On April 21st, 2021, we held the fifth webinar of our series with some of the most brilliant minds working in the field of food waste. Our speakers briefly introduced themselves, shared with us the journey that led them to build and develop leading FoodTech companies and provided their visions on how we are going to solve one of the most pressing issues of our humanity: food waste.

The Event

Just to provide a bit of context on the food waste issue: as of today, some 690 million people are going hungry and almost 3 billion can’t afford a healthy diet. Hunger has been on the rise for the past five years, and we face declining ecosystems and the consequences of climate change.

Nonetheless, around 14% of the world’s food is lost each year before reaching retail. Food loss is valued at $400 billion annually, roughly the GDP of Austria. This is in addition to food waste, for which new estimates are being made at the beginning of 2021. In terms of environmental impact, food loss and food waste generate 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Food loss occurs from farm to retail, excluding retail, while food waste occurs at retail, foodservice, and household levels. The causes range from poor transportation and planning, inadequate transport or storage, lack of cold chain capacity, extreme weather conditions, and consumers’ lack of culinary knowledge. In short, reducing food loss or waste means more food for all, less greenhouse gas emissions, less pressure on the environment, and greater productivity and economic growth. Source: FAO

As we’re dealing with one of the most critical challenges of mankind, we couldn’t have chosen a better moderator for this webinar than Joseph Gridley who has dedicated his career to designing, developing and executing projects that make a difference in the lives of others. Having worked as a chef and trained as a lawyer, he has always been fascinated by the fundamental role our food system plays in every aspect of our lives. In 2016 – after having taken roles at the UN, Free The Children and the Mayor of London’s office – he launched a new charity supporting business solutions to our food systems’ most pressing challenges: from food waste to childhood obesity. Then, in 2018, he took on a role at EIT Food, where he was responsible for supporting agri-food startups across Southern Europe through investment, prizes, mentoring and acceleration activities. Over his professional career, he’s been working with hundreds of agri-food startups that are proving that it is possible to make money and make a difference. We could not be more honored to have him chairing this session.

He started off by asking our speakers to introduce themselves and their companies. Thus, we went on to discover more about our panelists and the journeys that led them to build their businesses through some of the personal stories they shared with us. In the following paragraphs, we share how Jenny, Jamie, Christine, David Jackson and David Kat got into Food Tech and some of the words of wisdom they shared during the panel.

Jenny Du, Co-founder & VP of Operations at Apeel (#4 of the 2020 FoodTech 500)

Jenny Du earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering Chemistry and her PhD in Chemistry from Queen’s University (Kingston, ON, Canada). Following completion of her doctoral degree, she joined the Chemistry Department at UCSB as a postdoctoral researcher where she worked for 2 years prior to joining Apeel Sciences as Employee #2 and the Director of Extraction Engineering. She is now the Senior Vice President of Operations at Apeel Sciences, where she is responsible for leading the company’s efforts in Environmental Health & Safety, Regulatory Affairs, Quality, Manufacturing, Supply Chain & Logistics, Project Leadership, Field Operations, and International Operations across North America, Latin America, and Europe.

Apeel was born out of a concern to identify how so much abundance can go to waste when so many people are hungry. Inspired by nature’s own methods of preservation, Apeel set out to build a barrier that could be applied to fruit and vegetables using edible materials that could retain moisture, reduce oxidation and ultimately extend the shelf life of fresh produce slowing the rate of spoilage.

Founded in 2012 with a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Apeel Sciences continues to develop products for dozens of USDA Organic Certified and conventional produce categories.

 

Jamie Crummie, Co-founder & Director at Too Good To Go (#7 of the 2020 FoodTech 500)

Jamie Crummie trained as a lawyer before taking up the fight against food waste and co-founding Too Good To Go, now the world’s largest marketplace for surplus food. The app addresses this global problem by letting consumers buy unsold food from restaurants and retailers that would otherwise go to waste. Too Good To Go is now active in 15 countries and has over 34 million users who have rescued over 65 million meals worldwide. In the UK, over 3.5 million meals have been saved to date. Jamie was named One Young World’s Entrepreneur of the Year in August 2020, a Forbes 30 Under 30 in Europe in February 2019 and was shortlisted for the Entrepreneur For Good Award at the Natwest Great British Entrepreneur Awards 2019.

