Dubai Expo — The first expo in the world to take on food rescue
Lately, I’ve been receiving a lot of emails from Ticketmaster — there are concerts again! Outside Lands announced its three-day line-up, the Stones are back on tour, musicians, artists, and thespians are performing in New York City parks. Fans are flocking to baseball games, and many watched the ups and downs of their favorite soccer stars at the Euro2020 tournament. Some of my fondest memories of such events revolve around the food. Whether it’s crab sandwiches at AT&T Park in San Francisco, sampling from the smorgasbord of vendors at music festivals, or something as simple as grabbing popcorn at the movies, food flavors our experiences and memories. But of course, where there’s food, there’s waste — particularly at large-scale events.
We already know that about 30–40 percent of food produced in the U.S. is wasted, but specifically, meetings and events account for about $21 billion of that loss. In some ways, it’s understandable. Events have to overstock and overproduce to ensure they fulfill the requests of attendants. It’s hard to estimate how many people will come, even if there is limited capacity. There are those who buy tickets and don’t show up (or conversely, sneak in!). Some of us eat more than others, a sandwich might get burnt or cooked improperly, perhaps it’s not up to a customer’s satisfaction and they want a replacement. Any number of factors affect how many meals must be prepared at a given event. And, we’ve all seen the reaction when something’s not available. Sheer horror. There’s actually industry lingo for this: #FORO (fear of running out).
So, inevitably there is a surplus. The average event wastes 15–20% of the food it produces. Think about a typical NFL game. About 70,000–80,000 people attend on average. If there is enough food to go around, over 10,000 meals could get wasted at a minimum — every game! And it’s not all ice cream and french fries. A survey of those who worked in the meeting & events industry found that over 60% of the foods most commonly wasted are salads, vegetables, and hot main dishes. These are all items that could be donated to those in the community who face nutritional security or don’t have access to healthy foods.
Easier said than done though, right? Concerts and sporting events take an enormous amount of planning and coordination to produce, donating food may not be high on the list of priorities especially if staffing has limited capacity. On the other hand, we’re now at a place where technology can fill such a gap. At Replate, we’ve developed a tech platform sophisticated enough to not only manage food donations and track the environmental impact but will also gauge the nutritional value of those donations. We take the planning, orchestrating, and executing out of the hands of event producers and enable them to focus on their work while subsequently, saving food and supporting the community via our matching algorithm. With a few clicks, events like those we’re excited to attend this summer and fall, can reduce waste and make sustainability a practical and seamless part of operations.
In fact, Replate will be fortunate enough to lead this specific charge with Cisco at the 2020 Dubai Expo, which begins in October and runs through March. We are the official food rescue partner of the world fair, an event that has never embraced food recovery in the past and is one of the first in the world to put it into practice. Over 25 million people will attend, wining and dining on some of the most fanciful and delicate food from around the globe. Curries from Pakistan. Brazilian superfruits. Yemeni rice dishes and dips. The Dubai Expo is putting sustainability, mobility, and opportunity in focus, building grand pavilions to showcase global developments in technology, infrastructure, business, and entertainment, including the future of food. A turnstile of exhibitions will reveal how we source and produce what we eat, and maximize resources in a world without borders.
Centered among the vertical farms and multi-sensory restaurants, 190 countries will display their entrepreneurial endeavors, and among the slate will be a food court and best of the best fine dining where Replate will demonstrate the next phase of the food system. Food with greater potential, enjoyed, repurposed, and fulfilled. Our platform will coordinate the rescue and distribution of surplus from restaurants in the court to the food bank serving the UAE’s community. It will model what can be done at events large or small, with sophisticated tech and resourceful data.
And if we can handle a six-month fair with millions of people, we can handle it anywhere.
