How to convert tons of food waste into thousands of meals ?

Who ? Deborah Manning, founder of KiwiHarvest.
Why did we meet her? She created a social venture by herself. She uses food waste to answer the food insecurity problem in New Zealand.
When ? February 2019.

Did you create KiwiHarvest ? Why ?

Yes, I did. I was practising as a lawyer and I was happy doing that but something was missing. I wanted to develop a business that had a social purpose with a scalable model. That was the challenge. There are a lot of social businesses that are small and work really well in communities but they are not scalable. They rely totally on the Founder’s passion and volunteers, without a robust business model. Ultimately those businesses usually collapse.

How did you think about it?

One day I was reading this story about dumpsters divers. People were going to the back of supermarkets into dumpsters and living happily off the good quality food that was thrown away. On the same page, was a story about food insecurity and children going to school without breakfast. It was one of those “Ah-ah!” moments. I thought: “Why don’t I take the waste problem to solve the hunger one? And what would it look like?”

After some research I discovered the worldwide food rescue movement. It was well established in the northern hemisphere but not in New Zealand. I researched which of the scalable models we would use here. I wrote safety procedures, food handling manuals, and set up the legal structure.

You did that on your own?

Yes because I had this legal background. I gathered a board with specific skills. I chose a businessman, a lawyer, an accountant and a chef. That took about 6 months. I had been so busy thinking about what might go wrong that I did not start to collect any food. The Chairman of our board said to me “You should actually start rescuing food.” He was absolutely right because you can never plan for every problem that might occur. I literally got in my car and drove to a cafe to collect their food. I brought it home, I weight it, I reported it on a spreadsheet. The next day I took it to a food bank. That was 7 kilograms of sandwiches, and soups. Now the Dunedin branch does between half and 3/4 of a ton of food a day. Across New Zealand, we do 80–100 tons a month thanks to our 7 trucks and 18 employees. So that’s scalable.

How did you financed it to start ?

I self-financed it for the first 6 months. I did not want to ask to anybody to support me financially until I knew this model was going to work. I wanted people to feel that their donated dollar was going to return an investment into their community. It was important, therefore, to record data on all aspects of the business to show our impacts. That took 6 months.

When did you know that this model was working?

After 6 months, our costs were people’s time and transport. It was a lean financial model. I had to get somebody to do the operational side so I could grow the business. To get the money to hire someone, I went to a trust in Dunedin. I was told the average amount they give out was $10k. I put together a formal business proposal that showed what their return on investment would look like including the social benefits and the monetary value of food reintroduced back into the community. I said: “If you give me $50k, I will turn that into $250k worth of social benefits.” They gave me the $50k and we have never looked back.

Who else helped you to grow your business?

From there, I went to Dunedin City Council and said “We now need a premises to operate from and ramp up our operations”. So they gave us this place. After about a year of operating, we were approached by a worldwide firm: Goodman Property Group. They invest in their communities to strength them. They said: “Would you bring your model to Auckland if we support you financially?” Expansion was always in the plan but not on our immediate radar but when you are presented with an opportunity, you have to have the courage to take it. So we established a branch in Auckland which became the largest branch and our headquarters. From there we expanded to the North Shore, Hawke’s Bay and Queenstown (in collaboration with Sustainable Queenstown).

We probably are the largest food rescue organization in New Zealand because we have multiple branches around the country but we are not the only one. When we started 7 years ago in Dunedin, it was called FoodShare. Once we got branches we changed to KiwiHarvest. It was a better brand for us.

Logistic is a big part of the business, how do you manage it ?

We are basically a B2B business. The model in Dunedin is: the truck goes out twice a day. In the morning it collects highly perishable food that needs to be eaten by the end of the day. That goes directly to a food bank that going to distribute it that day. Then we do 2 or 3 trips to collect from supermarkets and other food retailers and distribution centres. Three volunteers empty the van and process all the food following our procedure. By 2.30 p.m., we are all done.

And in Auckland ?

