M&S Food has donated over 50million meals to local charities in the past seven years through its partnership with Neighbourly, designed to tackle food waste in-store. Over 2,700 good causes, from after school clubs to food banks, have benefitted from the donations of edible unsold fresh, ambient and chilled food from M&S stores, with over 6,000 benefitting from the partnership with Neighbourly in total.
Local groups across the UK are seeing demand for support surge due to the cost of living. Neighbourly’s latest community survey found 83% of groups are already seeing more demand, while 61% say they’ve seen a drop in food donations from the public. 73% say they would like more food items to be able to support those who use their services.
To provide further support for those in need in the run up to Christmas, M&S is donating 95,000 ambient products directly to groups, worth £50,000. This builds on its existing £1 million donation to help 1,000 local community groups, supported by Neighbourly, as part of its Christmas ‘Gifts That Give’ Clothing and Home campaign.
