July 2024 Community Update

Olio updates 4 min read

We want to say a heartfelt thank you to all of you who joined our fifth community webinar today. We’re so grateful for your high levels of engagement and support.

If you weren’t able to make it, or would like a recap, keep reading…

💛 For the recording of the full webinar, watch here

🧡 The high-level summary of the webinar is as follows:

Thank you!: We’re really grateful to each and every one of you for helping the Food Waste Heroes Programme operate at 8k locations with 160k+ collections every month resulting in 1m+ listings worth £4m-£5m being shared. And we’re delighted that ~75% of you are extremely or very satisfied with your FWH experience!
New FWHs: We’ve received feedback that we should prevent inexperienced or unrated users becoming FWHs; however first-time FWHs are only 2% of all collections and have a lower proportion of flag reports (12%) vs. all FWHs (13%)! We need to grow the number of FWHs to continue to grow the FWH Programme so we’ll continue to welcome new FWHs and invest resources to improve safeguards for all – and not just new – FWHs e.g. building out flag reporting, leveraging AI, extending automations etc
Claiming a slot: Increasing the proportion of collections covered by a FWH is a priority for us to ensure maximum food is saved from going to waste. We’ve made it easier to claim a collection slot – from the in-app banner showing upcoming collection slots, to pre-authenticated Volunteer Hub links and saved login details so you don’t need to keep logging in. We’ve also enabled FWHs to claim one-off slots rather than having to commit to an ongoing collection and broadened unlimited slots to include last-minute unassigned one-off slots
Collection confirmations: We’ve made it easier for site staff to confirm whether or not there’s food to collect. In addition to QR codes we’re also trialling automated phone calls. These improvements have resulted in a 13% increase in stores confirming their collections over the last 3 months, and will continue to be a focus for the next few months
AI-generated listings: We’ve added AI to Olio through ‘AI-ify’ to auto-generate titles and descriptions, making it easier to add large numbers of FWH listings quickly. We’re also excited to use AI in the future to help ensure your listings are compliant with food safety policies (e.g. letting you know if the use-by date isn’t visible or if it has already passed) before you list
Monitoring automations: We’re continuing to implement automations to reduce the need for the Olio community to bring non-compliant FWHs to our attention – meaning faster resolution and more time to dedicate to resolving more complicated issues
Deals: We’ve launched a brand new ‘Deals’ section in the app with yellow sticker deals from local supermarkets. Although this might result in less food available for collection by FWHs for any current Olio businesses that sign up for the new Deals section, we hope that by giving even more businesses a reason to partner with Olio there will be even more free food available on the app and we’ll be able to save even more food from going to waste

💚 We’ll publish FAQs covering answers to the most popular questions raised during the webinar in the next few weeks

And before you go, we’d LOVE your feedback on the webinar so we can continue to improve them in future. Please fill out the short 3 minute survey below if you’d like to share your thoughts.

Thanks again for your continued support, it means the world to us.

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