EMPATHIZE
Who are they?
To begin with, our target audience is local restaurants of Limassol. Our goal is to reduce food waste that is made in enormous quantities. Furthermore, we, as a team, are addressing local restaurants that produce enormous amounts of food most of which might not be consumed. Additionally, our team will address all kinds of restaurants, fast food restaurants excluded. They might be simple, classy, modern, old-fashioned, traditional, well-known, and limited customer restaurants. What is more, businesses may be in the food and beverage industry for years or they may be new to the specific industry. At the same time, our team do not have a selection criterion for the type of food or cuisine. Food type and cuisine may vary. The common denominator of all these food outlets is that they rarely consider food waste.
Define
A big quantity of food in restaurants is wasted everyday. The problem occurs when there is a lack of appropriate planning, overproduction and unstable markets and when the raw materials are not stored properly. The consequences and effects of food waste are plenty and dangerous. Wasted food is not just a social humanitarian concern, it is also an environmental one. When restaurants waste food they also waste all the energy and water it’s needed to grow, harvest, transport and package it. Moreover, there are also environmental causes like the production of methane that is created by wasted food in landfills. Finally, the economy is affected as well since high food waste causes an increase in demands of raw materials which leads to the increase of the prices of food stocks. In Limassol there is no strategy for restaurants to deal with food waste.
IDEATE
All the ideas
- Promote & sell leftover food stock at cheaper prices to customers
- Giving the leftovers to animal shelters that usually struggle with animal food supplies
- Giving the leftover food stock away to homeless people and poor/large families
- Feeding stray animals that usually roam around the streets of Limassol
- Estimating the food quantity based on the amount of people when the reservation is made
- Giving the leftover food stock away to hospitals either for the staff or the patients
- Using leftovers to create fertilizer
- Changing/creating new portion sizes so the customers have more choices depending on their appetite
- An app similar to foody that specifically works with local restaurants and sells left over food stock in cheaper prices, so instead of losing money they're gaining an extra small profit
- More side dishes than main dishes
- Site ordering in advance for the day, time and food the customers want and creating a guiding planner for the restaurant during the day
- The stock that is about to expire to be given to people who need it
Final Idea
There are numerous solutions to this major social problem. Our main and final solution probably leads to the most efficient goal. To be exact, we created a non-profit organisation that connects restaurants with animal shelters. We collect the unused food stock and leftovers from restaurants, providing them to animal shelters. The impact resulting from this solution will reduce the percentage of wasted food by a lot. Moreover, we were able to give a beginning to the reduction of food waste and share awareness with society to follow and support our social work.
