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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

LeanPath

Podcast: Talking Food Waste Reduction (and How We Can All Do More) With Andrew Shakman

Andrew Shakman had a tough job.

In May, the CEO of Leanpath was asked to give a closing message at the annual ReFED Symposium that would inspire attendees and catalyze action. After two full days of engaging talks and shared insights, he delivered, so we thought we would have Andrew come on the podcast to discuss some of what he shared and to discuss how the food waste reduction space has changed in the 20 or so years he’d been running the company he founded.

Some of the topics discussed on the podcast include:

  • How the food waste technology market has evolved in the past decade
  • Opportunities across the food value chain where innovation can make an impact in reducing overall food waste
  • How food service operators and other food organizations can make a bigger impact than they realize
  • The challenges of the home/consumer market for food waste reduction and where Andrew thinks solution providers can make an impact
  • And lots more!

To listen, click play below or listen on your device via your favorite podcast app. As always, you can find more Spoon podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast.

As Buffets and Hot Bars Close Down, LeanPath Launches New Mobile Solution

LeanPath today announced a new mobile version of its product that helps fight food waste in commercial kitchens. The new LeanPath Go is an item-based mobile tracking system that the company claims was specifically designed for the changes COVID-19 has brought to food operators, namely the shutting down of buffets and hot bars.

Typically, LeanPath’s product offerings use a combination of food scale, camera and cloud computing to help combat waste in high-volume food operations like cafeterias. Kitchen staff puts pre-consumer (i.e., to be served) food on the scale. The camera then snaps a picture of that food and sends the photo to LeanPath for analysis. LeantPath categorizes the reason for the waste (food was burnt, or spoiled, etc.) so that kicthens can better understand why food is getting thrown out and from that information train their staff to reduce waste.

All that, however, was before COVID-19.

Now, the global pandemic has shut down high-volume food operations like cafeterias and even hot bars in grocery stores. Instead of leaving big trays of food out all day long for hundreds of people to interact with, restaurants and grocers are turning more towards pre-packaged to-go items. To adapt, the new LeanPath Go system has ditched the food scale in favor of a mobile device.

From the LeanPath blog post announcing the new system:

Leanpath Go measures waste on an “each” basis when the unit and unit cost are distinct. A pre-packaged turkey sandwich with chips and a pickle spear, for example, is a single unit with a cost-of-goods already assigned to it. Leanpath Go’s picture-based interface allows the user to tap to track one item, or tap-and-hold for fast, multi-item tracking.

LeanPath’s new system then can help identify which items are selling (or not), and the costs associated with making that item so operators can better manage their inventory.

LeanPath isn’t the only company offering high-tech tools to fight food waste. Winnow and Phood both offer similar AI-enabled systems that use a scale and camera to automatically identify food waste in large food service operations.

In today’s crazy, unpredictable world, getting a handle on food waste and by extension the food budget, is something restaurants and other foodservice companies can actually control. And given the thin margins restaurants operate on in good times, being able to control food costs during this downturn could certainly help keep the lights on longer.

Copia Helps Cap Food Waste and Connect Non-Profits with Excess Food

When you talk with startups trying to combat food waste, you hear a common refrain: you can’t get to absolute zero–there will always be some waste in the system. While we may never hit zero food waste, Copia is a software company fighting to get as close to that as possible through a combination of prevention and recovery.

Based in San Francisco, Copia offers a suite of web apps to help companies that produce or purchase large amounts of food track, analyze and manage inventories. Their customers include organizations that make food, such as the UCSF Medical center cafeteria, and startups like Lyft that provide catered food for employee meals.

With Copia, these clients can track how waste is occurring, such as over production or over purchasing a particular protein, and where in the organization waste is occurring. A site like UCSF provides meals for patients, meals in a commissary as well as event food, and Copia helps them figure out where loss is occurring in which line of business. According to Copia, UCSF has actually reduced its edible surplus by three percent month over month through 2017.

Copia is among a cohort of companies that are using software and analytics to help companies manage food inventories. Others in the space include LeanPath, which provides cafeterias with a scale to precisely measure pre-consumer waste, and Spoiler Alert, which works with large food distributors to move excess inventory.

Unlike these other startups, however, Copia also provides a recovery solution on the back end. When there is excess, Copia’s app can help connect this unused food with a non-profit in need. Additionally, Copia’s software will also help companies figure out and calculate tax benefits for any donations made. In the Bay Area, Copia even employees its own set of drivers and can deliver food within the city of San Francisco in 12 minutes, or 26 minutes across Silicon Valley. Copia says that it redirects 60,000 pounds of food a month to non-profits in the greater Bay Area.

In an age of increasingly conscious capitalism, Copia also helps bolster the brand image of its clients. Customers can showcase how much food it has recovered or waste prevented or water saved both externally and internally.

Copia currently has 15 employees and according to Crunchbase has raised $140,000 in seed funding. The company operates in the Bay Area, Denver, Austin, Dallas and will start up in Los Angeles next month.

Zero food waste may be impossible, but watching startups like Copia reminds you of how much is possible to improve both the lives of people in need and our planet.

You can hear about Copia in our daily spoon podcast.  You can also subscribe in Apple podcasts or through our Amazon Alexa skill. 

Spoiler Alert’s Software Helps Food Companies Steer Clear of Spoilage

Spoiler alert! The enterprise software startup, Spoiler Alert, works to help large food manufacturers, distributors and grocery distribution centers better manage their inventory to help reduce food waste and recoup potentially lost revenue.

