Karma gives restaurants, cafes, and grocery stores an opportunity to help fight food waste by selling their surplus food for half price through the Karma app.

Karma provides a win-win-win solution to the food waste problem providing retailers with the opportunity to make an additional revenue of up to €50,000 per year for selling their surplus food through their app while consumers save money on restaurant-quality food and help reduce food waste.

Karma recognizes the difficulties that retailers such as restaurants, cafes, and grocery stores face when it comes to estimating the food consumption of their customers. As most retailers don’t want to underestimate and lose out on customers, they tend to overproduce.

By using Karma, retailers can upload pictures of their unsold food that would otherwise go to waste. App-users who follow the retailer will then receive a notification right away and the food will usually get sold within minutes. The customer then can pick up the food at a convenient time for the retailer, and the payment is securely processed through the app. The company has more than 400,000 users and estimates to have saved 245 tonnes of food waste to date.

Why you should care

The FAO estimates that roughly 1.3 billion tonnes of food gets lost or wasted each year, this accounts for one third of all food produced. This waste represents 1 trillion dollars in losses annually. The rich countries waste 222 million tonnes per year which is nearly as much food as is produced annually in Sub-Saharan Africa (230 million tonnes). In Europe and North America, each person wastes 95-115 kg of food each year. Karma aims to cut waste at the retail level by offering an alternative revenue stream for the restaurants, cafes, and bakeries that would otherwise throw away the food.

How the Global Goals are addressed

Responsible Consumption and Production

Karma has helped to save over 245 tonnes of food waste at the retail level to date.