Over 5 years, your generous donations have helped us support more than 3,420 local charities along with our partners, including Neighbourly.
We've now donated more than 22 million meals. And we're not stopping there.
In September 2022, the latest data from the Food Foundation reported that 18.4% of households had experienced food insecurity in the past month. An October 2022 Neighbourly survey also showed that food is the most needed item among 72% of charities. As the cost of living continues to rise, creating further hardship, we’re committed to playing our part in the fight against hunger.
Working with our partners and with your help, we’re able to offer continuous support to these communities across the country and donate the equivalent of at least 5 million meals annually. In addition, with your valued donations we can do even more to get support quickly and directly to the people that need it.
Launched in August 2017, Feed It Back is our nationwide food surplus redistribution network, which works with the award-winning giving platform Neighbourly to connect all our stores with good causes in their areas. Covering charities, food banks, community cafes and soup kitchens, Feed It Back helps to bring our store teams even closer to the communities they serve and enables each Lidl store to donate edible food surplus at a local level.
We also donate edible food surplus from our distribution centres and head office via a variety of local and national partners, such as His Church. This food is provided to those that need it most, quickly and efficiently to around 1,500 charities.
We want to encourage our customers to make a difference and have rolled out food donation boxes in all our stores nationwide. Part of our Feed It Back scheme, the donated food will be put to good use every day and will help make a difference during these challenging times. If you wish to donate groceries, keep an eye out for our donation boxes by the checkouts in store.
We’ve also identified 30 priority products, modelled on the Eatwell Plate, that will offer a greater variety of nutritional benefits to those reliant on food donations and labelled these with our ‘Good to Give’ Trustmark, which was developed by Lidl in consultation with Neighbourly. Lidl shoppers planning to donate items can easily spot this signage in-store on shelves.
In partnership with Neighbourly, Lidl GB unveiled the Lidl Community Fund, a £500,000-fund accessible to the network of over 1,300 charities that collects surplus food from Lidl GB stores to give to those in need. Launched in March 2022, the Lidl Community Fund enables the charitable organisations we work with to carry out their vital work and help those experiencing food insecurity. The fund consists of a range of grants which tackles issues such as an increased demand for food parcels and food storage capacity alongside focusing on long-term benefits such as the refurbishment of food preparation areas and premises. Due to its success, the Lidl Community Fund is now becoming an annual fund.
For Christmas 2022, we launched Lidl Bear’s Toy Bank and invited customers to join us in donating a gift to children in need of support. We gifted £125,000 to our local charity partners and invited charities, community groups and food banks to register their interest via Neighbourly.
At Lidl, we're supporting local groups that give direct help to people facing challenges.
Money raised through the fund will go to local good causes from food banks to community centres, up and down the country quickly and directly. Working with our partner Neighbourly we know the hard work community groups do to alleviate the issues of poverty and hunger, but at this crucial time they need more help.