Food Wastage Management

Domain: Food services management

Description: Food Waste is a massive problem. One third of all food produced in the world goes to waste. From restaurant scraps, to grocers disposing of imperfect produce, to spoiled food, roughly $400B in food ends up in landfills every year resulting in 3.3 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases annually. (ref: http://foodtechconnect.com/2015/10/09/10-startups-reducing-food-waste-one-byte-at-a-time/)

At the same time, worldwide nearly 800 million people do not have enough to eat. That means one in nine people are suffering from hunger. Hunger and malnutrition are the number one risk to health worldwide. (ref: https://www.foodbanking.org/hunger-food-banking/about-hunger/global-hunger)

So I thought about bridging the gap between the two, by providing a simpler means of collecting the leftovers and providing the same to those in need.

Roles: System Admin, Admin (Restaurant, NGO, Logistics, Government), Region Manager (Restaurant, NGO, Logistics), Worker role (Restaurant, NGO, Logistics), Mayor.

Scope:

• Restaurants/cafés will raise a request, in case of any leftover food they have.

• This request is sent to the NGO manager of that particular network. The NGO Manager then approves the request and assigns it to one of the NGO workers and forwards the request to the logistics manager.

• After receiving the request from the NGO, Logistics Manager then assigns it to one of the logistics worker.

• The logistics worker picks the leftover food from the restaurant and then delivers it to the NGO where the inventory is updated with leftover foods. The logistics worker also updates the delivery amount incurred and forwards it to the logistics manager.

• NGO worker can then distribute the food to the needy people while Logistics worker forwards the invoice generated to the NGO Manager.

• Logistics manager can keep a track of whether the NGO has made the payment of the delivery or not.

• NGO manager can also request for food from other regions if there is a shortage in the current network.

Conclusion: As mentioned above in the description there is a lot of food wastage that occurs daily at restaurants and cafes. Instead of throwing away the same as trash (which usually is the scenario), it can be used to feed the homeless.

Also, since the pickup is arranged for by the enterprise, the restaurants/cafes need not worry about it.

Benefiters will be both the restaurants/cafés (reducing the carbon footprint and wastage), and the needy.