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Imagine unpacking boxes at your new home, only to be told that perfectly good food must go straight in the bin. This was Olio co-founder Tessa Clarke’s “lightbulb moment” in 2014aboutamazon.eu. Frustrated, she asked herself: “Why isn’t there an app I can use to share food with someone nearby who might want it?”aboutamazon.eu. That simple question sparked a mission. Together with Saasha Celestial-One, Tessa built Olio in 2015 to do exactly that: connect neighbors so “one person’s leftovers became another’s dinner.”
“Olio was born from a simple insight – one neighbor’s leftovers became another’s dinner.” The founders started small. They tested the idea on a WhatsApp group – 12 strangers sharing real food for two weeks – and it workedaboutamazon.eu.
This was proof that people cared about fighting waste. In their first summer, Tessa and Saasha hit the streets of London – pounding pavement, meeting neighbors, and signing up 2,000 people before the app even launchedaboutamazon.eu. By July 2015, Olio was live with thousands ready to share. In Tessa’s words, “We had to get out and meet people in their communities – we wouldn’t have grown if we’d tried to do everything from behind a computer”aboutamazon.eu.
“One person’s surplus can feed another person’s family.” Olio’s origin story shows how a simple, human solution – built by and for community – can scale. Today it’s a full-fledged marketplace platform: a free app and website where users list surplus food (and household items) to share with neighbors at zero coststartupsmagazine.co.uk. Users snap a photo, post their unwanted goods, and arrange a pickup. There are no ads or fees – Olio’s “currency” is kindness and community trust.
Milestones & Growth: From 2,000 to 8+ Million Users
Olio’s growth trajectory is staggering. What started with a few London neighborhoods exploded globally. By late 2019, Olio had over 5 million registered users in dozens of countriesstartupsmagazine.co.uk. By mid-2023 it passed 6 millionaboutamazon.eu and, according to recent reports, 8+ million users across 60+ countries as of 2025linkedin.com. This isn’t hyperbole – that’s millions of neighbors collaborating.
Their timeline is studded with milestones. A 2018 Series A round raised about $6M, and a huge $43M Series B in 2021 brought on strategic investors (like VNV Global and Delivery Hero’s VC arm)startupsmagazine.co.uk. With each funding boost, Olio expanded to new markets – Latin America, Northern Europe, Asia – focusing on regions where their community took off organicallystartupsmagazine.co.uk.
Today, Olio is in over 60 countrieslinkedin.com. It’s even been highlighted by the UN as a “beacon” for sustainable consumption (growing from Europe to Africa, Asia, the Americas).
Key partnerships fueled this growth. Early on, Olio teamed up with local businesses and major retailers so unused food could flow into the app. By 2021, Tesco, Pret A Manger, Costa Coffee, Sainsbury’s, Iceland, Selfridges, KFC and others were on boardstartupsmagazine.co.uk.
These companies signed up to regularly donate unsold produce and meals. Combined with countless cafes, restaurants, and even TV sets, this created a steady supply of free food to share. In return, businesses get a simple, cost-effective way to hit sustainability goalsstartupsmagazine.co.uk.
“We grew five times in the last year, reflecting a shift as businesses and citizens look to be more sustainable and connect locally,” Olio co-founder Tessa Clarke enthused after raising their Series Bstartupsmagazine.co.uk. For ambitious founders, Olio’s trajectory shows how a mission-driven platform can snowball with the right mix of funding, focus, and community engagement.
Business Model & Partnerships: Mission Over Margin
Olio is not a traditional marketplace making sales revenue. It’s a non-profit or social enterprise model focused on impact. Users don’t pay anything, and Olio’s revenue comes from sponsors, donations, and partnerships with retailers. The magic sauce is community + tech, not transaction fees. In fact, Olio itself takes no cut from what’s shared on the app – it’s purely peer-to-peer givingstartupsmagazine.co.uk.
Partnership programs extend Olio’s reach. For example, the Food Waste Heroes initiative trains volunteers (“heroes”) to collect surplus food from shops and cafes for redistribution via Olio.
Over 90,000 Food Waste Heroes worldwide now do weekly pickups from partnershelp.olioapp.com. These heroes bring hundreds of thousands of meals into the app every week. It’s a win-win: companies avoid waste, and people get free food. (One community’s unsold sandwiches become another community’s dinner.)
