The average Singaporean generates the equivalent of two rice bowls of food waste per day. 11th Hour has a solution to this problem

Take all you eat, but eat all you take

The message, pasted on the walls of the food courts at Indian software leader TCS’s Bangalore offices, is loud and clear: Food wastage is a global menace, and it has to be checked.

As per a study by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, roughly one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year — approximately 1.3 billion tonnes — gets lost or wasted. While the waste amounts to roughly US$680 billion in industrialised countries, it amounts to nearly US$310 billion in developing countries.

Singapore is no exception. The average Singaporean generates the equivalent of two rice bowls of food waste per day. And it is bound to go up in the coming years.

Two entrepreneurs have found way around this problem, and it was the personal experience of one of the duo that led to the launch of this solution.

JunYuan Tan used to run a food stall in Singapore about two to three years ago. On some nights, the food court would have leftovers, but he did not want to throw them away, because it would add up to his costs. But keeping them for sale for next day was not a good idea either.

So he ran a closing-hour sale to get rid of the leftover by offering steep discounts such as a one-for-one promotion. “The challenge, however, was that if you keep running these kinds of promotions on a daily basis, customers would start timing their purchases based on your promotions — for example, they would delay their purchases until it was within the closing window period, so that they could enjoy the discount. On the other hand, if you only ran these kinds of promotions ad hoc, customers will not know when you would actually run the promotion,” Tan tells e27.

Also Read: This food startup uses Big Data to predict users’ habits & cut wastage

He saw an opportunity there. After running the food business for half a year, he decided to build a tech platform that could reduce food wastage in the Food and Beverages (F&B) industry.

11th Hour, as it is aptly branded, is a mobile app for last-minute food deals, in which merchants can easily create last-minute deals whenever they have excess capacity. The platform alerts users and lets them respond to these last-minute deals.

Merchants who have leftovers or even lull periods can easily take out their mobile phone and create a last-minute deal in as quickly as 30 seconds by filling up a template. Customers can then see all the last-minute deals around them on the app. Customers who follow a merchant, get push notification whenever a last-minute deal is available.

The app, available on iOS and Android, launched just last month. And since then, the startup has bagged around 160-plus F&B customers that include from cafes, bakeries, restaurants, and pubs. The app has close to 5,000 users.

A highly time-sensitive industry

According to Tan, last-minute food booking is a tough business to be in, unlike last-minute hotel and flight booking platforms. He says that such platforms don’t need the infrastructure for mobile devices and location services — all they need is a simple website.

“On the other hand, for last-minute deals to work in the F&B industry, you truly need real-time location services and mobile devices to be widely adopted first before it can work. That’s because last-minute in the F&B industry is of greater time-sensitivity, and the relevance of the deals are greatly influenced by the geographic proximity of the users,” he explained.

Also Read: 9 Asia-based foodtech startups that will satiate your culinary desires

Tan believes that if merchants get an incentive to get rid of their leftovers — i.e., let them recoup some of their costs by selling at last-minute discounted prices — they would duly and dutifully do so. As more merchants take the active step of pushing out last-minute deals whenever they have excess capacity, we would be able to seriously reduce food wastage.

11th Hour deliberately doesn’t think of monetisation at least for now. The duo wants to be open-minded to all possibilities that may arise as they engage more users and merchants.

Currently, the startup caters only to customers and businesses in Singapore, but an expansion is in the offing. “We are looking at markets outside of Singapore in the coming months. In Singapore, people are always looking for a good bargain. Moreover, did you know that the average Singaporean generates the equivalent of two rice bowls of food waste per day?”

Also Read: This food-tech startup uses IoT to bring your InnerChef alive

For geographic expansion, the startup will also look to raise funds in the coming months.

Tan, 29, is a graduate in Business from the University of Manchester. He worked as a Tech Product Manager for a while before venturing out to start his coffee shop. He has also worked as a strategic research consultant. His business partner TingHong Lim, 31, is an Engineering drop-out from the University of Newcastle.

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Image Credit: kaliantye / 123RF Stock Photo

The post Excuse me, are you gonna eat that? This Singapore startup plans to cut food wastage through tech appeared first on e27.