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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

food waste innovation

Food Waste Innovators Wanted

If we could pick one thing in the entire food space that technology could truly solve, it would be food *waste.* It has always been an issue that has a ripple effect up and down the food chain, and the statistics have only gotten worse since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020.

The team at the food waste non-profit ReFED works daily to provide data-driven solutions to reduce waste and loss in the food system — and that work is the topic at the 2022 Food Waste Solutions Summit held this year on May 10-12 in Minneapolis, MN.

Food waste doesn’t just happen at the consumer level, though about one-third of the 1.4 billion tons of waste happens after the food has been placed on retail shelves or taken home to consumer kitchens. But food waste – or food loss, as some experts note – also happens earlier in the supply chain, either during manufacturing, transportation and at the very beginning at the agricultural level.

Part of the Food Waste Solutions Summit is to discover and discuss innovations designed to tackle food waste at all levels of the food chain. The Spoon has partnered with ReFED to host a session showcasing innovative technology solutions to reduce food waste, specifically in agriculture, supply chain, and consumer categories — and we’re on the hunt for the creators, entrepreneurs and problem-solvers innovating in those categories to come and tell us their story.

Applications to speak during this innovation showcase are open through Friday, March 4. If you lead any organization innovating in the above-named categories, fill out the quick application. If selected, speakers will be included in a brief “fireside chat”-style conversation with the session moderator and audience Q&A. 

We’re looking forward to meeting and hearing from food businesses, funders, policymakers, entrepreneurs and non-profits all working to solve this complex, global issue. For more info on the 2022 Food Waste Solutions Summit hosted by ReFED, visit their site.

*Note: The Spoon is a media partner for this event; this post is not part of any paid campaign.*

CES: Tackling Food Waste With Technology (Video)

The topic of food waste and innovation is so important — in the US alone, $408 billion worth of food is wasted each year. But the topic is too often overlooked when it comes to food tech conversations.

That’s why we invited experts to join us at the CES Food Tech Conference last month to talk about waste at different points in the food supply chain as well as the systemic issues plaguing the global food system.

We welcomed Vonnie Estes, Vice President of Innovation with the International Fresh Produce Association to moderate this panel with participants including Spencer Martin, CEO of Clew, Adian Mouat, Co-Founder & CEO of Hazel Technologies and Tim West, President of True West Ventures LLC.

The full panel — “Tackling Food Waste With Technology” is ready for viewing below.

There’s More to Food Waste Innovation Than Tech, According to ReFED’s Dana Gunders

This being The Spoon, a lot of our discussions around food waste concern the innovative technologies that could help us eventually curb the multi-billion-dollar problem and meet national and international targets to halve food waste by 2050. But as we learned today at our Food Waste Insights and Innovation Forum, done in partnership with nonprofit ReFED, tech is only one piece of the solution. When it comes to food waste, true innovation is as much about new business models, behaviors, and ways of thinking as it is about advances in, say, machine learning or computer vision.  

Dana Gunders, the Managing Director and a founder of ReFED, kicked off the event by asking two important questions related to food waste: What is innovation, and what is the problem we’re trying to solve with it?

The second question is the easier one to answer, and Gunders called on some well-known stats as a way of explaining how “radically inefficient” our food system actually is:

  • 35 percent of all food in the U.S. goes uneaten
  • $408 billion annually is spent in the U.S. on food that is never eaten
  • More than 40 million Americans are considered food insecure

Food waste also accounts for 4 percent of U.S. GHG emissions (that’s 58 million cars worth’ of greenhouse gases), 14 percent of all freshwater use, 18 percent of all cropland use, and 24 percent of landfill inputs.

Citing data from Project Drawdown, Gunders pointed out that reducing food waste ranked first of 76 solutions meant to reverse climate change — ahead of plant-based diets, utility-scale solar, wind turbines, and other well-known contenders.

New innovations will help us reach those targets and cut down overall food waste, but as we learned at today’s event, “innovation” means different things to different stakeholders when it comes to food waste. “People talk about food waste as if it were one problem. It’s not,” Gunders said at the event. “This is a complex set of inefficiencies and we need a whole suite of solutions to address that.” Gunders is, of course, referring to the wide variety of ways in which food is wasted along the supply chain. Post-harvest food loss looks different from food thrown out at the grocery store. Both of those in turn look different than food that we dump down our kitchen drains. In all of these scenarios, food waste looks different, so it follows that the solutions will vary greatly based on which part of the supply chain they are aimed at.

Tech is one obvious tool when it comes to innovation, and at this point, companies are working with everything from machine learning and image recognition to hyperspectral imaging and sensors to fight food waste. These and other technologies can track waste, help retailers forecast more precisely, and even tell us which pieces of fruit will ripen soonest in any given crop. 

But, as mentioned above, technology is only one piece of innovation. Equally important are new processes and business models as well as what Gunders calls “cultural evolution.”

