We’re serious about food safety
Your comprehensive guide to how Olio keeps your food safe

A simple process with safeguards at every stage
Step 1: Olio recruits and trains volunteers
Volunteers must pass our in-app food safety and hygiene training before they can collect any food. This covers everything they need to know about collecting and storing food safely. They must also agree to our Volunteer Agreement and complete our kitchen self-assessment.

Step 2: You donate (safe) surplus food
Businesses must make sure surplus food is safe to eat. That means it’s been stored at the appropriate temperature, is properly labelled and packaged, and is within use-by date (past best before date is fine!). We accept all food types – from chilled to cooked, frozen or loose. Allergen info can be hosted on our website or handed to volunteers directly.

Step 3: Volunteers collect your food
At the time of collection, volunteers meet with your staff, check the dates, temperature and condition of the food and take it home. Volunteers live close by, and only take what they can safely transport and store.
Note: Olio takes responsibility for the food from here (contractually!).

Step 4: App users collect food from our volunteers
Once home, our volunteers list food on Olio’s app and store it appropriately until requesters come and pick it up. Pick-ups are always in person from the volunteers’ doorstep, and chilled/frozen food is stored in their fridge/freezer while they wait for requestors to arrive.

Want more information? Read our Food Safety T&Cs here.
Safe food sharing powered by tech

Health and safety authority vetting
- Our HACCP study and Food Safety Management System (FSMS) is reviewed and vetted by our primary EHO in the UK every year.
- We act as a liaison between local EHOs and volunteers.
- We hold monthly food safety meetings with our EHO and external food safety advisors.
Volunteer training and support
- Online food safety training is mandatory for all our volunteers.
- We run regular in-app quizzes and reminders to make sure volunteers remember what they learnt during their training.
- Our in-depth FAQs on food safety, group chats and community forum give volunteers a place to get answers to their questions.
- We’ve got a zero tolerance policy on bad food safety behaviour (non-compliant volunteers will be banned).
Reporting and traceability
- We have end-to-end traceability of where you food ends up once our volunteers collect it.
- In-app flag reporting allows users and volunteers to report issues 24/7.
- We’ve got unparalleled product recall capacities.
Supporting our partners
- We provide you and your staff with guidelines and training on safe food sharing.
- We’ve made it as simple as possible to share allergen information.
Guided by the experts
Building a best-in-class Food Safety Management System
Sterling Crew and Jo Betts explain how they helped to develop Olio’s innovative approach to food safety.

How Olio keeps your food safe
Read our second interview with Sterling Crew, president of the Institute of Food Science and Technology, on how Olio keeps food donated by our partner businesses 100% safe.

Our track record proves our process works
In 2023, here’s what we achieved:
Even so – we don’t take any chances. We remove all volunteers who don’t comply with our food safety policies.