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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

food waste

Phood Raises $2M in Seed Funding to Fight Food Waste

Phood, the New York City-based startup that uses a combination of weight scales, computer vision and AI to help foodservice operators reduce food waste, announced today that it has raised a $2 million Seed round of financing. The round was led by New Stack Ventures and Story Ventures. This brings the total amount raised by Phood to $2.1 million.

Phood’s technology helps foodservice companies better understand and optimize how their food is being used. As we wrote earlier this year about the company:

There are three parts to the Phood system: a scale, a camera and a software backend. Food is placed on the scale either before going into a dish (to see how much is being used to make meals) or afterwards (to see how much waste is being generated). There’s a camera mounted above the scale that uses AI to automatically identify what each food item is.

The company’s system also connects with a restaurant’s POS and inventory management software to track what particular items are being used and who supplied them. So, if a cafeteria ends up with a lot of extra brussel sprouts, Phood tells the manager to adjust the business’s purchasing.

On its face, food waste is a huge problem because it means food has been, well, wasted instead of consumed, especially during a time when there are so many in need. Food waste is also an acute problem for restaurants, which already operated under thin margins coming into the pandemic. Now with dining rooms going through a second round of closures, restaurants need to get the most out of every dollar spent and literally can’t afford to let food go to waste.

Thankfully, there are a host of companies fighting the good fight against food waste all along the supply chain. Both Winnow and LeanPath offer similar services like Phood’s to help restaurants manage their food usage and inventory. Restaurant supplier Choco recently held a pop-up event in L.A. challenging chefs to come up with foods based on by-products. And earlier this month the nonprofit ReFed launched a $10 million fundraising campaign to help fund projects that reduce waste in the supply chain.

If you want to learn more about the problem of food waste, and what companies are doing to combat it, check The Consumer Food Waste Innovation Report over at our Spoon Plus membership service.

Outsource the Turkey, Help a Restaurant

The whole “Thanksgiving-to-go” concept used to be the territory of just a handful of restaurant chains — the Bob Evans and Cracker Barrels of the world, for example. That, of course, was pre-pandemic, and now that the CDC has told Americans not to travel on Thanksgiving and the whole “home for the holidays” phrase has new meaning (like, you’re literally stuck at home), restaurants of all types and sizes are offering up their own take on the Turkey dinner.

At one point in the not-so-distant past, I might have thought Thanksgiving in a box was a bit bleak. But let’s be real: it’s been a stressful, scary year. People are alone and lonely, many are struggling financially, and the ever-present threat of the pandemic hangs over everything. Rather than spend hours in the kitchen cooking too much food for too few people, check out some of these restaurants, which are ready to do the hard work for you.

The Classic Thanksgiving Meal. You’ll find the old standards in this category: Cracker Barrel’s famous Heat&Serve Thanksgiving, Denny’s Turkey & Dressing Dinner Pack, and Boston Market’s takeout Thanksgiving (which, for the record, I’ve actually had and it was delicious). Thrillist has a big ol’ list of other restaurants here. There’s nothing fancy or unique about most of these options, but if you’re dead set on a turkey dinner but don’t want to deal with cooking it, these options are your best bet.

The Plant-Based Thanksgiving. Demand for plant-based foods has skyrocketed this year. It follows, then, that many restaurants around the country are offering 100 percent vegan takes on the Turkey Day dinner. VegNews has rounded up some notable ones here that include California’s Cafe Gratitude, the Veggie Grill chain, and many other restaurants, both local and national. 

Higher-End Thanksgiving to Go. If the industry-wide shift to off-premises has taught us one thing this year, it’s that even high-end food can be put in a box and delivered to your door. In keeping with that, a number of higher-end restaurants are offering Thanksgiving feasts to go. Some notable ones include Chart House, Fleming’s, and McCormick & Schmick’s.

Not-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving. Or you could just be totally over it all and have no inclination whatsoever to celebrate this year. Can’t say I blame you. For the usual QSRs and fast-casual joins, from IHOP to Sonic and every McDonald’s in between, Thursday will be business as usual.

