Saasha Celestial-One and Tessa Clarke, Olio co-founders (Image credit: Annabel Staff)
10 years ago, we started out as a neighbour-to-neighbour food sharing app, available in a few North London postcodes.
Fast forward to today, and we’re a widely-adopted B2B surplus food redistribution and discounting service, rescuing millions of meals each month , and a sharing app with 8.5 million users worldwide. Let’s take a look back at that journey.
Founded in 2015 by Tessa Clarke and Sasha Celestial-One, Olio was initially only available across a select few North London postcodes. Since then, we’ve expanded to 60+ countries, and have over 8.5 million users globally, with 4.5 million users based in the UK alone.
Helping businesses do more with their surplus food
A huge part of that growth has been down to the evolution of our offering for businesses – helping them sell more, share more, and waste less of their surplus food. That work predominantly happens in the UK and Ireland, but also in Singapore, and Latin America.
Through our Food Waste Heroes Programme, we’ve been able to connect hundreds of businesses with nearby Olio volunteers – of which there are now a jawdropping 150,000 (all food safety trained, and called “Food Waste Heroes”). Those volunteers rescue food from 8,500 locations per month, take it home, and share it with people nearby using Olio’s app.
For our partners, their Olio collections are made possible via our unique volunteer management software (currently managing 200,000 volunteer collection slots per month!).
Olio’s app being used by a volunteer to advertise surplus food to neighbours (Image credit: Zula Rabikowska)
A timeline of our Food Waste Heroes Programme
2015
Olio’s app goes live on the App Store as a neighbour-to-neighbour food sharing app. We quickly grew to include non-food sharing.
2017
In 2017, we partnered with South Derbyshire DC to develop a process for the safe collection and redistribution of food by community volunteers.
Once we had an approved process in place, our Food Waste Heroes Programme was born.
We then started rescuing food from a handful of London-based Pret A Manger stores, and Planet Organic stores across London.
2018
In 2018, our first catering sites come on board – including Compass UK & Ireland and Restaurant Associates sites, as well as Fooditude.
2019
After a successful trial in 2019, Tesco was then our first national scale partner in 2020, with Olio brought in to work alongside FareShare across Tesco stores nationally.
Sidenote: Astonishingly – Tesco and Olio recently surpassed 75 million meals rescued through their partnership. We’re very proud of that!
2020
Following our national rollout across Tesco’s stores, Booker Wholesale brings in Olio to rescue food from its wholesale centres in 2020.
2021
In 2021, Tesco Ireland comes onboard, rolling out Olio across its stores.
2022
In 2022, after a successful trial, Iceland Foods partners with Olio nationally across its 950 stores.
FoodPanda in Singapore starts working with Olio to rescue food from their 15 Pandamart locations.
Olive Dining comes on board as one of our first partners in the education catering sector.
2023
In 2023, a number of major retail partners came onboard – including Whole Foods, Amazon Fresh and Holland and Barrett.
In the catering sector, we joined forces with ESS across some of their Defence, Energy and Government sites.
We also started working with production companies in the TV and film sector – including World Productions and Lifted Entertainment, across productions like Love Island Aftersun, and I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here!
2024
In 2024, following a successful pilot across 36 stores, we launched our national partnership with Sainsbury’s.
Boots and Asda were two more major retailers that partnered with Olio in 2024.
In the catering sector, a partnership with ISS saw Olio expand across 35 NHS hospitals.
We also launched a strategic partnership with Biffa, to help provide an all in one waste collection and food surplus redistribution service to Biffa clients.
Introducing… A full suite of surplus food solutions
Building on this unbelievable decade, this year we were thrilled to launch a full surplus food toolkit for businesses, by introducing extra layer of discounting options to add on top of our community redistribution solution.
By boosting the visibility of businesses’ discounted food via our app, our partners can sell more reduced-to-clear groceries, and generate additional revenue, before redistributing anything left into the local community, so nothing goes to waste.
Reductions Feed:
We’ve now got Reductions Feed, which displays a live feed of discounted items to local Olio users surrounding participating stores. It does this through integrations with Point-of-Sale (PoS) systems, or via cloud-based inventory data.
A shopper buys a quiche from Iceland advertised via Olio’s Reductions Feed (Image credit: Zula Rabikowska)
Lucky Dip: Surprise bundles of discounted food
Lucky Dip offers another avenue for retailers to sell discounted food, by creating bundles of surplus food that Olio users can reserve via the app and buy in-store, at flat percentage reductions.
Iceland has been an early adopter of both solutions, having run trials across selected stores in London and Manchester in 2024 and 2025.
Stuart Lendrum, director of product, process and sustainability at Iceland Foods, said: “Iceland Foods wishes Olio a very happy tenth birthday. So far, our partnership has seen huge success and is constantly evolving to include more food waste reduction initiatives. We hope to work together for many more years helping to reduce food waste and support communities”.
Reflections from the businesses we work with
We’re so grateful for our network of incredible partners, who’ve supported us from day 1:
“Olio has been a fantastic partner in our mission to reduce food waste… Olio’s platform is simple to use at site level and delivers a meaningful, positive impact in the local communities where we operate.”
Ashleigh Taylor, Head of Environment at Compass Group UK & Ireland
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“Everyone, from Olio’s senior team to its passionate volunteers, is deeply committed to the vision of a more sustainable and connected world, and they’ve brought our colleagues along with them every step of the way. It’s a joy to work with such a values-driven organisation, and we’re excited to see what the next decade brings. Happy 10th birthday, Olio!”
Hannah Gallimore, Social Change Manager, Central Co-Op
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“Everyone at Olio I have met is incredible. They strive to have great relationships with everyone at Impact Food Group, while helping ensure our leftover items don’t go to waste.”
Bryan Lygate, Managing Director, Impact Food Group
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“One thing we love about working with Olio is how easy they make it to turn surplus food into a powerful force for good. Their platform connects us directly with our local community, ensuring nothing goes to waste and that makes a real difference.”
Heidi Gitsham, Head of Marketing, Olive Dining
Get in touch
Speak to our team today about Olio’s surplus food solutions