Flashfood diverts 50M pounds of food from landfills across 1,400 stores

Toronto-based Flashfood, a digital marketplace that connects consumers to heavily discounted food nearing its best-by date, hit a milestone: 50 million pounds of food diverted from landfills and 95 million pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent saved from the atmosphere.

While food prices are up about 10.9%, more than 2.5 million shoppers across North America have turned to Flashfood as a resource to access affordable, fresh food nearing its best-by date — including fresh fruits and vegetables, according to a news release.

Since January, Flashfood added more than 200 stores across partnerships with Stop & Shop, Giant Food of Maryland, Giant Eagle, Food Lion, Family Fare, VG’s, Meijer, The Giant Co. and Loblaw, and secured $12.3 million in Series A funding.

“This year we set out to rapidly expand Flashfood’s footprint and accelerate our impact with new and existing partners. Not only did we add hundreds of stores to our marketplace, but we invested in our technology to just about double our impact in less than a year,” Flashfood CEO and founder Josh Domingues said in the release. “With hundreds of new stores coming online this fall in the Northeastern United States, our team is focused on quickly scaling our impact to feed more families affordably in light of inflation.”

Related: Giant Eagle expands food-diversion Flashfood app to all stores

The Flashfood app enables consumers to browse deals – directly from their phone – on fresh food items that are nearing their best-by dates. Purchases are made directly through the app and shoppers then pick up their order from the Flashfood Zone located inside their participating grocery location.

Flashfood is available in more than 1,400 stores across Canada and the U.S.

The milestone of saving 50 million pounds of food was announced on the first day of September’s Groceryshop 2022 Conference.

Saving that amount of food equates to 95 million pounds of carbon dioxide diverted from the atmosphere, the equivalent of more than 38,000 transatlantic flights, according to the release. Here’s some more perspective: Rather than ending up in landfills, those Flashfood purchases fed the equivalent of an entire sports stadium filled with fans for more than three months.

Flashfood is focused on expanding its footprint with existing partners and will make the app accessible to more shoppers with new payment options set to launch this fall.

Related news: Tops shoppers help divert 500,000 pounds of food waste