The New FoodMaven
FoodMaven was started to tackle the problem of food waste. It is terrible that 40% of food that is produced gets thrown away while 70% of farmers are in the economic red zone, 42 million Americans are food insecure, and 50% of restaurants fail in 3 years. We saw an opportunity to make a positive impact on profits, people, and the planet by connecting food lost in the system with buyers in foodservice.
Over the last three years, we worked with incredible people from our restaurant and foodservice customers, to our suppliers, and to our non-profit partners. Together we made the following impact:
4.4 million Lbs of food diverted from landfills
169,199 meals provided in support of hunger relief
$1.3M of revenue to local suppliers
$5.1M of savings to local customers
Ultimately, solving the problem of lost food in the distribution system required getting to scale across most major markets cold storage and logistics. We were unable to get to that scale and had to make the hard decision to put a stop to our business model.
But, along the way, we found that we built a powerful solution to one of the toughest problems in the food system.
To truly make the food system better, you need to be able to look at all of the data and ask the right questions that will help us eliminate food waste, encourage more sustainable consumption, and reduce inequity so that the system works for all that work for it.
That is impossible to do today because there is no easy way to compare food data across the countless sources that are part of the system. Everyone has a slightly different way of talking about food. There is no common standardized food “language” so you can’t look at data across multiple sources.
FoodMaven solves that. We connect data across the food system so everyone can make better decisions.
We are excited to soon launch tools that will help restaurants and non-profits be able to easily compare the food products they bring in so they can choose the right one. These will include a free browser plug-in for comparing food products and an Open API to normalize food data. We will make sure everyone knows when these are available.
We believe that when everyone can make better decisions, we can make a better food system.
Our journey has not been a straight line. We are incredibly grateful for all of the Mavens, customers, suppliers, partners, and our investors who contributed throughout this journey and continue to support us. We would not have been able to build what we have without the lessons, bumps, and hardships along the way.
While how we tackle the problem of building a better food system has changed, our passion for doing so hasn’t. FoodMaven is here to make an impact.