Garda Pangan aims to raise awareness around the issue of food waste, which has been gaining little to no attention in Indonesia

From the second largest city in Indonesia, that has been an emerging player in the disruptive startup business, Garda Pangan surely has the potential to steal attention.

e27 talks to Eva Bachtiar, one of three co-founders of the Surabaya-based startup, about the food waste management startup that has been creating buzz in the past year with its social and environmental causes. Focussing on things that we are all guilty of taking advantage of: Food.

How it all started

“People don’t really know that our country is actually the second largest food waste producers in the world,” Bachtiar says on the phone.

“This is especially ironic since a total of staggering 19.4 million people in Indonesia still live in hunger,” she continues.

Bachtiar explains the initial mission of Garda Pangan that she built along with two other co-founders –a husband and wife and catering business owners.

“We want to facilitate those who have food excess and food scarcity problem so the excess can be distributed rightly to those who need it,” she says.

The concept of a foodbank is nothing new, but it is relatively rare in Indonesia. “We want to make Garda Pangan a foodbank that aims to support particularly hospitality and culinary business, because both sectors consistently have food waste. This way we don’t need to educate them one-by-one because they experience the excess firsthand,” Bachtiar stresses.

Garda Pangan’s mission directly jabs at the economic loss and environment hazard that are caused by the food excess and food waste issue.

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Challenges in raising awareness

One of the challenges in food waste management, besides the familiarity, is the concerns many hospitality companies have.

“Unfamiliarity with food bank concept is another thing that we can overcome. It’s harder to face the challenge of these companies’ concerns of being sued if something happens to the recipients of the food they donate,” Bachtiar mentions.

Bachtiar says that many companies feel reluctant to donate food excess because it is easier and less risky to just dump the food. “They worry that they are at a position of being sued if, for example, somebody got poisoned after eating the food that they donate. The possibility of having their donated food being resold is also something they want to avoid,” she further elaborated.

To accommodate these concerns, Garda Pangan makes sure their partners can rely on them about these issues. Once the food has been donated, the responsibility is fully rested on Garda Pangan as the distribution.

Putting dignity in food excess

Garda Pangan now serves three restaurants, one organic market, one fruit distributor, one food caterer, three bakeries, and two wedding organisers.

“These few partners that we have believe in our vision to not waste food and to give it to people who need it. They also like that it helps them to become greener and that it’s a good PR,” Bachtiar says.

Some people refer to “food excess” as leftovers, which Eva quickly corrected. “It has a negative connotation attached to the word ‘leftovers’ while the food that we distribute is strictly untouched, still clean, and unsold yet by the restaurants and hotels,” she stresses.

Bachtiar further emphasises on the importance of distributing the food the way it is, which is without any added processing. “The only case we will process the food donated to us is if it’s overripe fruits like bananas, that look bruised but still in a good condition, or just to add on so we can distribute a full set of meal instead of just rice and veggies that sometimes happens,” Bachtiar says.

“We simply want to put dignity in distributing the food. It may be an excess to someone, but to somebody else it could be the first proper meal they have in God knows how long,” she points out.

From social to scaling up

Being a social- and environmental-focussed startup does not mean Garda Pangan will operate solely based on donations.

“Yes, that’s really what we aim for: to better our business model. Many people perceive us as a social movement, a cause, not a business. We did start by bootstrapping, but we’re fully aware the only way to grow is to have a working business model. We want to run sustainably and eventually must have a business line,” explains Bachtiar when asked about Garda Pangan’s monetisation method.

“Right now, we can’t expect people to pay since it’s really new to them. No partners would want to pay for their food waste management because why should they pay if they can just dump the food for free, right?” she continues.

Garda Pangan aims to raise awareness of the importance and benefit of food waste management for businesses through its social media campaign and Food Heroes volunteering programme.

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Garda Pangan’s next move for 2019 will be proving that the business model they have formulated will really work.

“Our plan is to introduce the people -starting from Surabaya- to our sustainable and responsible food waste management and provide them with a social impact report. It will be a paid service that serves our clients with a better return since they will got information, such as a complete beneficiary report, to know who have received their food excess. This type of report can be a token to claim the company’s social responsibility (CSR) slot. Companies can allocate their CSR budget to use our service,” Bachtiar elaborates.

Besides the social impact report, Garda Pangan also plans to have an environmental impact report, in which partners who choose to collaborate with Garda Pangan will be given report on how much carbon footprint they have reduced by simply donate their food excess.

Another report on the pipeline is a waste analysis data that will allow companies to have knowledge about the food composition and type of food that have been managed by Garda Pangan.

“This approach has already helped one of our partners, a bakery that used to have 100-200 portion excess in its daily production. The bakery got our report and it was an eye opener for them how much portion they throw away everyday. Now they are able to fix their production number and save cost, reducing to 20-30 portion excess per day since it’s impossible to not have excess in food industry,” Eva shares.

Society-beloved

With the increasing trend of going green and zero waste lifestyle, Garda Pangan surely has the upper hand in scaling up around this time.

Having recently won the first place in Go Startup Indonesia Championship by the government’s creative industry agency BEKRAF, the company said that everyday they would receive direct messages on Instagram, its most active social media platform, from people in other cities asking for their volunteering programme to be held outside Surabaya.

“Today, we have 30 in-house volunteers and around 200-300 public volunteers daily. In the future, this volunteering operation is something we would like to keep as it is a good platform to promote food waste awareness,” Bachtiar says.

“Right now, we are looking to hire professionals for jobs like designers and will also expand our core team with full time employments,” she adds.

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Whether or not they will be open for investors, Eva shared that they are now in the stage of proving their business model and improving their infrastructure.

“I just resigned from my previous job to focus on Garda Pangan two months ago. Right now what we have is an angel investor who believes in our vision and will walk alongside us for the next year,” Bachtiar says.

A firm believer of the importance of having food bank in each city, the woman who has mining engineering background was moved by the fact that urban poverty is a real problem. People in the big cities are struggling harder to eat, compared to people living communally in the village.

“I believe in our capability to provide solution to this often overlooked, but urgent problem,” Bachtiar closes.

 

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