Go Local. One quick glance on Twitter shows the sheer number of small, independent restaurants offering some kind of service on Thanksgiving. Encouragingly, there’s also an unbelievable high volume of tweets from folks that are ordering from these establishments in order to show their support.

An added bonus of ordering in for Thanksgiving instead of doing it yourself: most of these restaurants need the revenue. With no end in sight to either the pandemic or the struggles eating establishments face as they struggle to keep the lights on, the more support they can get on Thanksgiving, the better.

Upcoming Event: Food Waste Strategies for the Supply Chain

Restaurants are one stop along the food supply chain where a whole lot of food gets wasted. For restaurants, there are financial consequences to so much waste; for the entire world, there are environmental and human ones.

On Monday, November 30, The Spoon will be holding a virtual fireside chat with Apeel founder and CEO James Rogers to discuss how this waste happens and what we can do to stop it. That goes for restaurants as well as grocery stores, farms, distribution centers, and your own fridge.

Join James and myself on the Hopin platform at 2 p.m. PST that day to be a part of the discussion. You can register here.

And oh yeah, it’s free!

Restaurant Tech ‘Round the Web

Chick-fil-A officially made ordering via its website available after tests in the Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. this past summer. Those that can’t or don’t feel inclined to download the chain’s app can now order digitally through the brand’s website.

Papa John’s is the latest restaurant brand to employ an AI-powered voice assistant to answer the phone. The chain will use AI company Kea’s platform, which can learn a restaurant’s menu as well as take orders, answer questions, and even upsell items. 

Washington, D.C. is allocating $35 million in COVID-19 recovery grants to restaurants as part of the city’s $100 million “Bridge Fund” for the hospitality industry. D.C. restaurants are still open, though Mayor Muriel Bowser suggested new restrictions could go into effect soon in response to the pandemic. 

Afresh Raises Another $13M to Help Grocers Manage Produce Inventory

Afresh announced today it has raised $13 million in new funding for its grocery retail management platform. The round, which is a Series A extension, was led by Food Retail Ventures with participation from existing investors Innovation Endeavors, Maersk Growth, and BaselineVentures. This brings Afresh’s total funding to $32.8 million.

San Francisco-based Afresh’s technology uses machine learning to analyze customer buying data for fresh produce and help grocery retailers forecast demand, which is harder to predict when it comes to perishable foods like fruits, vegetables, and breads. Grocery stores must order enough to meet customer demand, but not so much they are throwing out excessive amounts of unsold items and wasting both food and money in the process. Afresh’s technology helps grocery retailers forecast more precisely and order accordingly.

Right now there is a major need for this level of precision when it comes to grocery inventory. Panic-buying sprees at the beginning of the pandemic underscored some of the supply-and-demand shortcomings with grocery inventory systems. Afresh CEO Matt Schwartz told The Spoon earlier this year that “COVID was a test case” for the company’s overall structure. “Ultimately, we’re building the system for edge cases and supply interruptions,” he said.

At the same time, the world’s 1.3-billion-ton food waste problem grows more urgent each year. In the U.S. 40 percent of that waste happens in consumer-facing businesses like grocery stores and restaurants. In addition to helping grocers better manage supply and demand, Afresh’s platform can also help them cut the amount of waste they throw out (and save more money). 

The pandemic, the record levels of online grocery shopping, and the food waste problem are collectively making inventory optimization a big business for the grocery sector. Afresh’s funding comes the same week Farmstead, another AI-powered platform, raised $7.9 million. Crisp, based in NYC, offers retailers a similar platform.

Afresh’s latest funding round follows another Series A follow-on from July, that one for $12 million. The company said today it will expand its product to new markets and add new features in the coming months.   

Choco Is Challenging L.A. Chefs to Curb Food Waste With Food Creativity

As the world’s food waste problem gets literally bigger each year, so too does the amount of creative effort tech companies are putting into fighting it. The latest of these comes in the form of the Waste is Gold campaign, a pop-up event in Los Angeles in which three restaurants will serve dishes created from the food byproduct in their own kitchens. Powering the event is restaurant tech company Choco, which has big ambitions for fighting food waste both now and in the future.

