Food & Drink
Fridge-scaping
Olio founders Tessa Clarke and Saasha Celestial-One explore the trend that can help you save money & the planet.
2 October 2025
This article first appeared in our International Women’s Day 2026 issue of My Green Pod Magazine. Click here to subscribe to our digital edition and get each issue delivered straight to your inbox
Main image: Tessa Clarke, co-founder and CEO at Olio, at her TED talk, ‘The Surprising Climate Benefits of Sharing Your Stuff’. Credit Gilberto Tadday & TED
When Tessa Clarke decided to launch a food-sharing app, it meant walking away from a successful corporate career. The reaction was far from supportive.
Friends and colleagues questioned Tessa’s judgement – some even put the decision down to ‘baby brain’ – but she was responding to a deep sense that something fundamental was missing.
Tessa had grown tired of admiring the bravery of others while feeling uninspired by her own work. Her CV looked impressive, but it didn’t reflect the person she wanted to be or the legacy she hoped to leave behind.
It was time for a change, and when Tessa truly confronted the scale of one particular issue – food waste – she found it impossible to look away.
Food waste, Tessa discovered, is not just inefficient; it is morally wrong and environmentally devastating. Perfectly good food is thrown away every day while people struggle to afford meals and the climate cost of producing that wasted food continues to accelerate the ecological crisis. For Tessa, this realisation was a turning point.
Leaving her corporate life was a risky move, but Tessa drew courage from three things: the first was the sheer magnitude of the problem she had uncovered and the second was meeting her co-founder, Saasha Celestial-One, whose energy, belief and shared values made the challenge feel not just possible but exciting. The third major influence was motherhood.
At the time, Tessa had a newborn baby and a toddler. On paper it looked like the worst possible moment to start a business, but in reality Tessa found that with motherhood came clarity.
Becoming a parent sharpened Tessa’s sense of what truly mattered and strengthened her resolve to build something she could be proud of, both for herself and for her children.
What followed next was not a single leap of bravery but thousands of small, determined steps. Olio did not begin with slick branding or major investment; it started with a simple survey, which was shared on Facebook as a market research tool to get to the bottom of how people really felt about food waste.
Next came a WhatsApp group, which was set up as a way to test whether neighbours would actually share surplus food with each other. A very basic app followed, which launched in just five north-London postcodes.
Tessa and Saasha spent days pounding the pavements, handing out flyers and explaining the idea face to face. Behind the scenes, the personal risk was real: it involved remortgaging the family home every couple of years to keep finances afloat while navigating years of long, hard slog.
The global pandemic tested individuals and businesses all over the world; Olio was no different, but in 2020 – after three and a half years of conversations – Tesco signed up to trial Olio’s Food Waste Heroes programme. This breakthrough moment helped Olio to scale, and Tessa saw it as proof that persistence pays off.
Today, the Olio app has 9 million users across 63 countries, and its impact is striking. Through the simple act of sharing, people using the app have helped save the equivalent of 137 million meals from going to waste and rehomed 16 million household items.
Alongside Tesco, retail giants including Iceland, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and ASDA are now using the app to share their surplus food. The environmental impact of sharing (rather than wasting) the food and other items rehomed on Olio equates to one billion car miles taken off the road, and 40 billion litres of water prevented from being wasted.
For Tessa, these milestones are both a source of pride and a reminder of how much work still lies ahead; the scale of the global waste crisis means progress can simultaneously feel huge and heartbreakingly small.
For Tessa, one thing is clear: working with purpose has been transformative. Building Olio has changed her career and also her relationship with success itself; the measure is no longer awards or accolades but tangible impact, in human and environmental terms.
Tessa’s journey is a great reminder that doing something that matters is rarely easy or comfortable and is never finished. There will always be uncertainty, setbacks and moments of doubt, but taking the leap – even when the timing feels wrong and the path unclear – can be deeply rewarding. Sometimes the most important thing is simply to try.
For those inspired by Tessa’s journey, Olio offers a simple way to turn values into action. By making it easier to share surplus food and household items with neighbours and local communities, the app shows how small, everyday choices can add up to meaningful change.
Olio founders Tessa Clarke and Saasha Celestial-One explore the trend that can help you save money & the planet.
Historic moment for food sharing app Olio as it celebrates 100 million meals rescued.
The sharing app that lets you declutter the home, reduce waste and help out a neighbour.
