Olio Reviews 

The Lidl collections have been absolutely amazing! I want to give a massive thank you to the store manager, Laura, and her incredible staff in Luton Francis street Lidl collections have been absolutely amazing! I want to give a massive thank you to the manager, Laura, and her incredible staff. They are always so supportive, kind, and helpful during every pickup.
​I have a lot of people coming from shelters to collect this food. They are always so grateful and say thank you to me, but I always make sure to tell them: "It is Lidl and Olio who are making the real difference in people's lives!"
​Thank you both so much for this wonderful trial and partnership. It provides so much vital support, feeds people who truly need it, and ensures there is absolutely zero waste. Please keep it going!They are always so supportive, kind, and helpful during every pickup.
​I have a lot of people coming from shelters to collect this food. They are always so grateful and say thank you to me, but I always make sure to tell them: "It is Lidl and Olio who are making the real difference in people's lives!"
​Thank you both so much for this wonderful trial and partnership. It provides so much vital support, feeds people who truly need it, and ensures there is absolutely zero waste. Please keep it going!

How funny it is that in every reply they say “email olio @ ….” Because they never reply.

Im a FWH and been for a couple of weeks and Ive only collected rotten food and bread so far that has filled up my bin because who the hell is going to collect bread at 11pm.
Moreover I reported a user that collected a HUGE amount of food, including my slot, and then only shared 6 items. I never heard back. Big supermarkets slots are allocated to the same people and there is no chance given to other people.

I used to be a fan of Olio but not any more. Watching an add every time you request an item when you very often get a message afterwards (sometimes hours afterwards) to say the item has gone. means you can spend ages requesting things and getting nothing. I used to pay a subscription - but then had a hell of a time trying to cancel it. Sometimes items are listed for days and then you get no response after repeatedly making a request from the person offering the item on a daily basis. I have also had instances where the food I went to collect was rotten (and obviously so from the outside). So you spend time and money (petrol) going to collect rubbish - which means that far from reducing waste in the environment, actually damages the environment. You are required to state a collection time upfront when you request an item but there is never an upfront indication of when collection may be possible. Oilio was originally a good idea but has deteriorated over the years into what appears to be a money making scam. I won't now shop at stores that donate to Olio. They should give everything to charities. It is interesting that the reviews tend to be either 5* or 1*. That usually indicates that something has started to go very wrong in an organisation.

Easy to use app.No hassle or judgement when asking for free food. Easy to sell on olio. I recommend olio for everyone to try. Olio are helping the planet by giving people the chance to have unwanted food where normally it would end up in general waste and landfill.

Very happy to support OLIO
I am an active member and cobtribuitor to OLIO
Keep up the good work

I strongly warn against using Olio about Subscription SCAM.

There is literally no proper option to cancel or remove the subscription in a normal way. Once you sign up, you are effectively trapped in an auto-renewing system that continues after a year, with no clear or transparent way to stop it.

Support does not respond at all, so you are left without any help or resolution.

On top of that, the reporting system is completely unreliable and feels heavily biased. There is clear favoritism — some users seem to get away with rule-breaking (especially people with “trusted” roles like so-called captains), while regular users are quickly penalised for minor issues like incorrect photos. It feels inconsistent, unfair, and open to abuse.

Overall, the system appears designed in a way that protects certain users while ignoring legitimate complaints from others.

In my opinion, this is a platform to avoid if you expect fairness, transparency, and basic customer support.

I am so glad to be part of this community. It feels so good to have a social app that brings people together as well as mitigate food waste. A lot of people go to bed hungry and don’t even know this app exists. I am happy that i am among the few making a difference.

I registered with Olio in 2017 and have been a Food Waste Hero since 2019. I absolutely love being part of the Olio community and enjoy collecting and sharing food that would otherwise go to waste.
Through Olio, I've met so many wonderful, like-minded people in my local community. I'm especially fortunate to live in an area where we have excellent relationships with the stores we collect from, which makes the experience even more rewarding.
Olio is a fantastic way to share both food and non-food items, reduce waste, and bring people together. Being part of Olio has been incredibly positive, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to make a difference in their community.

A great way to give away unwanted books and dvds instead of them going in bin.