The pop-up event will take place from Nov. 19–21 at Counterpart Vegan in Echo Park, Strings of Life in West Hollywood, and Beelman’s in Downtown L.A. These restaurants’ chefs will create dishes made from food byproduct (e.g., tomato soup from leftover vegetables) that will be available for takeout or outdoor dining. Customers can order online via the Waste is Gold website.

Choco is best known for its mobile platform that connects restaurant kitchens directly with suppliers to more easily order and manage their inventory. The company raised $30.2 million back in April, around the time it also launched a direct-to-consumer channel in response to the pandemic and ensuing restaurant industry meltdown. 

But speaking to me on a call this week, Chelsea van Hooven, the Global Industry Advisor at Choco, said that the company’s overarching goal was to fight food waste, and that Choco is working on a number of different projects to raise awareness about the problem, including the Waste Is Gold campaign.

She noted that the inspiration for this campaign came after working with Matt Orlando, owner and chef at Amass, a zero-waste restaurant in Copenhagen, Denmark. In keeping with Orlando’s idea of building creative menus from food byproduct, Choco has given chefs participating in the Waste is Gold campaign a similar challenge.

For example, Mimi Williams, the executive chef for Counterpart Vegan, has created a ratatouille with spaghetti made from various parts of squash — parts that might normally be thrown out. Using more of the entire food, whether a squash, a pumpkin, or whatever else happens to be in the fridge, is lesson more chefs could take advantage of, and one that doesn’t necessarily require a lot of tech to execute on.

Tech, however, definitely has a role to play in the fight against food waste. For her part, van Hooven said that Choco is exploring the role of data in this area and how her company can provide a layer of it that will bring awareness and understanding of food waste to more restaurants. Tracking inventory data, and therefore food waste data, needs to become a part of daily business for restaurants. “We’re analyzing data in every field of our life, we should definitely use it for the better and optimize our food system,” she said. It’s a sentiment the food industry is voicing more these days as data’s critical role in fighting waste becomes more and more apparent.

While it’s still early days for Choco’s ambitions around creating that data layer, the pop-up restaurant events will definitely be making their way to more cities in the future. 

ReFed Launches a $10M Campaign to Reduce Food Waste, Announces New Insights Engine

ReFed today made two big announcements around its continued fight against food loss and waste. The U.S.-based nonprofit has launched a $10 million fundraising campaign to support projects and initiatives that reduce waste in the supply chain. Additionally, ReFed will release an online hub for food waste data and insights next year, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

The campaign is meant to support initiatives across the entire food supply chain that help to reduce food loss and waste. Crown Family Philanthropies, the Fink Family Foundation, The Kroger Co. Zero Hunger | Zero Waste Foundation, the Posner Foundation of Pittsburgh, and Wiancko Charitable Foundation are already involved and have helped to raise $3 million so far. The Robert W. Wilson Charitable Trust has made a matching grant.

Additionally, the campaign is part of an ongoing effort to aid in the goal of the United Nations, the USDA, and the U.S. EPA to reduce food waste by 50 percent by 2030. As we discussed in a recent Spoon Plus report on food waste innovation, many companies and solutions exist in the space, but a great many more are needed in order to “make food waste less possible” for producers, retailers, and consumers alike.

Also supporting the 2030 goal is ReFed’s forthcoming Insights Engine, an online hub for both data and insights around the global food waste problem. Some features will include in-depth analyses on existing food waste solutions, a directory of these existing solutions and companies, a calculator that shows food waste’s impact on both the environment and food insecurity, and financial analysis that will help direct the private and philanthropic capital needed to fund new solutions.

Alongside the Insights Engine, ReFed will release its Roadmap to 2030, which the organization says will serve as its guide for the next decade around the actions it and other players in the food system take to strengthen the fight against food waste.

The U.S. 2030 Food Loss and Waste Reduction Goal was launched back in 2015 by the USDA and the EPA as a companion to the UN’s Target 12.3. Over the five years since, we have seen the number of companies working to fight food waste grow, particularly around waste at consumer-facing levels (grocery, household, etc.). Even so, 40 percent of the world’s food continues to be wasted, resulting in 3.3 billion tons of CO2 equivalent of greenhouse gases and economic losses of about $750 billion annually.

