Foodprint

Inspiration

Did you know that? In Latvia, food waste reaches 35,000 tons or 19 kg per person. Each kilo of food wasted represents 2.5kg of CO2 released into the air. University cafeterias play a big role in this waste. In the same time, young generations want to act and limit their carbon impact.

So we wondered how we can connect this issue with young people who want to act.

What it does

According to a study by Zero Waste Latvia, 23% of food waste is related to overcooking. With the help of our platform, students will be able to order their meals in advance, allowing cafeterias to know the exact quantities to produce.

In addition, on this platform, students will have access to important information about the proposed meals, such as nutritional information and allergenic elements.

We provide a payment system within the application to reduce waiting time. Indeed, most of the time students do not have much time to eat lunch. Moreover, this payment system will encourage students to pick up the meals they have ordered.

Business plan
B2B	Subscription fees (depending of size)
B2C	Commission on orders (5%)

We add a clause engaging cafeterias to propose a lower price than with no pre-order

We need to keep the price lower than without pre-order that student can benefit for planning their meal and then act to save food waste saving their money :)

How we built it

As previously mentioned, we have become aware of the issue of food waste, especially in universities. Other researches as in France, for example, have revealed that for 500 guests in a cafeteria serving meals 200 days a year, a total of 15 to 20 tons of food waste per year. This problem is at least a European problem. We can confirm the possibility of extending our project to other countries.

During the development process of our platform we wanted to get feedback from other students by conducting a survey at our school fellow, the Stockholm School of Economics and Riga Graduate School of Law. It turned out that almost 3/4 of the students eat at least one time a week in the cafeteria. More than 2/3 look up to nutritional information. More importantly, 62% of the students who responded say that they are willing to plan their meal in order to reduce food waste.

Here you can find our survey's results :

How often do you eat at the cafeteria ?

Do you look up nutritional information ?

How likely are you to plan your meal in advance to decrease food waste ?

So, we conclude that, our platform will consist of a website that is accessible both on computer and on mobile. This choice is explained by the ease of use of a website compared to an application. In particular for the management of the cafeterias. However, we do not exclude the possibility of creating an application in the future. We want to wait to have the first feedbacks so that this last one meets perfectly the expectations.

Challenges we ran into

During the realisation of our project we had to face the difficulty of market research. We can underline the fact that we could not directly approach the cafeterias themselves, only informal exchanges which seems to confirm our project.

We can also foresee a difficult implementation in the habits of each. We want to create a financial incentive to order meals in advance by making special offers for example. We also want to add a clause engaging cafeterias to propose a lower price than with no pre-order

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud to have received so many opinions in a very short time. The idea seems to seduce a significant number of people.

The development of our website is going fast making our project tangible quickly. This will be very useful for the next steps of development.

What we learned

The development of our idea during this hackathon allowed us to really realise all the different steps necessary for the realisation of a startup.

It also allowed us to better understand the catering industry and the associated environmental issues.

Finally, we have acquired skills in the technical realisation of web platform.

What's next for Foodprint

We would like to work on the implementation in a test university in order to collect even more feedback on our website. SSE and RGSL seem to be suitable for our experimentation because of their small size. The next step may be the development of an application to make the customer experience better.