With the end of the year in sight, it’s time to take a look back at what 2016 had to offer. What’s clear is that the startup industry is still flourishing, with many young entrepreneurs that have plenty of innovative, disruptive ideas for the future. The following days we will be looking back at the startups that stood out to us particularly, and ask them about 2016 and their plans for the future. Today: NoFoodWasted.
Waste
We throw away food. Lots of it: every year, a third of all the food that is produced ends up in the trashcan. We really don’t think twice about throwing out that pot of leftover pasta or a half full jar of mayo that’s still good but taking up space. The bigger issue here is that supermarkets also throw out perfectly good food the day after the expiration date. August de Vocht, founder of startup NoFoodWasted, tries to battle this food waste with his app Afgeprijsd (Dutch for Priced Down), where users can find priced down products that are being sold in their neighborhood.
National rollout
In 2016 NoFoodWasted had a national rollout of their first app. “It was a great year with a lot of positive response and attention for our solution against food waste,” says De Vocht. “It went great. The number of new users, the number of new supermarkets and the reduction in food waste were really satisfactory. We are proud of all our supermarkets and users who work together with us to reduce the four billion kilo’s of food waste every year. We are thankful to be on the podium of TEDxAmsterdam and that we have won the Present Your Startup competition.”
Funding
NoFoodWasted has collected over 350.000 euro’s in funding, with the biggest amount coming from the Dutch municipality of ‘s-Hertogenbosch. De Vocht also received an office space as part of the deal. “Our long term goal is still to change the market around from a supply-driven market to a demand-driven market and we will help the consumer to buy smarter, the supermarket to work more efficient and the farmer to produce what the market needs. The farmer gets a better price for his products, the supermarket has less waste and a higher market and the consumer always has a good product. “
Growth
“We made our biggest growth in the number of supermarkets & the number of users who are working together with us to reduce food waste. In January we started with fourteen supermarkets and we will end this year with an amazing number of 175 supermarkets who are reaching twenty thousand consumers on a daily basis. It is still not enough of course, but it is a good amount of growth. I started the year alone, but now our team consists of six employees. We also build a complete new back-end, which is a lot faster and more efficient, but most of all it can handle the the growth of our platform.”
More locations
“Next year we will grow up to five hundred locations and we will start working with supermarket chains. We will also add other branches besides supermarkets. Food waste is not a problem of one person, one supermarket or one country. This means we need to go abroad: in 2017 we will launch NoFoodWasted in Belgium, Germany and the UK. In the Netherlands we will roll out our beacon network which we have tested in 2016. And we will start our second investment round to keep up the pace. To do this we will expand our team with more professionals.”
