Food waste is a problem that plagues all areas of our food businesses, and not least the consumers that buy our produce, dishes etc.

The war on food waste is one that we can win though, as suppliers to the catering trade, we offer storage, preparation and other solutions to help you increase the longevity of all of your raw, cooked and cured foods.

A new app is now helping everyone benefit – even businesses – by allowing us to share food before it goes to waste.

Households alone are responsible for half of all food waste in the UK, we throw away £12.5 billion of edible food per year! This costs the average family more than £700 a year.

Using the basic abilities of our smartphones – an everyday gadget that we all possess – we as caterers can offer foods (including raw ingredients) either for free or a fee. All you have to do is to snap a picture, add a mini description and your location and voila.

It really is that simple to do good deeds, and also maybe make a little extra cash on dishes and ingredients that might otherwise end up in the bin.

The statistics show that more than 120,000 items of food have been shared rather than binned since the app launched earlier this summer.

Co-founder of the company, Tessa Cook, told the Mail on Sunday: “I’m a farmer’s daughter. I was brought up to understand how much work goes into producing all of this food.

“The inspiration for Olio came a year and a half ago when I was moving country and found myself with some good food I couldn’t bring myself to throw away. I realised the problem was people who lived near me just didn’t know it was available.

“I thought there was an app for everything, and was amazed to discover there wasn’t one for sharing surplus food.”

Olio has even partnered with Sainsbury’s to distribute unsold food too, proving that this is a viable way of sharing food that might not otherwise ever be sold.

A photo posted by OLIO (@olio_ex) on Nov 28, 2015 at 9:42am PST

Following in the footsteps of another similar business-only smartphone application – Too Good To Go – which allows consumers to get meals for as little as £2 and no more than £3.80. We are sure that there will be many more ways for us as businesses to help consumers, whilst also creating new revenue streams from food that would otherwise go to waste.

Whilst we think that both of the applications featured are an excellent way to share food that would otherwise go to waste, there is nothing better than proper management of your food inventory. Keeping track and understanding the processes and amounts of each product you use on a regular basis is a superior way of reducing your costs and waste.

Improving your food storage options, such as freezers, fridges and proper dry storage bins can help increase the lifespan of your raw produce.

To find out more about Olio, and for download links to the iOS and Android applications, please visit: www.olioex.com