ReFed said today the $10 million campaign will help make a significant reduction in the amount of food being wasted each year. Meanwhile, Insights Engine is expected to be released in early 2021.

Food Waste Friday: Face Shields Made From Excess Food, Cooking Tips That Reduce Waste

As we often discuss at The Spoon, food waste remains a major problem worldwide and is getting bigger each year. The upside, though, is that nowadays, chefs, non-profits, tech companies, consumers, artists, and many more are constantly on the hunt for ways to stop it.

And while much of this week’s headlines were taken up with election news and pandemic updates, there were multiple noteworthy pieces of news around food waste innovation. I’ve rounded a few of them up here to give an idea of the creative lengths people will go to in order to curb the world’s massive food waste problem.

First up: face shields made from food scraps (h/t Waste 360). It was only a matter of time before someone came up with an environmentally friendly face mask for the COVID-19 era. London biotech designer Alice Potts has created 20 bioplastic face shields from a combination of food waste and flowers collected around London. The idea was to create a biodegradable face shield made from sustainable materials, rather than single-use plastics.

Architecture and design magazine Dezeen has photos of the face shields, which use food elements for the material and are dyed with walnut husk, beetroot, purple iris, and other natural elements. The color of the shield depends on the food and flowers from which it was made.

Potts’ masks, which she has dubbed Dance Biodegradable Personal Protective Equipment (DBPPE) Post Covid Facemasks, will be on show at the NGV Triennial at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. Post-show, the face shield design and bioplastic formula will be available as an open-source design.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., four professional chefs are joining forces next week to teach consumers kitchen techniques that can help reduce food waste in the home, according to the Adirondack Almanac.

The ReCook Cafe, which previously took place in person, will be held virtually this coming Tuesday, Nov. 10. It’s a mix of live and pre-recorded programming that features four chefs sharing tips and techniques to help home cooks get more out of their food items, reduce food waste, save money, and hopefully get a tasty meal out of the deal. 

In the U.S., the bulk of food waste happens in our own homes. Our recent Spoon Plus report on food waste outlined some of the companies and tech tools currently available to help consumers fight their own food waste habits. An online workshop that could help folks do that while improving their cooking skills seems like another logical addition to the list.

Best part: it’s free. Register here.

Speaking of food waste at the consumer level: a new study suggests FOMO causes food waste among Gen Z. 

Cook Clever, an EIT Food-funded project, surveyed 18- to 25-year olds and found that peer pressure to be “adventurous” in their food choices deters them from meal planning and eating leftovers. According to the study, this generation wants “new and exciting meals and are very opposed to suggestions of being more resourceful with leftovers.”

The study goes on to say that traditional approaches to food waste (see cooking class) don’t appeal to Gen Z. Dr. Natalie Masento, a lead researcher for the project, said we need more “specialized” efforts specifically geared towards the Gen Z age group will be more effective in fighting food waste.

Food Navigator has more thoughts from Dr. Masento, which are worth reading in full.

 

Kaffe Bueno Raises $1.3M to Turn Upcycled Coffee Product Into Functional Food

Denmark-based biotech startup Kaffe Bueno announced this week it has raised €1.1 million (~$1.3 million USD) in seed funding from Paulig Group Venture Capital, Vækstfonden, The Yield Lab, and an undisclosed angel investor. According to a company blog post, Kaffe Bueno will use the new funds to scale up production of existing products and launch new ones in addition to growing its team and securing intellectual property protection for its technology.

Kaffe Bueno bills itself as an ingredients company that uses upcycled coffee byproducts, such as grounds, to make cosmetics, nutraceuticals, and functional food and beverage products. The company, which was founded in 2016 by three Colombian entrepreneurs, currently has three products made from coffee byproduct: a lipid used in personal care and food products, a functional flour, and an exfoliant for cosmetics.

“Growing up in Colombia, coffee is much more than a beverage, we use it for everything: wounds, skincare, desserts, you name it,” cofounder and CEO Juan Medina said in today’s blog post.

