Australian grocery retailer Harris Farm Markets is introducing a new food waste initiative at its stores which will see perishable food items, that would otherwise have been thrown out,   upcycled into premium products. The Re-purposeful Picks range will see fruit blitzed into smoothies, bread turned into breadcrumbs and vegetables used as toppings on pizzas, extending the shelf life of the original product by up to two months.Harris Farm Markets co-CEO Tristan Harris told Inside Retail that there are so many opportunities to upcycle would-be waste food into quality products, the challenge will be making it economically viable. “People don’t have a concern with, for example, breadcrumbs that are more than two days old. When we bake bread, we sell it that day. There is this natural opportunity in that case, to dry the bread out in an oven and then crumb it; then all of a sudden, you’ve got a product which is perfectly usable,” Harris said. “It’s relatively easy to come up with some really good tasting products, it’s more difficult to make sure that they are economical for the customer. The competing product is something that’s produced in massive quantities in a factory very efficiently; we have to produce in-store so it costs us a lot in labour and inefficient, manufacturing techniques. Despite the fact that the underlying product isn’t costing as much money, it’s still challenging to make it at the right price point.”Harris Farm Markets’ Re-purposeful Picks range. Image: Supplied. All 25 Harris Farm Markets stores have been kitted out with facilities to create the new range. While recipes have been developed by a chef, the retail staff in each store will be producing the items, and there will be a person responsible for managing the process in each store. There will also be buyers and marketers on site to handle packaging and labels. “Every element of our business has been involved in the development of these products,” Harris said. The range launches with over 30 products, but more will be added over time. Harris said it’s a complex program but he’s confident that customers will support it when they realise the impact it can have.Australia’s food waste problemThe Re-purposeful Picks range is the latest example of Harris Farm Markets leading the way on sustainable food retail initiatives in Australia. In 2018, Harris Farm Markets became the first chain store retailer to ban the plastic bag and it was the first to reposition “ugly” fruit and vegetable as a viable product choice with its Imperfect Picks range.To date, the retail company has invested over AU$16 million in its sustainability initiatives, which have collectively eliminated over 31,000 tonnes of food waste since 2014.Harris told Inside Retail that it was “criminal to ignore” the issue of food waste in stores.“Fruit and veg is still about half the business, then there’s all the meat and the yogurts and cheeses; all these things are highly perishable so they have a natural risk,” he said.  “Seeing how much of that was being produced just so that we could keep the shelves looking full and customers happy, but was ultimately being wasted, became almost criminal to ignore.”The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that food waste costs the global economy US$936 billion a year, and retailers have a large part to play.“We probably focused more on making sure that we offered fresh products, than focusing so much on what was actually wasted,” Harris admitted. “But [food waste] costs everyone money so the better job you do to manage it, the more profitable you can be.”Like many supermarkets and grocery retailers, Harris Farm Markets is using technology to better understand daily demand from customers. “There are fantastic tools we’ve been developing. We’re using AI systems to predict sales outcomes, but nobody knows what each customer is thinking, so there’s always going to be some variability.”