No food to waste

Pretend for a second you’re in a supermarket. You’ve got your shopping list. You’re scanning the shelves for some yoghurt. Two options: a cheaper one expiring tomorrow, and a full-price one lasting until next week. Which do you choose?

40% of food produced is never consumed, which accounts for 8% of global warming. The biggest part of this waste is due to retail. Aside from the daunting societal and environmental impact, this also leads to over £18 billion lost in revenues per year globally.

We wanted to help. A team based in Milan launched the FoodTech Accelerator programme to connect our clients with innovators around the world to tackle this issue. One of the participating clients was a large Italian retailer keen to decrease food waste in an innovative way.

We discovered a start-up called Wasteless, who created an artificial intelligence dynamic pricing solution that calculates the optimal price of an item in real-time across the demand curve as the expiration date gets closer – reducing food waste while optimising the markdowns and empowering the consumer. It was the perfect fit.

Next, we got one of the major food producers in the poultry industry to test the technology. In less than eight weeks, we helped them apply the clever labelling to a selection of products and go live. We also launched an awareness campaign to encourage shoppers to buy the discounted products.

The campaign proved to be a success and 80% of customers said they were willing to pay less for a product with a closer expiration date.

Anyone else hungry?