Kaffe Bueno also noted that less than 1 percent of coffee’s “health-beneficial compounds” actually wind up in a brewed cup of joe. The rest of them go to the landfill, where they emit methane, which is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Upcycling coffee byproduct for use in other products is a way to make greater use of coffee’s existing health benefits for consumers while simultaneously cutting down on waste and emissions. 

Functional ingredients and healthier cosmetics are a couple ways to make use of coffee byproduct. A growing number of other examples exist, including a McDonald’s/Ford initiative to turn coffee byproduct into car parts and Berlin-based Kaffeeform, which makes coffee cups from leftover grounds. Meanwhile, a company called Grounded will mail you a kit with which you can grow gourmet mushrooms from spent coffee grounds. 

For its part, Kaffe Bueno will launch “new food, nutraceutical, and cosmetic ingredients into the European market throughout the rest of 2020 and into 2021.

Apeel Raises $30M to Help Smallholder Farmers Fight Food Waste and Access New Markets

Apeel, best known for its edible produce peel that extends the lifespan of fruits and vegetables, announced today it has raised $30 million in funding from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), Temasek, and Astanor Ventures. The new funds will be used to help smallholder farmers both reduce food loss and gain access to higher-value markets for their produce.

For this initiative, Apeel is focused primarily on smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa, Mexico, Southeast Asia, and Central and South America. James Rogers, founder and CEO of Apeel, explained during a chat with me this week that in these regions, farmers face a two-pronged problem when it comes to growing and selling produce: time and access.

There is little in the way of cold chain infrastructre in many of these regions, which makes it virtually impossible to keep produce fresh long enough to go from farm to market without spoilage. This lack of cold chain operations is the main cause of food loss in these parts of the world. 

Apeel’s technology, of course, builds time into the food supply chain via its edible peel that coats fruits and vegetables and to keep them fresher longer. But as Rogers noted, that extended shelf life is only truly valuable to farmers if they have access to markets with buyers, which is the other part of the food waste problem for smallholder farmers. Up to now, a lack of extra time when it comes to produce lifespan has barred farmers from reaching buyers outside of local markets and as a result has limited any economic gain.

Apeel’s new funding will in part go towards alleviating that second hurdle. In addition to providing investment, IFC is also partnering with Apeel to create programs that will plug these smallholder farmers into the Apeel supply chain and give them access to markets in the U.S. and Europe, where the economic opportunities are higher.

By way of example, Rogers explained that a mango grown on a smallholder farm in Kenya might sell for 1 cent in a local setting. If that mango makes it to one of the country’s urban centers, it might sell for $1, bringing greater economic gains for the farmer. Getting the mango to even higher-value markets like the U.S. and Europe only increases the economic gains. 

In a sense, the one couldn’t exist without the other when it comes to the combination of Apeel’s technology and its IFC partnership that gives farmers access to exporters. As Rogers explained to me, the technology — that is, the edible peel that extends shelf life — builds more time into the supply chain, enabling the produce to reach exporters before it goes bad. “The time creates the access,” he said.

In more developed countries like the U.S., Apeel has made a name for itself partnering with major retail chains like Kroger and Walmart. The company also raised $250 million in May of this year.

But this latest fundraise and the IFC partnership is Apeel’s first major step into developing countries that experience food waste and loss in the earlier stages of the food supply chain — though such a move has been on the company’s radar for a long time. Rogers explained that when Apeel started a decade ago, one of its goals was to provide the same supply and demand opportunities for people in parts of the world that don’t have refrigeration and cold chain tech.

“[Food is] only valuable if the underlying infrastructure is there to make it valuable,” he said, adding that part of Apeel’s mission with this new fundraise is to “bring demand from some of the largest markets in the world and be able to make the world much larger for these smaller farmers.”

TeleSense Raises $10.2M for its IoT Crop Spoilage Prediction Platform

TeleSense, which uses IoT-enabled sensors to detect and predict crop spoilage, announced today that it has closed a $10.2 million Series B round of funding. The round was led by existing investor, Finistere Ventures with participation from Fulcrum Global Capital, UPL Ltd, Artesian and Mindset Ventures. This brings TeleSense’s total amount of funding to $17.5 million.

