Dive Brief:
- The Spoiler Alert app tackles food waste — a looming issue for the food industry and country as a whole — by removing barriers and streamlining the process for companies to sell or donate their surplus inventory. This, the MIT Sloan graduate app developers hope, will keep these products out of landfills.
- For donations, the app connects retailers, producers, and suppliers to nearby nonprofits. When the products are not edible anymore, the app connects users to companies that make fertilizer and animal feed so the products still do not go to waste.
- A three-month pilot program with eight organizations saw about 10,000 pounds of food donated through the iOS app, sometimes in just a few minutes.
Dive Insight:
In addition to reducing food waste, Spoiler Alert's developers believe that the app's secondary benefits for companies are plentiful as well.
"Spoiler Alert is as easy as throwing food away," said co-founder Emily Malina. "What we offer is an opportunity to save money through a variety of ways. If companies are able to reduce the amount of food they throw away, they can have fewer hauling pickups, which reduces hauling fees. We offer a secondary market for discounted food sales, which enables new revenue streams, and streamline and simplify the documentation for tax benefits, which are quite sizable."
An app like Spoiler Alert is a win-win for food and beverage companies looking to make a difference without making a huge investment in overhauling their operations to otherwise become more sustainable — a focus that is growing more common today.
This app comes not long after the USDA debuted FoodKeeper, a food storage app targeted at consumers.