Great idea - hate to see food go to waste if someone can get the use of it

Knowing my food isn't going to waste and helping out

I am new to Olio and I like it very much. I will definitely continue to use it
Thank you

Dear olio. Please stop offering our tesco charity collections to your food waste heroes, weeks in advance too. We accept our charity collections each evening on foodiverse but have your fwh Turning up at the same time to collect our charity food. This is causing confusion and our charities risk not getting their donations that feed people in need. Its also unfair on your fwh who are using their own vehicles and time to be turned away
Thank you

Firstly Olio is a commercial business NOT the charity its marketing IMPLIES.

Yet it's main workforce, who collect and distribute food in a short time frame, are VOLUNTEERS. What other company has this business model?

The VOLUNTEERS are now expected to pay a subscription fee i.e. pay for the priviledge of working for them. If you do not pay you are forced to see adverts of Tessa Clarke their CEO pleading for 'support'.

Tessa meanwhile pays herself £150,000 as a base salary.

OLIO uses an app that is entirely AI driven. This includes the forum. Chat bots reply to any legitimate question with very long, well written replies criticising, bullying and hounding people who ask genuine questions. People are sanctioned automatically by the app, without right of reply. There is an all encompassing REPORT button and a long drawn out REPORTING process. Yet nothing is ever actioned and no human contact is available. They're too busy, under staffed, every sob story excuse. So why are unpaid volunteers expected to take on admin for them too?

Olio's income comes from supermarkets, they are effectively paying Olio for cheap waste disposal. The volume of food can be huge and MORE than any domestic kitchen can store safely. COMMERCIAL waste is being dumped onto volunteers. The supermarkets demand Everything or Nothing be taken. So the volunteer either takes it and struggles or has wasted their time, money and energy.

But Olio never criticises the supermarkets. Instead Olio blames and punishes volunteers. Interestingly Olio doesn't list it's income source or amount anywhere on it's financial accounts. Instead it vaguely claims volunteers as income. Odd that.

Most collections are after 10pm (the last minute before the shop closes and they won't sell the items), so a volunteer must travel, collect, travel back, sort, photograph, upload, respond to messages and distribute, all by 12 pm. That's 2 hours labour which at minimum wage costs £30. And for that volunteers are ALLOWED to keep 10%. In reality most volunteers keep 90% and post 10%. There are endless lists of CHEAP bread and no one goes to collect a loaf of bread. Other listings are frequently shared among their friends and relatives who are also on the app.

The volunteer is doing the supermarket's dirty work.

All the sharing, caring, cutesy stuff is nothing but marketing. The app actually runs using gaming/gambling techniques to capture attention and keep it hooked.

It's a disgusting, manipulative, extractive operation sold as some great social crusade doing good. It's simply diverting what should be commercial waste onto individuals.

It's great that some food isn't wasted. But there are fairer, cheaper, decent ways of distributing food. Olio just exploits free labour with hoops to jump. There is also the extra travel it necessitates, which is an environmental cost.

Security of volunteers is entirely ommitted by Olio. Volunteers are expected to have strangers coming to their private residence upto midnight, in this day and age? Curious then that Tessa and her paid employees and Tessa are so shy of any type of contact, phone, email or in person.
Video training and self confirmation of rules doesn't stop volunteers handling food unsafely. When that food is already on it's last legs it is a public health risk. Reports of shocking incidents are routinely IGNORED.

I think it's a terrible company that doesn't care about volunteers, the public, or even paid employees. It's all about Tessa and her filling her own pockets.

Good volunteer network. Good to save food waste and household items you no longer need can be passed on too.

Love olio had really positive experience using the app doing collections has an amazing community and always there to help and so easy to use

Too confusing. A user receives messages that are unclear. It feels like a dodgy app to me. The FWH is lovely that I have known. A physical site, turning up and collecting food do not ask such information from individuals. Olio do. Stupid name. Stop using exclamation marks when you reply to customers. It looks insincere and, again, stupid.

Only had this app installed for 14 hours and 106 tracking attempts had been blocked. Removed it

Great..easy...lots of different options...nice customers

Amazing app thinking of people and saving food and things going to landfill.