Fruity Lips

We all know we need to throw away less – the UK currently produces 10.2 million tonnes of food waste annually. So one company is taking surplus fruit and turning it into something else. FRUU makes lip balms and colour balms that are made from surplus fruit. The balms come in flavours including avocado, coconut, watermelon, mango, cherry, strawberry, pineapple, pomegranate, lime and lemon and cost £3 each. They are infused with Aloe Vera, which is calming and hydrating, have no artificial colourants and contain vitamin E. FRUU takes fruit that is going off or can’t be sold because it is wonky, or use by-products from the processing of fruit and turn it into the products. Each lip balm is made from up to 60% fruit-based ingredients, so that’s a lot of food being saved from going to landfill. The brand explains: ‘Our products are largely made of ingredients extracted and derived from more than 15 different types of nutrient bursting fruits. ‘Most of the ingredients are produced as a by-product of processed fruit waste, which generates vital extra revenue for small fruit farmers.

Fruu

Morrisons Axe Jobs

Morrisons is axing 3,000 management roles as part of a huge restructuring to create more shop floor jobs. The firm says it is also creating 7,000 new hourly-paid roles at its 500 stores, meaning a net 4,000 new posts. The new jobs will be in customer-facing roles, such as more butchers, bakers, fishmongers, the supermarket said. Morrisons said the new roles will be a mixture of part and full time posts, but declined to reveal how the numbers will be split. The company says those in managerial jobs who want to remain working at Morrisons can stay. However, their new offer will be at the shop floor level. Front-line store staff at Morrisons earn £9 an hour. The big four supermarkets are all making changes to try to stem the flow of shoppers switching allegiance to discount stores. They are all hoping to save money on staffing costs in order to be able to offer bigger discounts to shoppers in store. Within the past year Tesco, Sainsbury's and Asda have all announced significant job cuts at management level.

Morrisons Job Shuffle

Pointless Plastic

Tesco is removing plastic wrapping from its multipack tins in an effort to cut down on waste. The supermarket giant says it will remove 350 tonnes of plastic a year from the environment. Britain's biggest supermarket is working with the likes of Heinz and Green Giant to replace plastic-wrapped multipacks with multi-buy deals. Tesco said the move was the first of its kind by a major UK retailer. And environmental group Greenpeace welcomed the decision to get rid of what it called "pointless plastic". More than 40% of Tesco customers buy tinned multipacks, with 183,000 sold across its stores every day. Multipacks of baked beans, tuna, tinned tomatoes and soup are among the most frequently-bought grocery items in the UK, it said. Tesco is not the only supermarket to look into scrapping plastic wrap around tinned goods.

Pointless Plastic

Vegan Toothpaste

Colgate has launched a new toothpaste which is being billed as the first of a kind because it comes in a recyclable tube. Toothpaste tubes have traditionally been impossible to recycle because they are made from a mixture of plastic and aluminium. Consumers get through 20bn packs of toothpaste every year with discarded tubes contributing to the plastic pollution crisis. But Colgate’s new Smile for Good brand, which has also been certified by the Vegan Society, comes in a tube made from high density polyethylene (HDPE) which is the same plastic as milk containers. Colgate said its engineers had figured out a way to turn the hard plastic, which is widely recyclable, into a “comfortably squeezable” tube. However, the green toothpaste, which is on sale in Waitrose and Boots, comes at a high price. At £5 for 75ml, Smile for Goods costs more than six times as much as a regular tube of Colgate. Colgate has also taken the unusual step of listing the toothpaste’s ingredients on the tube alongside a simple explanation of their function. Consumers trying to buy greener products were confused by the role of the various ingredients, the company said. While the role of fluoride is probably well understood, the tube explains that silica cleans and polishes while glycerin prevents the paste from drying out.

Vegan Toothpaste

Rutland Falls To Golden Arches

Rutland will soon lose its claim of being the only English county without a McDonald's after councillors voted in favour of allowing the fast food chain to build a drive-thru on the outskirts of Oakham. More than 50 people wrote to the county council objecting to the plans, with one woman saying it was because of "who [McDonald's] are and what they stand for". But no-one on the authority's planning committee voted against the proposals, with eight in favour and one abstaining. Many fear the arrival of a big-name, fast-food restaurant will forever change the character of the nation's smallest county - famous for its hunting scene, tourist-attraction reservoir, and independent schools. "It's disgusting - Oakham is not the place for it," says Sandra Wells, 57, who has lived in Rutland all her life. "I don't like fast food and there are too many McDonald's [elsewhere]." But those in the town who do enjoy a Big Mac are happy at the prospect of not having to travel to a different county every time they want a fix.Oakham's mayor David Romney supports McDonald's plans - it is suggested the restaurant could create 65 jobs - and believes it will lift the town out of the "Dark Ages".

McDonalds Everywhere

KitKat Gold

Nestlé is to launch popular Kit Kat Gold in the UK following success down under. The four-finger Kit Kat is made up of the brand’s trademark crispy wafer on a milk chocolate base, topped with white chocolate flavoured with “sweet caramel notes”. Kit Kat Gold originally launched on a limited-edition basis in Australia in 2018, but was made permanent soon after. It will hit Co-op and Nisa from 3 February, before landing in most major retailers from 31 March (rsp: 85p/45g). The rollout to the UK is the latest in a series of Kit Kat innovations, including Green Tea Matcha and Ruby bars in 2019 and 2018 respectively. Nestlé marketing director Alex Gonella said he was “certain that Kit Kat Gold was going to be just as big a hit” in the UK as in Australia. The launch was “just one of the exciting plans we have for Kit Kat, and our confectionery portfolio in general” in 2020, he added. 