New business models around food waste have been emerging steadily over the last few years, many of them around grocery and/or restaurant services selling surplus food. This is a model popularized by the likes of Imperfect Foods, Too Good to Go, Flashfood, and many others. Upcycled products are another example, as is offering financial incentives to managers, as Sodexo is doing. 

Cultural evolution, meanwhile, refers to what Gunders called “innovation on a much simpler level.” It’s smaller actions that work together to make the public more aware of food waste and encourage changes in behavior. Signage in dining halls about food waste or allowing customers to taste a product before they buy it are two examples.

In the wake a of the pandemic, a new administration, and an increased sense of urgency around climate change and food equity, the culture in the U.S. right now is open to change. As Gunders pointed out, now is the time for businesses with food waste solutions to consider where they fit into these changes and how they might test their customers accordingly.

Join The Spoon and ReFED for the Food Waste Insights and Innovation Forum

By now, you know the stats: Each year, over one-third of our food produced is wasted.

That translates to about $285 billion (or 54 million tons) worth of food each year in the US alone. That’s more than a quarter trillion dollars worth of food, produced from or with scarce inputs like water, land and animals that are slaughtered — food that won’t end up on the plates of people who go hungry every day. Food that will be tossed aside and become trash.

It’s a big problem, but the good news is there’s a huge movement across the food system to find innovative ways to reduce the amount of food waste. One of the strongest voices at the center of this movement is ReFED, a US-based non-profit organization dedicated to ending the food waste crisis. ReFED’s efforts to create awareness through a data-driven approach to catalyze change is something we’ve covered here at The Spoon and one of the reasons we’re big fans of what they do.

All of which is to say, when we decided to do an event focused on highlighting innovation in reducing food waste, ReFED was our first choice for a partnership.

Today we’re excited to announce the event and share details with the food tech community.

The Food Waste Insights + Innovation Forum is a free-to-attend half-day virtual event on June 16th from 9 AM to 1 PM PT (12 PM to 4 PM ET) and will feature some of the leading companies and organizations. We’ll dive into their work and progress in building a less wasteful food system and hear about how they overcame barriers through leveraging innovation.

We’ll hear from leaders within companies like The Wonderful Company and Hellmann’s about innovative approaches they’ve taken to reducing food waste. We’ll talk to investors like S2G Ventures and Cultivian Sandbox about the ways in which capital can be deployed to scale impactful solutions. Finally, we’ll also hear from innovators like Spoiler Alert and Smoketown building new technologies and systems to reduce food waste.

We’ll also highlight emerging innovators chosen by ReFED and The Spoon who are creating technology-driven solutions to reduce waste across the food system, whether that’s at the farm, in the supply chain, at the restaurant or grocery store or in our own fridges.

If you have ideas you want to share about how to reduce food waste, are looking for a new partner to help supercharge your own company’s efforts in this area, or just want to learn more about this growing movement, register today for this half-day event on June 16th (it’s free!, thanks in part to our sponsors Google and FoodX Technologies).

We’ll be keeping you updated over the next several weeks as more speakers are added and the full agenda is released. In the meantime, reserve your ticket today, and get ready to help us further the conversation around how we can innovate to fight food waste.

Kroger’s Zero Hunger/Zero Waste Foundation Is Taking Applications for Its Innovation Accelerator

Startups, take note. The Kroger Co. Zero Hunger | Zero Waste Foundation (aka, the “Foundation”) is now taking applications for the second cohort of its Innovation Fund. The program, done in partnership with Village Capital, looks for companies developing new technologies, processes, and other solutions that combat food waste.

The Foundation says this could include rescuing and upcycling “imperfect” food. “Upcycled food is the next frontier in recovering and repurposing food that may otherwise go to landfills,” the Foundation said in a statement this week. In this context, upcycling could mean either using discarded food to create new foods (e.g., upcycled cookies), ingredients, or even meal kits. The program also lumps food rescue — selling surplus food to consumers — as part of the upcycling process, too.

Both areas are becoming more popular in the U.S., with companies like Imperfect Foods, Misfits Market, Renewal Mill, and Goodfish leading the way. Imperfect was actually a part of the first cohort for the Innovation Fund, along with Food Forest, mobius, Replate, and others. About 400 startups applied for the first cohort, so we can expect as many if not more vying for a spot in this next installment of the program.

The six-month-long Kroger program includes one week of virtual programming followed by monthly cohort sessions. The entire program runs from late May through November 2021.

A total of 10 startups will be selected from the applicant pool. Selected companies each receive $100,000 in upfront seed grant funding, with the chance for an additional $100,000 grant based on “achievement of identified program milestones.” Virtual workshops that cover investment readiness and technical skill development, and also provides networking opportunities with mentors and potential investors.

Two startups of the chosen 10 will be picked at the end of six months to receive an additional $250,000 in funding.

Applications are open until April 1, 2021.