We receive food in bulk in much bigger quantities there. Our trucks don’t come back to the warehouse because distances would make it inefficient. So they go out in the morning, collect and distribute all day long, and then come back empty. They might have processed in that truck a ton of food but nobody sees it except the drivers and the volunteers. They report what they are doing on our online system (food category, quantities, donors,…). It’s time consuming but if we don’t collect data as a food rescue then we can never show our impacts. We know that for every dollar we spend we can deliver food that would make two or three meals. We can convert dollars into kilograms of food and numbers of meals.

We are installing a CRM and transport route logistic system for the whole business around the country. Because the issue is: “What is the most efficient way for a truck to collect and deliver ?”. Currently, we have people in Auckland who manage it daily. If somebody rings to donate 2 tons of packaged meat, which is like gold for us, we have to be able to react quickly.

Do you have to refuse some of the food ?

Yes, because we don’t want food that we can’t pass on. Otherwise that just becomes our waste. Every time a food donor joins us, we give them information about what we can and can’t take. We remind them their test should be: “Would I eat this myself ?”. Food should be about respect. We occasionally take sugar drinks but not pallets of it. We will always prioritize fruits, vegetables, dairy and meat.

Do you exist because charities are not able to collect the food themselves?

Yes, that is partly right. Charities have been successfully collecting tinned and dried food from food donors for years but they do not have the systems in place to collect fresh perishable food. Additionally, food donors, especially supermarkets, have strict health and safety procedures that they and any visitors must adhere to. Our food donors need to feel comfortable that the food they pass on, will be managed in a safe way.

We have the same legislation that most countries have: the Good Samaritan Legislation for Food Donation. If at the time a food donation is made, the donors believe that the food is ‘safe and suitable’ for human consumption, they are exempt from any liability (s352 of the Food Act of NZ). The law protects them but we also need to remember that their brand is important. Our robust food handling procedures gives them confidence to do it.

Food rescue is your first pillar. What are the other 2 pillars?

“Educate” is our second pillar and “Engage” is our third.

> Educate: we realized that just giving people fresh food was not addressing the full issue of food insecurity. Some people don’t know what to do with food they have never had before. They did not know how to get rid of the skin of a pineapple, how to cook an aubergine… We are into the second generation of people who cook by taking the top of a jar and putting it in a microwave. We developed educational cards and recipes so clients of charities can learn how to cook.

> Engage: we engage everybody to be part of the solution to food waste and food insecurity. We talk about what we do in universities and schools, we bring businesses into our warehouses… We also run a program called “Cooking for a Cause”. It is a team building event in a commercial kitchen, with a professional chef. Participants cook rescued food so they see it is still perfectly good. They taste the meals before sending it to the charity they choose. And businesses pay for that.

What are the next steps for Kiwi Harvest?

We need to take our food rescue model into a social enterprise model which is a huge challenge. How do we monetize what we do? Most of the food donors think they are doing us a favour just by giving us their food. We need to tell them we actually provide them with a service, free of charge at the moment, that should cost them. There are many food businesses in New Zealand who send food to be disposed of for stock feed, compost or converted into biogas. And they pay for that. Some of that food is still edible. They are already paying for it to be disposed of so why can’t they pay to actually feed people? It’s a shift in mindset.

The last thing we are working on is thinking what would a national food distribution network look like? At the moment we have little food rescues all over the country and food banks all over the place and everybody is working in silos. What if we had two warehouses in the North Island and two in the South Island where bulk food can be sent to? Organisations that need food come to that place to get their allocation. It’s the next evolution for food sustainability in terms of surplus food.

What will disappear first: hungry population or waste of food ?

Food waste. I think that there will always be, to some extent, food surplus but it won’t be seen as waste anymore because it will be put back into our system. Whereas food insecurity is an issue that can’t be addressed by only giving out food. If you give a homeless person something to eat, he will still be homeless. Many of the charities we support provide wrap around services that go with food insecurity such as social care, employment guidance…

We read your annual report and we loved it, how did you get this idea ?

Great! We really think that social ventures need to be innovative to engage people. Our pro bono marketing partner, J. Walter Thompson, came up with the idea. Annual reports are usually not very sustainable and quite boring. We wanted to engage people through the reading of our annual report. Thanks to our sponsor, Olympus, it is the world’s first report that actually allows you to feed people just by reading it.