KitKat Gold

Greggs Bonus

Thousands of Greggs staff are set to get a £300 one-off payment after a "phenomenal year", the firm said. Sales growth had been helped by strong demand for its traditional snacks and Greggs' "now iconic" vegan sausage rolls, the bakery chain said. Greggs staff will share a £7m payment after shareholders received a £35m special dividend in October.he 19,000 Greggs staff who have been with the chain since before 31 March will get a £300 windfall at the end of January, while the remaining 6,000 will get £75 for each quarter they have worked for Greggs. The one-off payment to staff will be on top of the profit-sharing scheme that Greggs already has, a spokeswoman said. The bakery chain already shares 10% of profits with employees, she said. It isn't uncommon for workers to benefit from a share in the profits. Other UK retailers that have staff bonus schemes include John Lewis and Waitrose, Sainsbury's, and Sports Direct for shop floor workers. Maureen Hinton, global retail research director at GlobalData, said offering a staff bonus reflected a growing trend amongst firms to want to appear ethical.

Greggs Bonus

Quibi

A deep-pocketed new streaming service has revealed it will launch in the US on 6 April. Quibi has raised $1bn (£763m) in funds and commissioned some of Hollywood's biggest names to make content for its mobile-only service. Each show will be 10 minutes or shorter. The firm intends to charge $4.99 (£3.80) per month for basic access and $7.99 for an ad-free version. In addition to entertainment, the service intends to screen bespoke news bulletins from NBC, BBC and Telemundo, among others. Quibi which stands for "quick bites" is commissioning videos running from four to 10 minutes in length. One of Quibi's biggest challenges will be persuading the public to pay for an additional streaming service. Quibi said it would target viewers aged between 18 and 44 years old.

Quibi

Trainer Entrepreneur

Can you remember your 12th birthday? There was probably some cake - maybe even in the shape of a caterpillar - and, if you were lucky, friends, family and a few presents. Whatever you did that day, the chances are it's not affected the rest of your life very much.  But for Joe Franklin, who possesses a trainer collection so exclusive he's become one of the go-to suppliers for the UK rap scene, that day is when it all began. He saved up some birthday money and put it towards a pair of Jessie J's signature Nike Air Max 90s, trainers he says he only wanted to impress his friends. "Later that day someone offered me double what I paid. So obviously I took it and I made double my money". Since then the most expensive pair of trainers he's sold went for £62,000, after he flew to LA and bought them from a collector for £45,000. Joe says on an average week he now makes anywhere between £5,000 and £20,000.  He was making half of that while still at school - so it's probably not surprising he ended up dropping out of college at 16 with just a couple of GCSEs.

Trainers

Cereal Change Up

Lidl is to remove cartoon characters from its own-brand cereal ranges to help parents resist pester power and tackle Britain’s growing childhood obesity crisis.The discount retailer, which has almost 800 UK stores, pledged to remove cartoon characters from eight of its cereal ranges by spring. The company said it was prompted to take action after nearly three-quarters of parents said their children pressurised them to buy certain items in the supermarket, with more than half believing cartoon characters on packaging encouraged this.Many of Lidl’s cereals have unhealthy-sounding names that will not be changed – such as Choco Rice, Cereal Cookie, Choco Shells and Frosted Flakes – but the company says that over the last four years it has reduced the sugar content by 20%.Georgina Hall, Lidl’s head of corporate social responsibility, said: “We want to help parents across Britain make healthy and informed choices about the food they buy for their children. We know pester power can cause difficult battles on the shop floor and we’re hoping that removing cartoon characters from cereal packaging will alleviate some of the pressure parents are under.”
Cereal Change

Veganuary

Greggs, the UK’s largest bakery chain, will end speculation about its hotly anticipated new vegan snack by launching a meat-free version of its popular steak bake. Since the runaway success of its meatless sausage roll, the chain – which serves more than 6 million customers a week from its 2,000 outlets – has been working to develop vegan versions of its other bestselling items. The new product arrives on Greggs’ shelves at the start of Veganuary – a growing movement that encourages people to embrace plant-based diets during January. The vegan steak bake has been created to mirror some of the original snack’s features, including 96 thin layers of puff pastry but without the egg glaze. The filling is made with pieces of the fungi-based protein Quorn instead of beef, mixed with diced onions and meat-free gravy. Costing from £1.55, it will go on sale in 1,300 shops from Thursday before being rolled out to the remaining 700 outlets on 16 January. The launch comes as retailers expand their vegan and plant-based offerings amid the growing popularity of flexitarian diets – where a largely vegetable-based diet is supplemented occasionally with meat.

Veganuary

Death of Saturday Jobs

The number of working teenagers has almost halved in the last 20 years, a study suggests, sparking fears of the "death of the Saturday job". A Resolution Foundation report suggests a quarter of 16 and 17-year-olds were in work between 2017 and 2019 - falling from 48% in 1997-99. Young people were instead prioritising studies over part-time work, it added. The think tank says the number of people who have never worked increased by 52% over the last 20 years. The report says 8.2% of people aged 16-64 - some 3.4 million people in total - had never had a paid job. That is a 52% increase since 1998 when 5.4% had never worked, the report added.

Saturday Job