A NEW scheme will see unsold food become meals for vulnerable people in Salisbury.

Tesco and FareShare are calling on charities and community groups around the city to sign up.

Tesco’s Community Food Connection programme with FareShare FoodCloud supports charities and community groups by linking them to the supermarket’s stores via an app.

The app allows the store to send alerts to them about the surplus unsold food items available at the end of each day.

The unsold food is free and includes fresh produce, such as fruit, vegetables and bakery products.

Chilled products like meat, dairy and ready meals are also offered.

There have been 350,000 meals donated to people in need via Community Food Connection, following a successful pilot in 14 stores last year and a national rollout from March this year, that has seen more than 1,000 charities sign up to the scheme so far.

Rachel Finn, the head of Community Food Programmes at Tesco, said: “No food that can be eaten should go to waste.

“We’re really excited to start working on this initiative to ensure that any unsold food we have is made use of.

“We are looking forward to forging strong links with local charities and community groups in Salisbury, and to use this initiative to support their efforts to help vulnerable people in our community.”

FareShare FoodCloud is the latest step in Tesco’s work with FareShare on the provision of surplus food.

The partnership spans more than three years and includes activities which make food available from the Tesco supply chain, distribution centres and dotcom centres.

This has seen nine million meals made up of surplus food donated to more than 2,200 charities and community groups across the UK.

Any groups interested can register at fareshare.org.uk/fareshare-foodcloud.