At last! A simple channel for food rescue…

We spend a lot of our time telling event organisers that food is one of the biggest sustainability levers they have. In most of the footprints we measure, catering sits behind only travel and accommodation – and unlike a delegate’s flight, it’s a line item that the organiser controls almost completely. 

But it’s the surplus food left after the event that’s always proved to be the awkward bit.

Organisers who have done everything right – accurate numbers, sensible menus, plant-forward choices – still end up staring at trays of perfectly good food with no plan for it. The honest answer, most of the time, has been a shrug and a bin. Perhaps a composter, should the venue provide one.

So we’re supporting Olio – the leading surplus food sharing platform for events, trusted by organisers, venues and caterers across the UK – to give event planners something better than a shrug.

What’s Olio – and how does it actually work? 

Olio has spent the last decade on a mission to create a world where food waste doesn’t exist – and they’ve built partnerships with the UK’s biggest retailers, caterers, hotels, venues and more to make sure that (perfectly edible) surplus food always gets eaten, rather than binned.

For events, their redistribution process has four simple steps:

1. You press a button on Olio’s app for event organisers to confirm there’s food to collect. That’s the only action required from anyone on site.
2. A trained volunteer collects your food. One of Olio’s Food Waste Heroes (there are 100,000 of them nationally, all food safety-trained) comes to the venue and picks the food up directly.
3. It’s redistributed locally. Volunteers share the surplus with people in the surrounding community via the Olio app.
4. You get an impact report. Olio reports back on what was collected and where it went, along with testimonials from the people who received it. That’s the bit that goes in your post-event report and your sustainability reporting.

We know what you’re thinking – what about food safety?

It’s the first thing every event team asks, and it’s the right question. Three things worth knowing:

1. Olio takes on legal liability from the moment its volunteers collect the food. From the point of collection onwards, food safety responsibility is theirs.
2. Their redistribution process was built with their primary authority and food safety specialists (their in-house team includes the former President of the Institute of Food Science and Technology).
3. Every volunteer completes thorough food safety training before they can claim a collection. 

Their track record says it all: Olio volunteers have safely shared 160 million meals since 2019 – with zero food safety incidents. 

What about the local charity route?

Plenty of organisers have tried donating to a nearby charity, and it can work beautifully. It’s also fragile. Charities can’t always find a volunteer at short notice, often can’t take every food type because of transport or cold storage constraints, and coordinating it eats staff time on the night. There’s rarely any formal record of what happened afterwards.

Olio isn’t a replacement for that relationship where it already works – but events move, and given their national scale, it’s a more widely available option. 

With Olio, event organisers get:

• On-demand volunteer availability (including last-minute)
• Volunteers can take all food types
• Your team just needs to click a button on their user-friendly software (no missed calls)
• A detailed impact report of where your food’s ended up – every single time.

The side effects nobody expects

The reason we like this partnership isn’t only the diverted waste. It’s the secondary benefits we keep hearing about:

Costs come down. Less overcatering and less waste disposal both show up in the budget.

Teams feel better. Kitchen staff, waiting staff and organisers no longer have to watch good food go in the bin.

Katie McNeill, Event Manager at BeaconHouse Events, described it to Olio as “a really nice way to solve two problems at once.” 

Guests eat more sensibly. Buffet signage explaining that surplus is being donated changes behaviour – people take what they’ll actually eat, which means less overproduction is needed in the first place.

Why food waste is worth your attention

The hospitality sector throws away around 1.1 million tonnes of food a year, and roughly 75% of that could have been eaten. The cost of that waste runs to about £3.2 billion annually. Meanwhile, 1 in 6 UK households experienced food insecurity in 2025.

Where to start

If you’re already working with us on measurement, food waste diversion is a natural next step – you’ll see it land in your footprint and in your reporting. If you’re not…

This is a good place to begin, because it’s a sustainability intervention that costs little, changes behaviour on site, and produces a hugely positive story worth telling afterwards.

Talk to us about adding Olio to your next event.