If you don’t mind your fruit and vegetables being a bit wonky or imperfect, Lidl might have just the ticket - it has launched a massive 5kg box of selected fruit and veg for £1.50 at selected stores.
The budget supermarket has tapped into the trend for wonky veg by launching the deal - called ‘Too Good to Waste’ - as part of a trial across 122 stores.
The boxes will contain a selection of imperfect or slightly damaged fruit and vegetables, packed by Lidl staff. And while you can’t choose what’s in them, the produce will be “perfectly good to eat”, the supermarket said.
“We know from our data that fresh produce is one of the biggest contributors to food waste in stores, so we’re excited by the difference our initiative will make. Not only will it help customers consider items that they might have previously dismissed, it will also provide an opportunity for them to make further savings,” Lidl’s CEO Christian Härtnagel said.
Lidl said it will also add more significant discounts onto fresh foods approaching their use by date in a bid to cut food waste.
The chain isn’t the first to offer the boxes. Asda launched a £3.50 ‘wonky veg box’ in 2016, which it claimed contained enough food to feed a family of four for a week. Tesco also launched a range of cheap ‘perfectly imperfect’ fruit and veg items in 2016, with prices starting from around 30p for a bag of parsnips.
According to figures from WRAP, the food industry is responsible for around 10 million tonnes of food waste each year.