Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Waitrose have teamed up to launch a joint national campaign to help tackle hunger and cut food waste.

The initiative, dubbed ‘Let’s make a meal of it’, will run in stores for up to two weeks, encouraging shoppers to round up at the till or donate online. Every £1 raised is set to fund five meals via surplus food charity FareShare.

The campaign is backed by a new industry coalition Alliance Food Sourcing, set up by Fareshare, The Felix Project and IGD. It aims to rescue more surplus food from the supply chain, including off-cuts, mislabelled products and factory leftovers, and it turns into meals for people in need.

“At Sainsbury’s, we believe everyone should have access to good food,” said IGD president and Sainsbury’s chief executive Simon Roberts.

“This is a breakthrough for the UK food industry to be working together in this way to tackle food poverty and just shows what is possible in delivering real and positive change.”

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The partnership will see foods that would otherwise be wasted rescued. Examples include sweet potato trimmings made into soup, excess pasta sauce repackaged for community kitchens and unused orange juice used to create bespoke vitamin-rich juice blends cheaply for charities.

The new initiative answers a challenge from King Charles who in 2023, urged the industry to do more to bridge the gap between food waste and hunger.

“Through Alliance Food Sourcing, FareShare and The Felix Project are transforming surplus food into meals—reducing waste, strengthening communities, and changing lives across the UK,” said FareShare CEO Kristopher Gibbon-Walsh.

Tesco UK CEO Matthew Barnes said: “We are excited to support the Let’s make a meal of it campaign and strengthen our partnership with FareShare. Collaboration is key to addressing food insecurity, and we are happy to partner on this with the other retailers.”

Morrisons CEO Rami Baitiéh added: “As a food retailer and manufacturer, we are committed to tackling food waste from field to fork. We want to help eradicate food poverty and are delighted to play our part in this industry initiative to redistribute surplus food to people in need.”

Waitrose & Partners James Bailey managing director said: “We are proud to be part of Alliance Food Sourcing to reduce food waste while tackling food insecurity. Working with our suppliers, we’re helping to divert surplus from our supply chain that would otherwise be wasted, to get good, nutritious food to people in need.”