How Foodprint Started
Michal brought a familiar concept from Europe and built a business and app that empowers Kiwis to take food waste into their own hands—literally.
“Ko te whakaora kai i to matimati! - Food rescue at your fingertips!”
Inspired by her years living in Sweden, she couldn’t understand why this wasn’t already a thing here in Aotearoa. Blessed with rich soil and some of the best environments for growing quality ingredients, Michal saw an opportunity to not only save food from landfills but to give back to local communities and small businesses.
Where Are We Now?
Since June 2019, Foodprint has been an innovation within Aotearoa's hospitality and food production industries. We have partnered with nearly 450 eateries that choose to use the platform to reduce surplus while marketing their commitments to sustainable business practices in a changing world. Integrating Foodprint into these eateries' product and waste management systems has helped our partners recover their running costs more frequently.
Recent Growth
While the concept isn’t new, our expansion across the country has seen it embraced by an increasing number of eateries. This month, we welcomed Rotorua, Taupō, and Tūrangi into the Foodprint community. This launch has been one of our more successful, with over 30 eateries creating profiles and making sales on the app in the first week.
Foodprint is gaining momentum in smaller communities by diversifying the types of eateries we approach. As a result, our team can see establishments reach out with creative ideas on how best to sell their surplus. This demonstrates that Kiwis are willing to take the bull by the horns when given the right tools—call it Kiwi ingenuity!
Eatery Innovation
Some of our innovation comes from these small businesses:
Smoke ‘n’ Barrel (Woolston, Christchurch): The first restaurant to sell surplus salads from the previous night's dinner service.
Rocky’s Superette (Sandringham, Auckland): A local dairy that consistently lists imperfect items, they also use Foodprint to advertise and sell their ‘Specials’—just like most dairies do.
GoodFor (Nationwide, nine stores): The first bulk foods and food dispensary to integrate us into their waste prevention system across all stores. Foodprint is now part of their staff onboarding training.
Creative Edge (St John, Auckland): Successfully marketing and selling imperfect baking mishaps and offcuts of their commercial products, like ‘Mud chocolate cupcake tops.’
Mosgiel Garden Fresh (Mosgiel): The first greengrocer and business out of range that uses Foodprint to enhance their online marketing and word of mouth, helping them consistently sell out of their ‘fruit & veggie boxes.’
Where Are We Going?
We aim to launch in four new regions and 10 new cities by the end of 2025! With this goal, we expect our community to grow from 130,000 app users to 250,000. Alongside this expanding customer base, we have set an ambitious target of partnering with 1,000 eateries by the end of 2025.
In just five years of operations, Foodprint has helped save 200 tonnes of CO2-e from food waste across Aotearoa. If we maintain our momentum with our partner eateries towards a common goal, we can expect to save this amount of carbon each year!
One scone saved each day translates to around 65kg of CO2-e saved and over $1,000 in profit retained for the business each year. We hope you share this information with the next café or eatery you see that has surplus food. This is our planet, and if an app can make a difference, then you can be the one to promote it!
“Ko te whakaora kai i to matimati! - Food rescue at your fingertips!”
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