Olio, the food waste company, is all positive vibe. But after several years of volunteering for them, I have various misgivings.

Their objective is to grow users at all cost, so they will never forcefully kick anyone off the platform (if it happens at all, it’s laughably easy to come back and abuse the app again).

The food is traced via the app, not from the Tesco’s store staff side, so a lot of fraudulent activities happen, e.g., listing food that don’t even exist, then get another account to request it so Olio doesn’t notice that this volunteer didn’t even collect any food from any store.

ALL DETECTION IS MANUAL! Olio doesn’t even have an automated system to detect shenanigans. Users on the platform have reported multiple cases of volunteers not collecting for months, sometimes years, without any actions from Olio. Of course, Olio seems to hide this kind of news from its partners, e.g., Tesco & Iceland.