How Gander is helping shoppers find reduced food and cut waste 

At the end of a long day, you’re scanning the supermarket shelves, tired and hungry, hoping to find something quick and cheap for dinner. Then you spot them: the bright yellow stickers. Half-price chicken. A ready meal for under £2. A bag of salad that’s still fine for tonight.

For some shoppers, those reductions are a lucky find. For others, they’re a lifeline.

Now, an app called Gander is making those moments of luck a little fairer — and helping stop good food from going to waste all across the UK.

First developed on the Isle of Man in 2019 by father-and-son team Ashley and Mike Osborne, Gander shows, in real time, which items have been reduced in nearby shops. The idea is simple: perfectly good food shouldn’t go to waste just because no one knows that it’s there.

The spark came years earlier when Ashley was working in London. Most nights, on his way home through Liverpool Street station, he’d stop to grab reduced-to-clear food from the shelves. They were piled high with cut-price items — but minutes later, anything unsold would be thrown away. Watching good food binned while thousands of commuters walked past gave him the idea. When he returned home, he shared it with his dad. Between them, they turned that observation into action.

Gander connects directly to supermarket systems so that when a price drops, it instantly appears on the free app and website. Customers can see what’s available nearby and head straight to the shop before the bargains vanish. No waiting until closing time. No guesswork. Just affordable food, found when it’s needed.

What started as an experiment has grown fast. Today, Gander reaches millions of shoppers and helps supermarkets mark down hundreds of thousands of items every week. It’s been recognised internationally, earning three nominations for The Earthshot Prize — the environmental award led by Prince William, Sir David Attenborough and The Royal Foundation.

Across the UK, rising food prices mean more families are struggling to eat well. In 2024, 11% of people were food insecure, up 80% since 2021, and one in five children now lives in a food-insecure household. The Asda Income Tracker shows that one in five households can’t cover essential spending, leaving a shortfall of about £73 each week.

At the same time, UK supermarkets throw away up to £1 billion worth of good food every year — food that could easily feed families if it found the right home in time.

By linking those two problems — food waste and food poverty — Gander offers a practical fix that helps both. It gives shoppers a way to stretch their budgets and access fresh items that are normally pricier. For retailers, it helps sell more stock and cut waste without changing their operations. The company says its technology has helped major supermarkets reduce waste by an average of 26%, while recovering more than £42 million in revenue.

The environmental impact is just as important. Food waste accounts for around 10% of global carbon emissions, and once it ends up in landfill it releases methane — a greenhouse gas far stronger than carbon dioxide. Every meal eaten instead of binned saves the resources used to produce it — water, energy, land — and helps reduce pressure on our planet’s finite resources.

Iceland became the first national retailer to partner with Gander, taking the idea from a local start-up to a UK-wide innovation. Gander has already saved millions of meals from going to waste and proved that sustainability and affordability can go hand in hand. More supermarkets and local shops are now joining the network, helping make reduced food easier to find across towns and cities.

The results are tangible. For shoppers, a quick check on the Gander app might reveal cut-price fruit and veg, meat or dairy — the very foods that often slip out of reach for families on tight budgets. For retailers, shelves are cleared more efficiently, staff time is saved and less food ends up discarded. And for the environment, every item bought instead of binned counts as a small but meaningful win.

From its beginnings on a small island to international recognition, Gander’s journey shows how one simple idea can spark real change. The Osbornes set out not just to build an app, but to make sure fresh food ends up where it belongs — on people’s plates, not in landfill.

As another winter approaches, and with households watching every penny, Gander’s message feels more relevant than ever. Each yellow sticker still tells a story: of food saved, waste avoided and money kept in someone’s pocket. And thanks to Gander, those small, everyday choices are adding up to something much bigger — a fairer, greener, more sustainable way to eat.

Key Statistics

• 1 in 5 households can’t cover essential spending, leaving a shortfall of about £73 each week.
• Food waste accounts for roughly 10% of global carbon emissions.
• UK supermarkets throw away around £1 billion worth of good food every year.

Have a Gander

1. Open the link.
2. Share your location or enter an address.
3. Choose a store near you and find something you like.
4. Head to the store and buy the product, while stocks last!

Download the Gander App

Find reduced food near you. Download the Gander app or visit app.gander.co to find live reductions near you. Save money, cut waste and help make good food go further — one meal at a time.

This article originally appeared in The Big Issue.