FOOD
FoodCloud is a surplus food sharing platform founded in 2012 by Iseult Ward and Aoibheann O’Brien. “Food is produced and grown for people,
so the ideal solution is that it goes to people,” says Iseult. “With growing awareness of the problem of
Iseult Ward and Aoibheann O’Brien at the launch of the FoodCloud hub
food waste, it’s becoming more important for retailers to deal with their surplus food in an environmentally friendly and socially conscious way.”
The platform works by connecting retailers with local charities who can use
surplus food. “We will go through the due diligence with the charities to ensure they are legitimate and that they have the correct food safety processes
in place to manage the food safely and create a collection schedule,” Iseult explains. “Once all of that is approved, we provide access to the technology to the stores. With one of our retail partners we have integrated with their scanners, others use the PC or desktop app to upload details of their surplus
food and the collection time. A notification will go out to the allocated charity to let them know the food is available and they text back to confirm they will be available to collect it.”
To date, FoodCloud has
redistributed the equivalent of over 24 million meals to 6,000 charities and, according to Iseult, the
environmental impact is akin to saving 74,000 tonnes of emissions or planting 3.7
CO2
Aoibheann O’Brien, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Iseult Ward and at the launch of the FoodCloud hub
million trees. The platform can also be used as a data gathering tool. “We provide reporting and analytics on all the surplus food that’s being made available from
It now has over 2,500 retail stores across the UK and Ireland, including Tesco, Aldi, Lidl and Waitrose, donating surplus food through its software platform. After a successful launch in
Ireland, they were approached by Tesco to roll it out to all of their stores in the UK, prompting them to partner with FareShare, a food redistribution organisation in the UK that collects
and delivers surplus food donations to charities across the country. “In one year of using our platform, FareShare has grown the number of communities it can reach from 500 towns
and cities to 1,500, demonstrating the step change that technology can enable when we are trying to address such huge problems as food waste.”
50 INNOVATION IRELAN REVIEW x INNOVATION IRELAN REVIEW
the retailers’ stores and being collected. We have presented Tesco with a list of the top
100 of their donated products so they can see if there are
consistent products that are coming up as surplus.”
food.cloud
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