‘Slashed our food bill in half’ – family thrilled at £50 a week saving. ‘We love this app’ | Personal Finance | Finance

West Midlands mum-of-three Katie Gray says her family’s bills have jumped by around £220 a month, as energy, petrol and tax bills skyrocket. Yet incredibly, their food bill has fallen, thanks to an “amazing” free food sharing app.

The cost of living crisis is “like a bad joke right now”, says Katie, 32, who lives in Tipton with husband Thomas, 33, and their sons Oscar, 8, Harry, 4, and Tommy, 3.

Katie, 32, says the family is pulling out all the stops to beat the cost of living crisis. Thomas has found a new job working for a plumbing company, and moving house has cut their rent by £100 a month to £456.

However, with three hungry boys in the house, their food bills rocketed to £100 a week, until Katie found an “incredible” way to cut them down to size.

She has downloaded community food waste app Olio, which connects neighbours and local businesses to share surplus food so that it can be consumed rather than thrown in the bin.

This includes food nearing its sell-by date in local shops, spare home-grown vegetables, bread from a local bakery, or groceries from your own fridge when you go away.

Users simply open the app, add a photo and description, and state when and where the item is available for pick-up.

Olio has a network of 25,000 volunteer “food waste heroes” across the UK who pick up unsold surplus food from businesses to save it from going to waste.

They bring it home, list it on the app, and redistribute the food for neighbours to pick up. More than half of all items get picked up within 30 minutes.

Katie thinks it’s brilliant. “I used to spend £75 to £100 on my food shop, in a typical week. Since downloading Olio and doing my own food collections too, I’ve halved that to about £25 to £50.

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That is is the equivalent of around £2,350 a year, and Katie is bracing herself for yet more pain from April, when the 1.25 percent National Insurance health and social care levy will add another £20 a month to Thomas’ total tax bill. That’s around £250 over the year.

Katie says: “Without Olio, we’d be in a much worse position.”

Olio co-founder Tessa Clarke said interest in food sharing has soared during the pandemic. “We are providing an essential lifeline to people who might be having a tough time.”

She said there is no stigma attached to picking up food, because the main aim of the app is to prevent items from being thrown away. “If people take the time to share their spare food, as little as possible goes to waste.”