Approved Food

Britain’s largest online retailer of clearance Food & Drink, with over 5000 products in stock.

Pieces of coverage

Media drops

PR coverage reach

The Brief

Approved Food is the UK’s largest online-only retailer of short-dated food and drink. It has served over 300,000 customers with 950,000 orders and employs 40 people at its site at Dodworth Business Park, Barnsley, South Yorkshire. As a company, it has campaigned for 10 years to reduce food waste, in particular around the Christmas period.

Faith was tasked with delivering a PR campaign to:

  • Highlight key messages and educate the media on tackling food waste
  • Educate consumers about ‘best before’ food labelling.
  • Generate brand awareness of how shopping at Approved Food saves you money and prevents waste.
  • Secure high quality, relevant print media and online coverage with a minimum DA of 35.

 

Approach

Food waste is a huge problem in this country, with households binning more than seven million tonnes of food, worth a staggering £9.7m, each year. The PR strategy was designed to underline and drive this messaging and stress Approved Food’s commitment as an adopter of the cause.

The activity was positioned to savvy shoppers as a tailored media campaign to a select group of lifestyle, specialist and trade journalists who had either a history of reporting about Approved Food, or had an interest in food waste and recycling. The three-month strategic media relations campaign was built around:

  • Targeted media drop
  • Launch press release
  • Thought leadership commentary
  • Follow up release in collaboration with waste prevention body WRAP (the Waste Resources Action Programme)

Key journalists were identified and issued with a media mailer, comprising of a press release – with Christmas food waste facts and tips – an Approved Food product box, and an individually tailored information pack which included food-labelling myths.

 

 

Results

Our three-month Don’t Get Wasted campaign resulted in exposure across all media tiers and successfully connected key journalists with the brand and its offering.

24 pieces of coverage were achieved across tier one media with a total reach of 1,432,334 with strong brand awareness, 4 links with a DA of 35+. All pieces included 100% message delivery and calls-to-action

Highlights included a Good Housekeeping feature on saving money that also ran in sister titles Red, House Beautiful and Country Living. Other titles included A1 Retail, Take A Break, The Yorkshire Times, Resource and Veggie.

Food waste isn’t just a problem at Christmas, and the campaign continues to achieve media interest, resulting in coverage outside the campaign dates in national titles such as The Mirror.

Ambassador Jonathan Straight was subsequently appointed to the Courtauld 2025 Steering Committee to identify priorities, develop solutions and implement changes to cut the carbon and waste associated with food and drink.