Hopefully that doesn’t ruin the rest of this story for you.

It shouldn’t, as Spoiler Alert is one of the many companies using technology to tackle the very real problem of food going unused. Based in Boston, Spoiler Alert offers a business intelligence and relationship management platform that lets companies that move large amounts of food better understand their inventory and navigate when unexpected surpluses happen.

Unsold food inventory happens for a lot of reasons. Severe weather can interrupt transport, a buyer can cancel an order, or someone in the office could just be really bad at ordering the right amounts. Spoiler Alert’s software lets companies put this excess food to use, whether that’s finding an alternate buyer, turning it into a donation, or connecting it with a composting facility.

Let’s say TomatoCorp suddenly finds itself with a ton of extra tomatoes. These tomatoes are not spoiled and totally fine to eat.

Typically, TomatoCorp would have to go out and manually find someone to take the excess inventory, and hopefully do it before the food spoils and has to be thrown out. This takes time and pulls already busy people off the work they normally do.

With Spoiler Alert, this process is more automated. In this example, TomatoCorp has uploaded all the SKU data about the tomatoes, as well as the partners and buyers it does business with. Spoiler Alert will look at the surplus and help the company connect with potential buyers in its network, or with non-profits that can take the tomatoes as a donation. The software even compares whether a straight sale or the tax benefits of a donation are more economical for the company.

Spoiler Alert also helps companies understand their own ordering with granular tracking, so if it’s actually a person in a particular department that is consistently over ordering, the company can address that problem so it’s no longer a cause of inventory mismanagement.

Founded in 2015, Spoiler Alert has 11 employees and received a $2.6 million seed round from Acre Ventures (which is backed by Campbell Soup Company). The company operates in 19 states and counts Sysco among its clients.

Spoiler Alert isn’t the only startup looking to help get extra food into the right hands. Copia‘s platform helps organizations donate excess food, Imperfect Produce sells “ugly” produce at a reduced rate, and LeanPath sets up a scale and camera in cafeterias to help monitor and reduce pre-consumer waste.

But the folks at Spoiler Alert think their biggest competition is the status quo. Organizations are fine doing things the way they’ve always done them and don’t want to learn anything new. The easier companies like Spoiler Alert and others mentioned here can make it to put that surplus food to work, the better it is for our communities, our planet and (spoiler alert!) the bottom line.

Want to talk about this story and other foodtech news? Join our foodtech Slack community and jump into the conversation.

You can hear about Spoiler Alert in our daily spoon podcast.  You can also subscribe in Apple podcasts or through our Amazon Alexa skill. 

LeanPath Fights Food Waste with Behavior Change in Kitchen Staff

Given that up to 40 percent of the food in the United States is never eaten, it’s no wonder there are a number of startups tackling the issue. Whether it’s working at the farm level, creating marketplaces for excess food, or dynamically adjusting menu prices, companies are working to reduce food waste from almost every angle.

LeanPath has been combating food waste since it was founded in 2004. And while it fights food waste with technology, it’s bigger goal is to fundamentally change behaviors both inside the kitchen and out.

Based just outside of Portland, OR, LeanPath works with high-volume kitchens that prepare food for masses of people. Think: college cafeterias, buffets at casinos or hotels, etc., places where food is not made-to-order.

LeanPath provides these kitchens with a connected scale with a camera mounted on it. When a kitchen worker throws out food pre-consumer (meaning anything before a consumer puts it on their plate), they enter the type of food it is on a touchscreen, weigh it and take a picture. This data is sent to the cloud and tracked.

From this, LeanPath can help kitchens categorize the reasons for the food waste. The food could be spoiled, or burnt, or there could have just been too much of it. Equipped with this insight, kitchen managers can see where the waste is coming from. This manual act of weighing food, seeing the pictures of it and tracking daily waste helps kitchen staff see how big the problem is and begin to change behavior.

Once a kitchen understands how big a food waste problem they have, LeanPath offers training services to improve the situation. The company offers both algorithmic advice as well as live coaches who work with the kitchen to reduce waste. LeanPath even has chefs on staff to guide kitchen managers in efficient food rotation, adjusting production levels and a big issue: trimming. Behind overproduction, LeanPath has found that improper cutting of meat or vegetables is the second leading cause of food waste in the kitchens they serve.

LeanPath President and CEO, Andrew Shakman says that his company typically finds that four to ten percent of food purchased becomes pre-consumer waste. Shakman says that LeanPath typically cuts pre-consumer waste in half or more for those kitchens, generating a two to eight percent savings on the food bill. For a low margin business like food service, this can add up to meaningful amounts of money.

Right now, LeanPath is in 1,200 kitchens across 20 countries, and counts high-profile companies such as Google, Ikea and Aramark as customers. LeanPath is bootstrapped, and has raised an undisclosed amount of “impact funding” from environmentally conscious investors. Shakman said the company may explore to equity fundraising this year as it looks to double the number of countries it’s in.

But for Shakman, the problem of food waste isn’t just in the kitchen, it’s also with us. Consumer expectations bear an equal amount of blame for food overproduction. So-called “merchandising” of food creates expectations in all of us that buffets should be bountiful and filled with abundant displays of croissants and sculpted strawberries — a lot of which goes in the trash.

Getting consumers to shift their thinking on that will be a huge challenge. Hopefully as LeanPath and other startups generate awareness about food waste, they can change our behavior as well.