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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
Business
Sam Barker

John Lewis and Waitrose to hand out free food to their staff to help with cost of living

John Lewis and Waitrose are giving their staff free food between October and January to help with the rising cost of living .

The meals are being handed out to full-time staff, also known as partners, as well as part-time and agency staff.

A John Lewis Partnership spokesperson told the BBC that on a four-hour shift staff can have a free breakfast, lunch or dinner, depending on when they're working.

Someone working an eight-hour shift gets two meals.

Workers at big stores, head offices and distribution hubs will get their free meals in canteens.

Staff at smaller stores get food like packed salads or sandwiches.

Waitrose and John Lewis lorry drivers get packed meals to take with them.

Waitrose and John Lewis staff are eligible for free meals at work (Getty Images)

The news come as John Lewis and Waitrose are hiring more than 10,000 temporary roles across the country this Christmas to tackle the festive shopping rush.

The John Lewis Partnership, which owns John Lewis and Waitrose, will recruit 4,000 seasonal roles across 331 Waitrose shops.

This will include supermarket assistants, night shift workers and customer delivery drivers.

There will also be 2,000 temporary roles for 34 John Lewis stores, including sales and merchandising positions.

Anyone interested can register at jlpjobs.com/Christmas, with jobs going live throughout September and October.

A few permanent roles will be advertised too.

The John Lewis Partnership is also hiring 4,000 staff in its supply chain, via recruitment agencies.

These roles include warehouse workers and drivers.

More details on how to apply for these roles is here.

John Lewis Partnership chief operations officer Andrew Murphy said: "We are looking forward to welcoming people across the country to grow our team and ensure we deliver a great Christmas for our customers.”

Waitrose is scrapping "best before" dates on nearly 500 products as part of its plans to tackle food waste.

The posh supermarket instead wants customers to use their own judgement about when food has gone off.

Waitrose will remove the “best before” dates from September, on items including packaged fruit and vegetables.

The move is expected to eliminate millions of baskets worth of food waste, the retailer said.

It comes after rival Marks & Spencer announced it will axe "best before" dates from more than 300 fruit and vegetable products last month.

Morrisons announced plans in January to remove "use by" dates on milk and encourage consumers to use a "sniff test" instead.

Tesco got rid of the dates on more than 100 fresh food products in 2018.

"Best before" dates are about the quality of food, while "use by" dates are used to show when a product is no longer safe to eat.

Waitrose is also planning to close two stores, putting almost 200 jobs at risk.

Shops in Newcastle (Eldon Square) and Croydon have both been earmarked for closure following "challenging" trading conditions.

The possible closures would affect 123 people in the Newcastle store and 70 staff members in Croydon.

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