Importantly, Olio’s app fosters trust and ease of use. The founders intentionally kept it simple – no complicated ratings or ID checks to slow users downlinkedin.com. Early design choices removed friction: the app would only be marginally more polished than a WhatsApp chatlinkedin.com.
This emphasis on usability helped overcome initial skepticism. As Tessa reflects, starting with a WhatsApp proof-of-concept gave invaluable feedback and showed that people would use the service if it were as easy as sending a messageaboutamazon.eu.
“Olio is a next-generation community marketplace,”
says an investorstartupsmagazine.co.uk. It isn’t about fees – it’s about collaboration. In this way, Olio differs sharply from profit-first models. (See a side-by-side graphic comparing mission-driven vs profit-driven marketplaces.) By centering purpose, Olio turns waste into value for communities.
Community & Tech: The Engine Behind the Sharing
Olio’s vibrancy comes from its community architecture and smart use of technology. At its heart, the platform is location-based – you only see listings nearby – which encourages real neighbor interactions. The company also built robust systems to handle growth: Olio runs on cloud infrastructure (AWS) that auto-scales for traffic spikesaboutamazon.euaboutamazon.eu. For instance, when Olio is featured on TV, “we’ll get 10,000 sign-ups in two minutes”aboutamazon.eu, and the tech keeps up without a hitch.
Features like “MADE” (a section for homemade food/crafts), “GOALS” (tips for sustainable living), and upcoming “BORROW”/“WANTED” sections add depth to the appstartupsmagazine.co.uk. These encourage broader sharing: not just leftover groceries, but baked goods, homegrown veggies, or even lending household items. This focus on community-driven content kept users engaged and returning to the app.
The Food Waste Heroes program deserves its own spotlight. This volunteer network illustrates Olio’s community-first approach: neighbors literally get involved. Heroes undergo training and use a special interface (the Volunteer Hub) to claim pickups. Olio’s platform then connects those volunteers with partner businesses’ surpluses. A simplified flow diagram might show: Partner store → Olio listing → Food Waste Hero pickup → App community. This seamless chain relies on both human goodwill and reliable tech.
“No coding required – launch your marketplace with zero tech skills,”
Ordering.co promisesordering.co. This is exactly the kind of platform that could power an Olio-like service. Imagine a local-sharing app built on Ordering.co’s marketplace infrastructure: you’d get user accounts, listing management, geolocation, chat, and even delivery integration out of the box. Because Ordering.co is designed to handle multi-category marketplaces from day oneordering.co, an entrepreneur could focus on community-building (like running Food Waste Heroes) instead of wrestling with backend code.
Impact: Food Saved, Communities Strengthened
Numbers tell Olio’s impact story. By mid-2021, the app had saved over 25 million portions of food and 3 million non-food items from landfillstartupsmagazine.co.uk. That’s meals on plates instead of waste in landfills. Today, those figures are even higher with 8M users and tens of millions of new listings each monthaboutamazon.eulinkedin.com. In other words, Olio has prevented hundreds of millions of dollars worth of groceries from being trashed.
What’s truly measurable: Olio tracks the aggregate impact of all sharing. Each listing shows metrics like KG of CO₂ saved or liters of water conserved, so users see tangible results of their actions. This gamified feedback loops reinforce engagement. It’s no surprise Olio has been called “one of the most transformational companies of our generation”startupsmagazine.co.uk.
The social dividends are huge too. Olio builds empathy between neighbors, reduces pressure on food banks, and boosts local ecosystems. For entrepreneurs, it’s proof: a scalable business model doesn’t need to harm society; it can actively heal it.
Challenges & Solutions: How Olio Stayed the Course
Olio’s journey wasn’t without hurdles. Building trust around free handouts can be tricky. Early on, users worried if listings were real or safe. Olio tackled this with smart tech: every posting is reviewed and flagged for banned items, users have verified profiles, and pickup addresses use “ambiguous coordinates” so exact homes aren’t exposedaboutamazon.eu.
Growth had its own pain points. A viral hit was both blessing and curse: sudden spikes in signups and messages tested the system. Olio’s decision to embrace cloud auto-scaling (AWS Auto Scaling, Spot Instances, etc.) paid off; the app remained stable even under 10,000 new sign-ups in two minutesaboutamazon.eu.
They also made product choices to keep it simple. Tessa notes early ideas like ratings and identity checks were cut because “users didn’t ask for them”linkedin.com. Stripping features kept barriers low. The lesson: solve the real problem (sharing food) and nothing more.
