Tesco is to begin a trial giving expiring food to customers for free at the end of the day as it tries to cut food waste.

The supermarket will give away some already discounted “yellow sticker” items after 21:30 in some of its smaller Express stores in coming months.

Tesco already donates expiring food to charities and foodbanks. It says it is taking this step to try to meet its goal to halve food waste in a decade.

The company however said that the expiring food would be offered free to charities and shop workers before customers could take it.

A spokesman said the trial would begin in a small number of its Express stores in the UK. The locations have not been specified, nor the starting date.

“This trial will allow customers to take any remaining yellow-stickered items for free at the end of the day, after they have first been offered to charities and colleagues,” they added.

Tesco is Britain’s largest supermarket chain, with a 27.8% market share. It has 3,700 UK stores and about 750 more abroad.

All major supermarket chains have partnerships to send surplus food to food banks and community groups and offer steep discounts on expiring food.

But Tesco’s trial appears to be the first direct-to-customer policy in the UK.

The firm has a target to cut its food waste by 50% this year, as part of its net-zero emissions push.

Up until February last year it had claimed to have cut food waste by 45% in the five years since 2017.

However, it was was forced to correct that figure to 18% after it reported a contractor had been using some of the waste to generate gas that was burnt for energy.

Inflation and the rising cost of living means food staples such as meat, eggs, butter and cereals are more expensive than a year ago, while households are also facing higher energy and water bills later this year.

More than seven million people, or 11% of the UK population, were in “food insecure households” in 2022/2023, an increase of two million from the previous year, data from the Department for Work and Pensions shows.

Many more people have also turned to food banks in recent times. The Trussell Trust food bank has reported more than 1.4 million new users in the past two years.

Tesco’s most recent sales figures in January were strong on the back of what it called its “biggest ever Christmas” and the highest share of the grocery market since 2016.

It reported UK and Ireland like-for-like sales, excluding fuel and VAT, were up 3.7% over the six weeks to 4 January and there was record trading in the week before Christmas.

The Tesco share price was marginally down 0.5% on Thursday.