With its Food is Precious Programme, IKEA is aiming to halve food waste before the end of August 2020. The store in Eindhoven, in the Netherlands, has been leading the fight against food waste. The team at Eindhoven reduced food waste by 45%, saving over 48,000 meals. We had the opportunity to fly to Eindhoven, and learn how they are solving their food waste issue. Watch their story in our latest video:
To achieve its reduction target, IKEA has chosen Winnow as one of two key partners. Using our smart scales, the group can understand the source of its food waste, measure it, and thereby reduce it. In a little more than a year since the rollout of the initiative, IKEA has globally saved more than 1 million meals. That’s over 450,000 kg of food, which is enough to enough feed one thousand people for a whole year.
IKEA is one of the world’s most popular brands receiving one billion visitors worldwide, every year. With their global reach, IKEA has the great opportunity to inspire brands and individuals to take measures against food waste. The Group brought Winnow to Eindhoven to help the team manage food waste increasing the kitchen’s efficiency and contributing to the environment at the same time.
To reduce food waste, the team has been using Winnow to identify the top three most wasted dishes each day. That helps the team focus on reducing the production volumes both for these dishes and the rest of the range in order to decrease overall waste. The team has also concentrated on ordering according to anticipated production quantity. Today food waste has been reduced by 45% from the starting point, leading to a saving of €100,000. It is the equivalent of saving 48,000 plated meals.
"The experience with Winnow has been amazing. In one year we saved over 48 thousands meals. We never thought we had a food waste issue. We were so surprised that we actually had to calculate again to believe it". Said Maarten Raaijmakers, Deputy Food Manager at IKEA Eindhoven, during an interview to Winnow.
This inspiring example shows that with the right tools commercial kitchens can effectively reduce their food waste. We applaud IKEA for their forward-thinking initiative. They are leading the way on how companies should address this issue.
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