Too Good To Go is about creating a tangible solution through technology to ensure that perfectly good food doesn’t go to waste. It is a B Corp certified social impact company that fights food waste around the world. It’s important because the food we waste accounts for 8-10% of all CO2e emissions. They are best known for their app, which is the world’s largest B2C marketplace for surplus food. On it, restaurants, cafes, supermarkets, bakeries, canteens and wholesalers from 15 countries prevent their surplus from going to waste by connecting with millions of users.

With more than 36 million users, they have prevented 70 million meals from going to waste in the last 5-6 years.

 

David Kat, SVP Business Development at Wasteless (#19 of the 2020 FoodTech 500)

David Kat was the on-line publisher at publishing giant VNU (now AC Nielsen) in the Netherlands, London and Paris. He’s a business developer, entrepreneur and active investor since 2004. He introduced companies including Mobileye, X-Sight Sys, Magink and AgentVI to innovate incumbent industries. A father of two daughters, he’s energized by making this world a better place. His favorite channels of achieving that are business, food and the Arts. Thus, he now serves as the VP of Business Development at Wasteless.

Founded in 2017, Wasteless is the first machine learning and real-time tracking solution for grocery shops to offer customers dynamic pricing based on the expiry date of products. They help retailers optimise markdowns, substantially increasing their profitability. Wasteless is helping supermarkets and the planet fight one of their biggest problems — food waste.

Winner of numerous awards including Kairos, Seeds & Chips, Emerce Best European Start-up, AgFunder and Foodbytes by Rabobank NYC, its primary goal is to fix the broken food system by getting ahead of food waste.

 

Christine Moseley, Founder & CEO at FullHarvest (#28 of the 2020 FoodTech 500)

Christine Moseley is a passionate serial entrepreneur. Currently, at Full Harvest, she is solving the massive food waste problem at the farm level. Full Harvest is the first B2B platform for surplus and imperfect produce, connecting large farms directly to food & beverage companies. Christine has over 15 years of experience in the logistics and food industries at both Fortune 100 companies (Maersk, P&G) as well as high-growth food start-ups. Christine holds an MBA from Wharton Business School and a BA from the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill. She was recently recognized as Inc.’s Top 100 Female Founders and Fortune’s #2 Most Innovative Woman in Food & Drink. Full Harvest was named Fast Company’s 2020 top World Changing Idea in Food.

Full Harvest was born out of Christine’s passion for the environment, sustainability, and affordable healthy food. While scaling one of the first cold-pressed juice companies, Organic Avenue, she became very passionate about making healthy food more affordable for everyone. In 2014, moved to California to find a way to lower food production costs along the supply chain, leveraging her 12 years of operations and food experience. During a farm visit, she was shocked to find out that 20 billion pounds of produce go to waste each year simply because they are excess or not perfectly shaped for grocery stores.

She vowed to not stop until this problem was solved.

 

David Jackson, Director of Marketing & Public Affairs at Winnow (#56 of the 2020 FoodTech 500)

David Jackson is a marketing and communications professional with almost 20 years of experience working with brands like The Guardian, American Express, and NGOs like Shelter and WaterAid. Now is the Director of Marketing and Public Affairs at Winnow. Winnow develops artificial intelligence tools to help chefs run more profitable, sustainable kitchens by cutting food waste in half. Trusted by thousands of chefs in over 40 countries, Winnow is helping businesses like IKEA, Compass Group and Hilton save 36m meals a year from the bin.

Without visibility of what is being wasted, kitchens are wasting far more food than they realise. By understanding and reporting the real costs of food waste, both to the bottom line and the environment, Winnow Vision enables chefs to take action.

Using a camera, a scale and artificial intelligence, the smart container “learns” to recognise many different foods. Users can refine the system by training it on specific menu items. Companies and chefs can then use the information on food, financial and environmental costs to adjust their food purchasing decisions accordingly.

 

We then wrapped up this webniar by opening the floor to our attendees for a Q&A session with our panelists.

At Forward Fooding, we are incredibly proud to have hosted the Food Waste webinar. We loved hearing more about the entrepreneurial journeys and the inspiring stories from some of the incredible entrepreneurs from the ‘2020 FoodTech 500’s pack’ who are leading the charge in the food waste sector!

A big thanks go to all our speakers,  for taking the time to share their words of wisdom and inspire other entrepreneurs to enter this space. Another huge thank you to all the attendants who came along and joined us to celebrate this amazing pack of entrepreneurs who are bettering our food system every day with their inspiring work!

Last but not least, a very special thanks goes to Joseph Gridley, for agreeing to chair our event and being an amazing moderator for this session!

If you’ve missed this event, fear not,  you can watch the video below!