Giant Eagle expands discounts to food nearing its 'best-by' date

More shoppers will have a chance to snap up discounted food at Giant Eagle.

The O’Hara-based grocery chain is expanding to all of its corporate stores its partnership with Flashfood, an app that connects users to discounted food that is nearing its “best-by date.”

Giant Eagle and Toronto-based Flashfood launched the program at 34 locations in 2021. They said the move has diverted 350,000 pounds of food from reaching landfills — about 130,000 meals.

“Our partnership with Flashfood has not only helped us in our mission to reduce food waste, but it has helped us better serve our guests and their families by offering more value-focused grocery options,” Giant Eagle spokesperson Jannah Jablonowski said in a statement.

“With the success we’ve seen so far, it was a natural next step to expand the program across our supermarket footprint,” Jablonowski said.

Customers can browse deals on the app for items such as meat, produce boxes, dairy and bakery items, as well as center-store foods and snacks that are nearing their best-by dates.

Purchases are made directly through the app. Shoppers pick up their order from the Flashfood zone located inside the store.

Food waste has been an issue that’s been gaining more awareness in recent years.

Higher costs have hit consumers as companies raised prices — or reduced the size of packages without changing the price, a term known as “shrinkflation.”

Meanwhile, waste is a problem throughout the supply chain — from farm to table.

The World Wildlife Fund states that humans waste 40% of all the food we produce.

That loss represents roughly 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions and “is a main driver of the loss of forests, grasslands and other critical wildlife habitats, while also depleting our freshwater supply.”

When it comes to consumers, wasting food can dent the budget. For grocery stores, it means lost revenue.

A 2022 report from Coresight Research found that about 30% of surplus food in U.S. grocery stores goes into landfills and edible food is also discarded by restaurants, agriculture and consumers.

“We estimate that food waste costs the grocery industry $16 billion in net income annually,” Coresight found.

About 90% of respondents in Coresight Research’s survey of North American grocers said that reducing food waste is important for reaching their sustainability goals, and 72% have set sustainability goals specific to food waste.

About 84% of grocers plan to invest in technology over the next two years to manage food waste.

“Our expanded partnership with Giant Eagle couldn’t come at a more critical time,” Flashfood founder and CEO Josh Domingues said. “With inflation causing grocery prices to soar, this expansion will increase our ability to feed more families affordably and reduce the amount of food reaching the landfill four-fold.”

Flashfood works with grocers across the country, including The Giant Company, Meijer, Tops Friendly Markets, SpartanNash, Price Rite, Giant Food and Stop & Shop.