WeFood: The Grocery Store That Sells Expired Food for a Great Cause

Would you shop at a grocery store that sells nothing but expired food? WeFood is and the company is doing its best to help solve world hunger.

WeFood, which opened in Copenhagen this week, stocks only food that has passed its official expiration date or unworthy of other supermarket shelves because of aesthetic imperfections and damaged packaging. The company is hoping to lure its customers from all economic backgrounds by selling its produce at a steep discount (between 30 and 50 percent.)

Volunteers run the supermarket and all profits go to fight poverty around the world. The store has become so popular that they run out of food virtually every day, and since it opened on February 22, there’s been a constant line down the block to get in.

So why are citizens in Denmark frantically shopping for “expired” food?

They want to help reduce food waste. The country sends 1.5 billion pounds of edible produce to their landfills every year, a problem that the country hopes to solve within the next few years.

The Danish Minister for Food and Environment Eva Kjer Hansen released a statement regarding Denmark’s food waste problem during a recent event hosted by WeFood.

“It is bad for the environment, and it is money spent on absolutely nothing,” Hansen stated.

Denmark has been working to reduce food waste for several years. The country already reduced food waste by 25 percent over the last five years, according to a recent government report.

Roughly one-third of the world’s food supply ends up in the garbage, complicating efforts to help solve world hunger around the globe. In the United States alone, 70 billion pounds of edible food per year is thrown away. Americans actually throw out more food than plastic, metal and glass.