Out the Box

Tackling food waste one app at a time

A new feature from Farmstead will remind customers what’s in their refrigerator to reduce food waste.

US online grocer Farmstead has rolled out a new ‘Eat This First’ feature, designed to tackle food waste by reminding customers what items are expected to perish first.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

The grocer is thought to be the first online-only store to have precise sell-by date inventory control and automated procurement systems for perishables allowing items to be kept fresh for longer, but the new feature helps take the effort to the next step.

Farmstead’s email receipts have now been updated with ‘Eat This First’ sections to alert customers when it makes sense to consume particular products sooner rather than later, reducing in-home food waste.

Farmstead customers are also automatically signed up to receive the new ‘Eat This First’ receipts via email.

CAN THIS REALLY HELP WITH THE ISSUE?

Food waste is a massive problem in the fight against climate change – and although shoppers are conscious of it, tackling it can prove difficult.

In the UK, households waste on average the equivalent of eight meals a week, WRAP has found, or 87,000 tonnes of food waste across all households in seven days. The biggest culprits are bread, potatoes, milk, meals (homemade and pre-prepared), fruit juices and smoothies, pork/ham/bacon, poultry, carrots, and processed potato.

In a recent survey, over a third of people admitted their freezer is sometimes “a total disaster” and extremely hard to work out the contents, while 19% of people threw away something frozen in the past two weeks, because it has laid dormant for too long.

Food waste is responsible for nearly 25 million tonnes of CO2 emissions, equivalent to 5.4% of the UK’s total emissions.

WRAP notes that the majority, 4.5 million tonnes, is food that could have been eaten and is worth approximately £14bn.

So, the problem is there and people do possibly need a nudge on how to best deal with it.

Pradeep Elankumaran, co-founder and Chief Executive of Farmstead, said: "We developed our own in-house logistics and inventory software specifically to reduce food waste in our own warehouses.

“While a typical grocery store has 30-40% food waste, Farmstead is in the single digits. In introducing ‘Eat This First,’ we’re extending that capability out to each customer. We are the only online grocer able to deliver it due to our digitised inventory control.”

COULD THE TECHNOLOGY MIGRATE TO PHYSICAL STORES?

It’s not beyond the realms of possibility.

It would require meticulous inventory capabilities on part of the retailer, but the result may well be worth it. And concerns about the climate is not the only reason why food waste needs to be eradicated; there’s a costof-living crisis, and according to Sarah Clayton from the Love Food Hate Waste initiative: “For the average family with children, the cost of binning food can be more than £700 a year.”