This document outlines SOMARO’s 2025 measures to prevent and reduce food waste through responsible food redistribution, close engagement with beneficiaries, and ongoing internal awareness. It reflects our long-term commitment to supporting vulnerable families while ensuring that surplus food reaches people instead of being wasted.

The SOMARO Association – The Social Shop is a nonprofit association that sells products at symbolic prices, in its own shops, to low-income people. Our goal goes in two main directions: eradicating poverty and diminishing food waste. The role of the store manager is to lead and coordinate all aspects of the social shop, from receiving the goods from suppliers to selling them to customers, people with financial difficulties.

Among the store manager’s attributions are:

• Constant and active search of new, local and national suppliers;
• Goods management (reception in administration, reception, checking of warranty terms, cooperation with suppliers, etc.);
• Sales management (co-ordinating products in the store for their sales, product quality assurance sold, offering discounts or bidding to maximize sales, primary accounting, etc.);
• Quality management (careful monitoring of warranty terms and assurance that the product sold is in place in quality standards); Maintain a steady flow of volunteers to ensure good delivery of goods;
• Maintaining a good relationship with all the institutions involved in the good development of the Social Shop activity;
• Keeping a close relationship with SOMARO General Manager, in order to improve the Association and its activities on which unfolds them;
• Keeping a good relationship with the beneficiaries of the social shop in order to offer a pleasant experience in the visit them in the social shop.

Selection criteria:

• Higher education (represents higher education advantage in the economic or social field)
• Experience in managing a store (not necessarily leading a team)
• Driving license cat. B
• Basic accounting knowledge
• Knowledge of computer operation (sales program, excel, word, access database)
• Ability to plan and achieve medium and long-term goals
• Ability to empathize with social shoppers

We offer a pleasant job with a flexible program and the satisfaction to come to a job where you really help people and, last but not least, the environment.

We await your CV accompanied by a cover letter at simon@somaro.org until 07.08.2019.

 Read more!

If it is voted next week, the new law on food waste reduction will close the social shops and leave hundreds of families in Bucharest and Sibiu without the only source where they can buy food at low prices. At the same time, this new legislative proposal does not impose any obligation on food companies to reduce waste. All measures remain optional.

Several months ago, the Agriculture Committee discussed to amend law 217/2016 on the reduction of food waste. After several months of discussion, on the agenda of the Chamber of Deputies will most likely come next Wednesday a draft law that:

• It prohibits the resale of donated products, including by social shops.
• It does not impose any obligations on companies in the food industry to reduce waste. All proposed measures are optional.

The first effect of this law will be lost to those few social shops in Romania and the impossibility of others to appear. Such a social shop is Asociația SOMARO – Magazinul Social. From here you can supply people at the poverty line, beneficiaries of the General Directorate for Social Assistance. Given that the law will prohibit the sale of donated products, this store, and so on, will close. The 819 families of SOMARO social shops in Bucharest and Sibiu (families in poverty) will lose the opportunity to buy products at extremely low prices (about 15% of their real value).

Social shops and other similar social economy structures are not profitable. The sale of products ensures, often only partially, the subsistence of the shop. In addition, selling products at prices that people with extreme poverty can afford, help the beneficiaries to retain their dignity, being treated as customers.

Throughout the world, states are investing in such solutions that help both to reduce food waste and to reduce poverty. (for example, SOMA social shops in Austria, Not-for-profit Grocery Markets in Canada, Croix-Rouge Buttek social shops in Luxembourg, CARITAS MARKT social shops in Switzerland, etc. In 2013, there were over 1,000 shops in Europe only!). In Romania, the state forbids them.

Throughout the debates in the Committee on Agriculture, the representatives of the food industry companies have resisted the obligations the original draft imposes, not wanting to take any responsibility for diminishing food scarcity. In the same way, they opposed the possibility of social shops to sell the products received, although any donor company could have decided what kind of organization they donated and under what conditions.

All this, according to Eurostat, in Romania:

• 38.8% of the population at risk of poverty or social exclusion – the second largest in the EU
• 23.8% of the total population of Romania are affected by severe material deprivation
• 18.9% of employees are at risk of poverty

The group of organizations against food waste will ask Members to amend the bill once it reaches the plenary agenda, so that its provisions are not optional, but mandatory, and social shops will be exempted from the ban on re- sells premium products as a donation.

Download: Press Release (in Romanian)

Contact:

Simon Suitner, General Manager Somaro // simon@somaro.org // 0722.454.314
Silvia Boeriu, Communication Coordinator CeRe: Centrul de Resurse pentru participare publică // silvia@ce-re.ro // 0721.215.260

Last week, a fairly unpleasant news came in: Agriculture Minister Petre Daea announced that the food waste law is once again postponed. The reasons invoked ranged from the “non existence” of the implementation methods to the “worry” that the current form of the law could encourage parallel trade – referring to the fact that if the foods close to the expiration date can be revived, even at extremely low prices, this would generate a trade that is hard to control.

Learn more on the case & get the details.

Read the full article on wall-street.ro (only in Romanian).

Adela says: “For me, the time spent at Somaro was a very important step, both in my career and personally. I have learned that a job can be actually more than just a job. As well as Somaro is more than just a store. It is a place where you can grow and a place where your work has a value. The work here, together with the suppliers, volunteers and last but not least, the beneficiaries in Sibiu helped me to learn and to be always better than the day before! I therefore want to thank all the collaborators I have met during these three years at Somaro, who make Somaro possible. I personally will remain committed to this cause, no matter where I am going to go!”

More information can be found in the document ANUNT ANGAJARE.