The Trader Joe’s Of Expired Food Will Open Next Year
A former executive of the Trader Joe’s grocery store chain says he will open an experimental grocery store that repurposes expired products in an attempt to curb food waste and feed lower income communities.
As Organic Authority reported last week, misleading food expiration labels cause 90 percent of Americans to throw away perfectly edible food. With food waste recently named the third-biggest contributor to climate change, it’s even more important to ensure food is consumed, not trashed prematurely.
Doug Rauch, the former president of Trader Joe’s supermarkets, can’t solve climate change, but he does have an idea that could stop us from wasting edible food.
Rauch recently announced that he will open a pilot grocery store, called The Daily Table, that “will sell prepared food, along with fruits and vegetables, that are past their labeled prime but are still deemed safe to eat,” reports LAist.com.
The pilot program is launching in Dorchester, Mass., and Rauch hopes that by selling food that’s beyond its sell-by date at deeply discounted prices, it will help feed those who can’t afford to shop at Trader Joe’s.
“It’s the idea about how to bring affordable nutrition to the underserved in our cities,” Rauch told NPR. “It basically tries to utilize this 40 percent of this food that is wasted.” He explained that the Daily Table’s setup will be “kind of a hybrid between a grocery store and a restaurant if you would, because primarily it’s going to take this food in, prep it, cook it [for] what I call speed-scratch cooking.”
Image: ashleylovespizza
