DIY ready meals from Oscar Mayer
Joining forces with top British food manufacturers, TBBT has demonstrated expertise in working with partners in the manufacturing process itself, rescuing surplus foods that are used in the creation of other products – including components for ready meals.
Cue Oscar Mayer – a leading manufacturer of chilled ready meals and prepared foods, supplying supermarkets and major brands across the UK. Its portfolio spans the cuisine map - including British, Italian, Mexican, and Asian, recipes. Together we combined the company’s passionate approach to sustainability, desire to reduce its waste and its carbon footprint to ensure that its food feeds people first. Imagine the possibilities!
TBBT were invited to join Oscar Mayer’s technical team on a factory walk at their Wrexham site, to see what goes on behind-the-scenes and take a closer look at where their surpluses are created.
A unique pilot project was born: for Oscar Mayer to send TBBT its surplus ready-meal meal components left over from the end of its batches of cooking.
Together we tackled the logistics to create a seamless ‘chill chain’ keeping everything secure, cold and edible. As well as making sure that members received all the ingredient, allergen and cooking instructions needed to ensure safe consumption and food safety compliance.
The first delivery of product began in June. 7kg bags of spag bol, cheese sauce, stroganoff, cottage pie and cheese sauce started to arrive, each with 10 days use-by life, even more if frozen. All top-quality components used in quality ready meals for the nation’s favourite retailers . Each bag contains enough for 8-10 family meals – meaning TBBT members can batch cook their ready-meals at home and keep their freezers stocked.
The work was so successful that a fuller partnership was fostered which now means regular weekly collections resulting in up to 2 tonnes of food a week – that’s enough for 4760 meals! And in August, Oscar Mayer’s site in Flint joined with its New Product Development trial meals, giving our members a preview taste of treats not yet on the shelves.