About
Fazla Gıda is a start-up focused on addressing food waste. As you know zero hunger is one of the issues of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and Fazla Gıda is a social enterprise with the aim of solving the food waste issue. Having been founded by Olcay Silahlı, CEO, and Arda Eren, CTO, in 2017, the company has saved >55,000 tonnes of food.
Why it is a good practice?
To reach its targets, Fazla Gıda is collaborating with restaurants, hotels, dining halls, food retailers and distributors. Thanks to their cloud-based infrastructure, they offer companies holistic evaluation opportunities through donation via food banking, secondary sales on the HoReCa channel, production or diversion to animal food and conversion to electrical energy in biogas plants in a manner to create maximum financial, environmental, and social benefits from waste products. They set out with the aim of reaching the goals of Ending Hunger, Responsible Consumption & Production, Sustainable Cities & Communities besides achieving the goal of Climate Action, and also showing the young people in Turkey that it is possible to do a job that is in involving benevolence for humankind and for the planet.
Sustainable
In the food business side which consists of manufacturers, retailers, and the associates of HoReCa sector, food waste is mainly caused by inefficient inventory management, logistics operations, and the high-quality requirements of the food sector. Even though most of the surplus is suitable for human consumption or for use in various other processes, they end up being landfilled because companies don’t have enough information and skill set to manage their surplus effectively. Fazla Gida solves this issue by using
an in-house developed AI-based algorithm that takes customers’ SKU lists with time and location-based data, best-before date, and nutritional values. The system calculates the financial, social, and environmental impact of surplus according to data collected and categorises all products with the best-fit solution.
In addition to those solutions, the Fazla platform provides real-time reporting and analytics dashboards for dynamic waste stream analyses and insights to reduce waste at the source by using machine learning algorithms and big data analysis. The platform analyses the big data of food companies and provides real-time data analytics with a variety of explanatory and easy-to-use graphics. The dashboard provides surplus trends based on products, product categories, stores, and regions to the clients. Clients have access to monthly trends via dashboards where they can see the top wasted SKUs sorted by amount, weight, and cost. They can compare results in store breakdown and see monthly changes of surplus results.
They have also developed the Fazla App which aims to decrease food waste in the HoReCa sector by providing HoReCa businesses a chance to reach out to customers with edible food that they couldn’t sell during the day and that will go to trash because of quality or operational reasons. Both customers and businesses can benefit from it since the customers will have a chance to buy quality take-away food at a discounted price and businesses will gain profit from food that otherwise go to waste. The system reduces food waste and waste-borne carbon emissions as well. The main feature that makes the Fazla App unique is the fact that all the offers are in a concept of “surprise boxes”
Ethical
Fazla are working to establish sustainable systems and to bring the highest benefit to the circular economy by correctly managing the surplus products. With their technology-based, holistic approach, they determine the most suitable service for food business’s surplus products from food to textile, from packaging to chemicals, and they make the client’s impact visible with their end-to-end and traceable process management. With this technology-based holistic approach, they provide the insights needed to prevent waste by tracking waste and helping food businesses bring their production and surplus products to the consumer.
One such system is the ‘Extra Intelligent Weighing System’, which measures the food waste in a business in detail and makes it possible to reduce the waste with data-based insights. The biggest obstacle in controlling and reducing food waste is the inability to measure the waste generated during the kitchen operation.
