aldi has said that there will be at least one day remaining on all the products.
How do I get the food from Aldi?
This very generous offer is not available to the general public.
They are offering this to charitable organisations.
There is also no way Aldi can deliver these products so charities that want to take advantage of this need to arrange their own transport (a large car or van) to pick up the food, as well as containers to take the food away in.
Collections will need to be made once the stores are closed between 4:30 and 5:30pm on Christmas Eve.
As staff want to be on their merry way, it’s only fair that these times are met.
IMPORTANT
If you are a charity (or know of one to let them know about this), you need to contact Aldi by Friday 8th December.
This way, they are able to anticipate how many organisations are coming and can let the individual stores know.
Please give Aldi the following details:
- Charity / Group Name
- Main Contact Name
- Main Contact Telephone
- City / Town
- Store Postcodes Which You Would Like To Collect From
- Type Of Products That You Wish To Collect
You need to contact the Energy and Environment Team, ALDI Stores Ltd, at Tel: +44 (1827) 711-800.
How else can you get free food?
Now, while this hugely, festive and generous offer is only available to charities, there are other ways you can get free food.
Olio
People give away perfectly good food via Olio.
Olio is a food sharing app where surplus food is made available for others – for free!
CheckoutSmart
You’re able to get free food and cheaper food via CheckoutSmart.
Access the details via your smartphone or directly from their website to see what’s on offer each week (it changes regularly).
Naomi knows the burden of living on very little and became debt free by learning from past mistakes and following her own money saving tips and tricks.