When we first wrote about TeleSense in 2018, it was focused on grain spoilage detection. Connected sensors placed in grain stores would monitor conditions like humidity and temperature to help farmers prevent spoilage.

But since then, the company acquired Dutch sensor company Webstech, and expanded TeleSense’s use case from just detection and more into prediction. TeleSense now combines it detection data with machine learning and AI to help maintain grain quality and optimize its path through the supply chain.

“Sensing temperature and humidity is nice, but that’s only part of the value,” Telesense CEO Naeem Zafar told my by phone earlier this month. “It’s beyond spoilage and more [about] operational efficiencies.”

To that end, TeleSense has also shifted its target customer. Initially, the company was going after farmers, but it has since shifted to focus more on large grain trading companies and co-ops. With its sensing and analysis technology, TeleSense can help predict how long to store grain and the optimal time to sell.

The company is also expanding into grain transportation. According to Zafar, dozens of grain barges catch fire because grains overheat. With its temperature monitoring, TeleSense sensors can help prevent this type of crop loss during transport.

In addition to prediction, Zafar said that TeleSense is also moving beyond grains and applying its technology to potatoes and other perishable commodities.

TeleSense is among a new crop of companies fighting food waste along the supply chain. Other players include companies like HWY Haul helps automate the trucking of produce, Silo aims to automate supply chain operations, and Strella Biotech, which uses IoT sensors on shipping palates to track produce freshness as it travels from farm to fork.

Headquartered in California, TeleSense also has offices in Australia and Europe.

Imperfect Foods’ New Snack Box Lets You Fight Food Waste Through Holiday Gifting

A key tactic for fighting food waste at the consumer level is to incentivize folks with easy, affordable solutions that don’t require a whole lot of work. Bundling food-waste-fighting concepts into holiday gift ideas seems like one surefire way to do that, and it’s something food redistribution platform Imperfect Foods will be doing in 2020. The company today announced the launch of its first-ever holiday gift box containing a mix of so-called “imperfect” snack items, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. 

Imperfect, which raised $72 million earlier this year, “rescues” surplus and cosmetically imperfect food items from grocery stores and delivers them to consumers at discounted prices. That includes fruits, vegetables, and pantry items as well as meat and dairy. 

It follows, then, that all snack items included in the newly announced holiday gift box come with their own rescue stories. Those include:

  • Dried mango considered too “sunburnt” to sell at grocery
  • Almond butter toffee that broke into pieces
  • Peppermint- and dark chocolate-covered pretzels that broke into pieces during production
  • Surplus seasonings
  • Leftover snack mix bits like peanuts, pretzels, and sesame sticks
  • Almonds with “blemishes”

While the above list would satisfy most snack lovers’ cravings, it more importantly offers a quick snapshot of the many ridiculous reasons retailers throw food out — food that could otherwise be purchased for lower prices or given to those without access or means to regular grocery store items. In high-income countries like the U.S. and many places in Europe, the majority — more than 80 percent — of food waste happens at consumer-facing levels like retail. Needless to say, there are a lot of blemished almonds out there that need a home, and a lot of people in the country who could benefit from keeping them out of the landfill.

Nor is Imperfect the only food rescue service out there. Two other notables include Misfits Market, which operates similar to Imperfect and recently raised $85 million, and Flashfood, a Canada-based service that currently works with Meijer grocery chains to rescue food.

Packaging rescued snack items as holiday goodies may also be a way for a company like Imperfect to make the concept of fighting food waste more appealing and, well, fun. No other food waste apps besides Imperfect have yet to surface with a holiday offering, though it wouldn’t be surprising if they did over the next few weeks.

The Imperfect Foods Holiday Box will be available for both Imperfect subscribers and nonmembers for $24.99 starting November 16. The company said in today’s press release will save about nine pounds of food from going to waste. Proceeds from the boxes go towards Feeding America.  

‘Make Food Waste Less Possible’: How Businesses Can Help Consumers Fight Food Waste at Home

Tackling the food waste topic in a 30-minute panel is something of an impossible undertaking, given the size of the problem. That’s why at Day 2 of Smart Kitchen Summit 2020, myself, Apeel Sciences’ CEO James Rogers, Chiara Cecchini of the Future Food Institute, and Alexandria Coari of ReFED zeroed in on a few major causes and solutions around food waste.

