An interview with Andrew Shakman, the founder of Leanpath, one of Forward Fooding’s top 500 Food Tech startups.

Andrew Shakman, the founder of Leanpath

It’s time to put a face to the name…

We asked our FoodTech 500 top-runners to give us a bit of insight into how they started out as a company and their thoughts on the role of technology in Food innovation. Meet Andrew, the founder of  Leanpath, a food waste prevention solution that cuts food waste by 50% and makes kitchens more profitable. Let’s see what he had to say.

So tell us a little bit more about you! Where did the idea for your FoodTech company come from?

Andrew: Leanpath’s roots are in measurement for efficiency. At the time of the organization’s inception, I recognized that menu prices were growing at a slower annual compound rate than wholesale food prices, resulting in further squeezing of already-low margins for organizations in the foodservice and hospitality sectors. My team and I then surmised that this was a point of pain, and that organizations could be run more efficiently (and profitably) with access to an effective method to lower their food waste and increase earnings. We also theorized that kitchens could be likened to factories, and looked to management science and concepts like Lean and Six Sigma for learnings from manufacturing that might be applied to kitchens. So from the start, the focus of Leanpath involved using measurement to drive change.

How is tech central to your business?

Andrew: Leanpath created and patented automated food waste prevention technology for the foodservice sector and that technology, coupled with data analytics and behavior change, is central and critical to our global impact. The key to our technological innovation lies in our integration capability. We bring together hardware (scales, cameras, tablets, floor scales, and displays) with cutting edge, customized software that enables foodservice managers to track and measure all food waste transactions in their kitchens. Each transaction is weighed, and critical data such as food type, waste reason, and disposition code is captured in seconds through a customized user-interface. Our flagship bench scale marries this data with a digital picture of the food, and all details are electronically stored in a cloud-based database. The data feed a robust analytics platform, which allows clients to analyze the drivers of their food waste with a high level of granularity. Our integrated dashboard provides highly impactful graphics and reporting features, including waste overview summaries, participation reports, and more. Alert features allow chef champions to target specific (ex. high cost) items for review, prompting conversations on how to repurpose or avoid future overproduction, while Goal features leverage our technology for even deeper focus on specific items for the entire kitchen. Built-in gamification features supplement the process and increase engagement for food waste prevention.

Why do you think it’s important to see the food industry embrace tech?

Andrew: Quite simply, the food industry needs to embrace tech to help save the planet by scaling financial, social, and environmental benefits. Global food loss and waste currently exceed 100 billion pounds (45 billion kilos) annually. It underpins the most pressing challenge of our time – that of feeding nearly ten billion global citizens by 2050 in a sustainable manner. Currently, while wasting 30-50% of the annual food supply, we are failing to feed over 800 million citizens while severely harming the environment through excessive GHG emissions, water depletion, soil depletion, plastic pollution, ocean acidification, biodiversity loss, and more. As the Global Footprint Network notes, we are overshooting planetary boundaries, and we don’t have a second planet to fall back on.

Food is the single biggest lever we have to address issues of hunger, environment, equity, and ultimately climate. We must remember: Food is Climate. We must optimize the use of our food resources, minimizing waste at every level of the food supply chain, to meet the 50% reduction goal specified by Target 12.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Tech allows foodservice workers to leverage the power of data, at scale, and with urgency, to reduce food waste in the short term and prevent it from recurring. It allows food organizations to develop evidence-based solutions to root causes of food waste in the foodservice sector while driving behavior change. And by reducing food waste, we not only make progress toward achieving Target 12.3, we also achieve a multiplier effect, benefiting many other SDGs related to hunger, poverty, water security, life on land, life below water, and more. In the last 6 years, Leanpath has utilized its technology to prevent 50 million pounds (22 million kilos) of food waste from occurring, equivalent to saving more than 158 thousand metric tonnes of carbon dioxide, saving over 20 billion gallons (75 billion liters) of water, or saving 41 million meals.

Want to know more? Check out Leanpath’s full profile here.

Congratulations again to Leanpath for ranking fourth in the category “Surplus & Waste Management” of the Foodtech 500 list.

To find out who else made it into the FoodTech 500; the top Food Tech companies in the world, click here.

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