On FIR took place lectures about social supermarkets and waste of food

On the 22^nd and 23^rd November 2017, the Department of Business and Commercial Communications hosted a speech of doc. Christina Holweg of the Institute for Handicraft and Marketing, Wirtschaftsuniversität Vienna, who lectured about social supermarkets in Europe and about the waste of food. She has been studying both topics for a long time in Vienna and she has been cooperating with the Department of Business and Commercial Communications in the past year.

Among the interesting information that doc. Holweg presented, for example, that the discarding of food in retail units is not an important issue for chain management, because there is disposed daily food only in 1-3% of the daily sales of the premises. This, however, means throwing food of a total weight of 30-100 kg, that could be consumed.

Doc. Holweg during her program also visited selected retail chains operating on the Czech market and has visited the Czech social supermarket.

Social supermarkets are stores that offer food for customers with very low incomes. The business model of the social supermarkets stands in the purchase of food with the end of the expiration date from the producers and the retail chains. This food is then resold with significant discounts in comparison with standard prices. Social supermarkets operate in Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, Romania and Switzerland.

There are at least 40 stores in the Czech Republic that carry the features of social supermarkets.

The whole event is supported by project No. 79p5 “Social supermarkets in Austria and the Czech Republic” under the program AKTION Czech Republic-Austria, cooperation in science and education.