One of those was the role of consumer behavior in the fight against food waste. Right now, according to ReFed, 80-plus percent of food waste in the U.S. happens at the consumer level, with more than 40 percent of that occurring in our own homes. But is it even realistic to expect consumers — for whom convenience and speed tend to be top priorities — to alter their behaviors around cooking, shopping, and eating in order to bring that number down?

Maybe. But as panelists explained during today’s talk, one of the keys to changing consumer behavior belongs not to the individual but to consumer-facing food businesses — the grocery stores, restaurants, and other retailers of the world.

Coari pointed out that these food businesses have a lot of influence up and down the value chain. Those businesses can enable consumer behavior change by making their environments, whether in the store or in the restaurant, less conducive to food waste to begin with. They can, as Coari said, “Make food waste less possible.”

Apeel, which makes a natural coating for produce to extend its shelf life, is one such example. Selling, say, avocados preserved in Apeel’s coating means consumers have more time between buying the product and eating it at home. Extending this lifespan, there’s a better chance the avocado will get eaten before it goes bad.

Neither the coating nor the extra several days of shelf-life happen because of anything a consumer does. They’re just buying the avocado. Instead, Apeel has used a technology and process that allow a consumer to get more mileage out of the food they buy.

Cecchini pointed out that educating consumers and helping them shift their perspective around certain foods is another important area of consumer behavior change. Take the so-called ugly produce: misshapen-yet-edible fruits and vegetables that are often sold at discounted prices. Cecchini suggests removing monikers like “ugly” or “imperfect” from the food waste vocabulary and trying to put a more positive spin on the concept to make it appeal to as many consumers as possible. In that way, grocery retailers, too, might not have to put as much effort into cosmetically perfect produce and wind up throwing out the rest.

There are tons of other examples of business innovation influencing food waste behavior at the consumer level. While we certainly didn’t cover all of them in the span of a half-hour, today’s talk certainly left me thinking about what food businesses can do to help us get more mileage out of the food we have and waste less of it in the process. As Rogers said at one point, “We can’t hope people [will] do the right thing. We have to make the right thing the easiest, cheapest, best for the planet thing to do.”

HWY Haul Brings AI to Automate Fresh Produce Freight and Fight Food Waste

Unless you see one parked outside your grocery store, you probably don’t think too much about the freight trucks that are so vital to getting food onto store shelves. Today, trucking freight, especially produce and fresh foods, from the farm to the store is a pretty complicated and manual process. And HWY Haul wants to change that process with automation and artificial intelligence.

As Syed Aman, cofounder and CEO of HWY Haul explained to me by phone this week, current methods for scheduling shipments require a lot of phone calls and paperwork. Farms need to call brokers to get a trucker, multiple calls must be made to track a load en route, drivers need to stop for temperature checks to make sure produce is kept cold, and once that produce arrives at the store, it can take weeks for a trucker to get paid.

HWY Haul promises to automate this process with what it calls a “managed marketplace.” The company’s cloud-based platform allows farms (or stores or other suppliers) to schedule a vetted driver, determine the cost for each trip, monitor their route in real-time, and keep constant temperature checks (to ensure the food stays cold). Once delivery is made, HWY Haul processes the payment automatically.

In addition to potentially bringing more efficiency to the business of trucking fresh food across the country, Aman said HWY Haul can also help reduce food waste by reducing load rejections. When a load is rejected by the store, that food can wind up in a dumpster. By helping bring loads in on time and always at the correct temperature, Aman said that using HWY Haul can result in fewer of these wasteful rejections.

HWY Haul is actually among a crop of startups working at different points along the supply chain to bring more automation and precision while fighting food waste. AgShift uses computer vision to help establish objective prices for food. Varcode creates blockchain-based thermal stickers to ensure food is kept at the right temperature throughout the cold chain. And Silo automates operations around buying and selling food as well as forecasting supply and demand.

Based in Santa Clara, Calif., HWY Haul has raised an undisclosed Seed round of funding. The company makes its money by charging the shipper a fee per route booked.