YouTube’s SortedFood Launch Pop-Up Workshops 

Sorted Food – the social media movement dedicated to cooking and inspiring millions of people to get joy from food, is launching a new initiative to help reduce shopping bills, make more out of the food we buy and cut food waste.Research carried out by Sorted Food* has found that 93% of shoppers are spending more on food than they’d planned to and 70% of consumers feel their large food shops don’t stretch as far as they’d hoped. To help tackle this and the rising cost of living, the YouTube stars are launching a new meal planning tool and hosting a day of workshops in London on 22nd September, with their team of chefs and experts demonstrating innovative yet simple solutions to help Brits cut their grocery spending.

The research revealed that over half of shoppers who are spending more on their food shop are annoyed but feel there’s nothing they can do about it, whilst a third of shoppers worry about how they will afford other items throughout the week. Sorted Food want to help transform shopping habits so that people can get more out of the food they buy, without succumbing to the supermarket tricks that encourage shoppers to spend more than they need to, and teach people to think beyond ‘cooking by recipe’ which often results in leftover ingredients. Over a third (37%) of those surveyed said they had leftover ingredients from recipe cooking.

The business has developed a range of smart solutions to help home-cooks shop like a chef running a restaurant that needs to make a profit, so that they too can serve up delicious food without spending more than they planned to, and have no food waste. On September 15th it will open a shop in East London where it will host workshops where customers can learn from a team of experts. It is also extending its revolutionary meal planning app Sidekick, to help users plan up to six meals per week for no additional cost (£4.99). In addition, its popular YouTube channel with 2.6 million subscribers, will play host to a range of content on efficient grocery shopping.

The Workshops will teach visitors how they can make delicious food using a lot less ingredients than they would normally buy, and learn clever tips and tricks for meal planning and shopping from the Sorted Food chefs. Visitors will also take away a bag of ingredients containing every ingredient they need to make three awesome meals to serve two people for £20. Tickets for the shop can be purchased here: Sorted Food Workshop – Sorted

Jamie Spafford, Sorted Food Co-Founder comments, “Even with the best meal planning intentions, when most of us go shopping we have a list of ingredients to buy that we use across individual dishes, but often this means we still end up with leftover food that ultimately ends up in the bin and just wastes us money, and that’s not to mention all the supermarket ‘special offers’ that tempt us into buying food we don’t need! For example, a curry recipe that requires 100g of spinach that the supermarket only sells in 200g bags – the spare 100g usually ends up at the back of the fridge and then in the bin. But, if we start to plan and shop like a chef running a restaurant that needs to make a profit, that spare spinach would be used up in another dish later in the week. We want to help home-cooks plan their food shopping like this, so they can not only eat delicious and nutritious food, but they can save money and cut food waste at home.”

Jamie continues, “We all live such busy lives that sometimes it gets hard to find the time to really properly plan our meals, whilst the temptation to buy more than we need to once we’re in the supermarket is hard to resist. But with soaring food prices now more than ever we need to make the most of every single food item we buy. It’s always been our mission to help people become awesome home-cooks and in doing that we want to help people change the way they shop, so that they can still eat great tasting food but we can make it go even further – better for their wallets and the planet.”  

Over 750,000 meals have been cooked using the Sidekick App. The team of Sorted Food chefs have designed smart recipes packed full of money-saving hacks that help take the strain out of everyday meal planning and shopping. The revolutionary part of the app comes with the unique ‘Recipe Packs’. Each week the Sidekick App publishes a wide choice of ‘Recipe Packs’, each containing three awesome recipes, all cleverly designed to share ingredients between them and leave users with no food waste at the end of the week. Subscribers simply choose up to two packs for the week ahead and the app creates one simple combined shopping list, which helps users save over 20% on their food shop in the first month of using Sidekick, increasing to over 30% in subsequent months as their store cupboard grows, plus they learn new skills to help them ‘cook like a chef’.

The meals in each Recipe Pack share fresh ingredients across each dish mixed with budget store cupboard ingredients found in most kitchen cupboards (ie olive oil, pasta, stock cubes), this allows users to get the most out of every ingredient they buy, helping them to save on their food bills and ensure none of the food they buy goes to waste. Once users have chosen their Recipe Packs for the week ahead, the App combines the six dishes to create a single shopping list of ingredients for them to buy and they choose where from – whether it be online, a convenience store or their local farm shop.

Tickets for the shop can be purchased here: Sorted Food Workshop – Sorted for £20

Sidekick is free for the first month, then £4.99 per month

*The survey was conducted in June via social media with over 2,500 responses