You Give We Give update: Thanks a million.

Our customers have donated over £1m to food banks and food-poverty related social enterprises since the beginning of March and we wanted to say thank you.

We’ve matched this sum, generating £2m worth of food and cash donations for its food bank partners and social enterprises working to alleviate food poverty throughout the UK. 

We launched our You Give We Give scheme in 2014 to help tackle UK food poverty and maintain our near-zero food waste levels. You Give We Give allows our customers to add a donation for food bank partners and food poverty-related social enterprises as part of their grocery shop. 

Food banks have been under unprecedented pressures over the last twelve weeks. The response from our customers has been overwhelming. In fact, customer donations increased by over 800% between the first week of March and the first week of April – an increase that simply bowled us over and helped so many people.  

Since it launched six years ago, You Give We Give has generated over £6m worth of food and cash donations. Over £1m of this total figure was generated in March and April this year alone.

Our You Give We Give partners include Feeding Britain, The Felix Project, Community Shop, Bankuet, UK Harvest, Ediblelinks and The Big Help Project. These organisations provide critical support for people at risk of hunger and malnutrition across the UK. Their work during the current crisis has included servicing an unprecedented rise in the demand for food parcels as well as providing ‘holiday hunger’ support for children who normally receive free school meals.

Andrew Forsey, CEO of Feeding Britain said the donations were much appreciated; 

“Families who were already vulnerable before the pandemic are now even more so. We’re also beginning to pick up requests for help from newly vulnerable groups such as the self-employed and others suffering a drop in income. The generous support of Ocado customers has enabled our emergency programme to bring much-needed relief to so many individuals during these incredibly challenging times.”

Everyone at Ocado is really proud of our customers’ kindness. Especially our CEO, Melanie Smith; 

“Our customers have always shown remarkable generosity through our You Give We Give scheme but this has reached new heights in the past few months. Their overwhelming kindness, donating over £1m in just over two months has meant that, together with our donation match, we’ve been able to provide additional support to our food bank partners at this critical time.”

Add a You Give We Give voucher on your next shop and keep track of the campaign on our social channels.