Food waste fighting startup Orbisk announced today that it has raised a €1.05 million (~$1.23M USD) Seed round of funding. The round was led by FoodSparks by PeakBridge, with participation from EIT Food, and existing investors DOEN Participaties, and Brabantse Ontwikkelings Maatschappij.
Based in the Netherlands, Orbisk makes a computer vision based system for foodservice operators to identify and cut down on food waste. Restaurants and cafeterias install Orbisk’s hardware at their primary waste bin, and kitchen staff hold food being tossed out underneath the Orbisk camera. Using artificial intelligence, Orbisk automatically identifies the food while a scale weighs how much of it is being thrown out.
As we covered recently, Orbisk’s computer vision and AI system is powered in part with the help of data company Sama. As Orbisk came to market, its cameras captured thousands of images of different types of food to train its AI. Sama worked to structure that data so the algorithms could learn what items like “noodles” or “broccoli” looked like.
The system works for both pre- and post-preparation. For instance, restaurants can monitor what type food and how much of it expires before it even gets cooked. Or for more buffet style restaurants, the system can monitor how much of a particular dish is leftover.
Food waste is a big problem for the world. According to the United Nations Environment Program, about one-third of food produced in the world for human consumption (roughly 1.3 billion tons) gets lost or wasted. That’s inexcusable when there are so many food insecure populations around the world.
Thankfully there are a number of companies around the world tackling the problem. Orbisk isn’t even the only startup to offer such a system for commercial kitchens. Over in the UK, Winnow makes a system similar to that from Orbisk.
The pitch from Orbisk and others like it is simple. By monitoring what food gets thrown out, restaurants and cafeterias not only reduce the amount of good food going into the garbage, they also save money by not spending it on food that customers don’t want.
Orbisk Co-Founder and CEO, Olaf van der Veen told me by video chat this week that his company’s system is currently being used by 50 restaurants right now, and reducing the food waste of its customers by an average of 40 – 50 percent. With its new funding, Orbisk plans to continue developing its product, scale internationally and be in a couple hundred establishments by the end of this year.
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