Operating globally also meant cultural and logistic challenges. Food safety rules vary, and trust varies. Olio overcame this by localizing: hiring local teams, translating the app, and letting communities self-organize. They also diversified partnerships: from grocery giants in the UK to local shops abroad. Each market has its own approach (for example, more focus on donations in some places, more peer-to-peer in others). Flexibility was key.
Whenever Olio met a wall, it found a community-driven solution. When COVID-19 hit, Olio quickly adapted: instituting no-contact drop-offs, ramping up hygiene communication, and seeing a sixfold growth in listings as neighbors looked out for each otheraboutamazon.eu. These pivots kept the platform resilient.
The Global Model: Why Olio Succeeds Everywhere
Why did a grassroots UK app become a global movement? The secret is universality. Food waste is a universal pain point – everyone eats, and everyone wastes some. Olio’s model taps into a shared value: nobody likes throwing away food when someone else is hungry. Combined with the network effect of marketplaces (“more users = more offers = more value”), Olio gained self-reinforcing growth.
Crucially, the platform is adaptable. The Olio tech stack (messaging, geolocation, on-demand pickup) can serve any community. The Amazon AWS interview highlights that Olio engineers split into teams for delivering features versus experimenting – ensuring constant innovation without crashing the shiplinkedin.com.
They even added AI to speed up listings (scanning images, detecting expiry dates) while keeping an eye on sustainability (Olio calculated even doubling emissions from AI still left them 90% net positivelinkedin.com). This tech-forward mindset means Olio stays scalable and efficient as it grows.
The bottom line: Olio’s story proves a local, mission-driven marketplace can go global without losing its soul. It did this by owning its platform (not relying on rented tech), by forging real partnerships (not a cut-throat revenue model), and by relentlessly focusing on purpose.
“Olio is perfectly positioned to service this movement and in doing so create a truly transformational company,”
said an investorstartupsmagazine.co.uk. Entrepreneurs, take note: the future of marketplaces is not just Amazon vs eBay. It’s locally-rooted networks powered by robust platforms.
Build Your Own with Ordering.co
The success of Olio sparks an obvious question: Could you build the next Olio? Absolutely – and you don’t need a billion-dollar tech team. Today there are turnkey platforms that give you the same building blocks Olio developed, so you can focus on mission and community, not infrastructure.
Enter Ordering.co – an all-in-one marketplace platform made for high-growth, impact-driven businesses. Ordering.co lets you launch, manage, and scale your marketplace without limitsordering.co. It provides user accounts, listings, carts, chat, delivery integration, and more – all branded for your community. Because you should own your marketplace, not rent itordering.co, Ordering.co never takes a cut of your transactions. You have full control over branding, pricing, and customer data, just like Olio did.
With Ordering.co you can build any local marketplace: food sharing, grocery swaps, DIY goods, or hybrid models.
“From restaurants and groceries to on-demand delivery and B2B platforms, you can build any type of online marketplace”
ordering.co. That includes a platform just like Olio. Imagine launching a hyper-local sharing app where volunteers pick up from donors and neighbors claim free items – but without writing a single line of codeordering.co. You can have a fully functional marketplace in days, not monthsordering.co, complete with maps, notifications, scheduling, and even loyalty programs if you want.
Above all, Ordering.co is built to scale. Their systems are tested on massive marketplaces, so they
“scale to thousands of vendors and millions of transactions”
ordering.co. That means your Olio-like app can grow from one town to dozens of countries without rebuilding the backend. (Olio needed years and deep pockets to build their infrastructure; with Ordering.co those days of heavy lifting are over.)
👉 Bold callout: “Whether you want to launch a community swap network or a zero-waste marketplace, Ordering.co gives you the toolkit to focus on impact. Build local with global potential.”
In short, Olio’s journey is both inspiration and blueprint. It shows that solving real problems – one neighborhood at a time – can blossom into a worldwide movement. And platforms like Ordering.co make that path smoother than ever. For any entrepreneur or social founder asking, “How do I start?”, the answer is clear: you don’t need to reinvent Olio from scratch. Use the proven infrastructure, gather your community, and start sharing. The planet (and your neighbors) will thank you.
Sources: Insights are drawn from Olio co-founder interviews and news reportsaboutamazon.eustartupsmagazine.co.uk, Olio’s own documentationhelp.olioapp.com, and Ordering.co’s platform detailsordering.coordering.co. All stats and quotes are sourced to these references.