"Let's Reduce Food Waste"... CU Launches 'Green Save Service'

[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] CU announced on the 22nd that it will introduce the 'Green Save Service,' a good end-of-day sale aimed at creating a green earth.

The CU Green Save Service is a service that sells products nearing their expiration date or items with poor sales at stores at discounted prices instead of discarding them. It was planned to participate in the global campaign to reduce food loss.

According to the Ministry of Environment, the amount of food waste discarded daily nationwide reaches an average of 14,477 tons, with approximately 2 trillion KRW spent annually on food waste disposal costs alone. In particular, about 65% of food waste is discarded in a fully consumable state before consumption.

To prevent perfectly good products from being discarded, CU operates the Green Save Service targeting about 3,000 food and beverage items across approximately 10 categories, ranging from fresh foods with short shelf lives such as lunch boxes, sandwiches, and desserts to general foods like snacks, beverages, instant foods, and side dishes.

Products eligible for the Green Save Service are sold at discounts of up to 40%. To ensure customer safety, general foods can be purchased until the expiration date set by each store, and fresh foods can only be purchased up to 20 minutes before the expiration time.

The CU Green Save Service is available through the 'Last Order' app, which handles near-expiration product transactions.

When customers select and pay for products on the app, the received order is sent as a popup notification to the store’s POS system. Store staff are then aware of the sale in advance and separately package the products. Customers visit the store at the designated pickup time, present the barcode, and collect their items.

Notably, the CU Green Save Service eliminates the inconvenience of staff having to individually photograph products with the app camera or search for product names to upload them. By linking the Last Order app with the store system, products registered as discounted items in the store system are automatically registered in the app.

CU plans to test the Green Save Service in some stores within Seoul until next month and then expand it nationwide.

Last year, CU launched a lunch box reservation service allowing customers to pre-order lunch boxes via the app, and recently introduced products that can only be purchased by reservation. This reservation sales method minimizes discarded products by preventing purchases that do not occur.

Additionally, at the eco-friendly CU Green Store, a food waste processor is operated that can reduce food waste output from stores by as much as 85%.

Jonghae Cho, head of the BGF Retail Service Platform Team, said, “We expect the Green Save Service to have a triple effect of reducing food waste, improving franchise store operational efficiency, and enabling customers to shop reasonably.” He added, “CU will upgrade the system so that near-expiration products are automatically uploaded, allowing franchise stores nationwide to more easily participate in the food loss reduction campaign.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.