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Food waste supermarket Wefood to expand to Aarhus

Lucie Rychla
April 28th, 2016


This article is more than 8 years old.

The first store in Copenhagen has proven to be a great success

The first Wefood store in Denmark is located on Amagerbrogade in Copenhagen (photo: Folkekirkens Nødhjælp)

Only two months since the grand opening of Denmark’s first food waste supermarket Wefood, the charity organisation Folkekirkens Nødhjælp that runs the store has announced plans for expansion.

The organisation would like to see another surplus supermarket open in the capital and also in Aarhus.

READ MORE: First social supermarket to open in Copenhagen

We would like to have one more shop in Copenhagen, and we also want to expand to Aarhus in 2017,” Birgitte Qvist-Sørensen, the general secretary at Folkekirkens Nødhjælp, told DR.

“Aarhus will be the European capital of culture in 2017 and we would really like to be there to celebrate that.”

The concept of selling food that would otherwise be thrown out at a discounted price has proven successful, and the first Wefood store on Amagerbrogade in Copenhagen has already made over 200,000 kroner in profits.

Long queues every day
“There is a queue on the street every day,” said Qvist-Sørensen.

People mainly come to see what we have, which was always part of our intention that they should not do all their shopping at Wefood, but come here and check what we’ve got.”

Wefood is run by Folkekirkens Nødhjælp’s volunteers and all the profits go to the charity’s projects in developing countries.

The ambition is to raise awareness of food waste. Danes throw out over 700,000 tonnes of food every year, while some 800 million people go hungry in other parts of the world.


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Moreover, 21 percent of those surveyed admitted to medicating their kids with paracetamol, such as Panodil, before sending them to school.

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At Børnehuset there are fears that parents prefer to pack their kids off with a pill without informing teachers.

“We occasionally have children who that they have had a pill for breakfast,” said headteacher Susanne Bødker. “You might think that it is a Panodil more than a vitamin pill, if it is a child who has just been sick, for example.”

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Parents, when confronted, often cite pressure at work as a reason for not being able to stay at home with their children.

Many declare that they simply cannot take another day off, as they are afraid of being fired.

Allan Randrup Thomsen, a professor of virology at KU, has heavily criticised the parents’ actions, describing the current situation as a “vicious circle”.

“It promotes the spread of viruses, and it adds momentum to a cycle where parents are pressured by high levels of sick-leave. If they then choose to send the children to daycare while they are still recovering, they keep the epidemic going in daycares, and this in turn puts a greater burden on the parents.”