The context

One third of the world's food production is wasted. The fact that a significant amount of food is produced but not consumed by humans has substantial negative impacts: environmental, social and economic. It is estimated that 8-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions are associated with food that is not consumed. Reducing food waste at retail, food service and household levels can have many benefits for people and the planet.
 

The main mission of Fruitcollect is to harvest the unconsumed fruits of private gardens to fight against food waste. The non-profit organization also supports producers by buying back their surplus at a fair price. Part of the harvested fruit and vegetables is directly redistributed to partner social organizations. And in order to support FruitCollect's social actions, the other part of the harvest is transformed into 100% Belgian and natural juices.

The challenge

Following a record harvest, Fruitcollect had to sell almost three times the volume of the previous year. The challenge was therefore twofold: finding new potential customers while optimizing the delivery system.

Regarding the delivery system, the AS-IS situation is the following :

• FruitCollect had 2 employees in charge of the deliveries and 2 vans, which was clearly insufficient to handle the growing volumes;
• The delivery software was not optimized and data quality could be improved;
• Fruitcollect wanted to reduce the carbon footprint of deliveries;
• The cost of delivery was 0,23€/bottle.

Regarding the search for new potential customers:

• B2B sales represent 90% of total sales and B2B customers (stores, grocery stores, etc.) buy directly from FruitCollect without going through intermediaries;
• As the products are perishable, it is important to be able to sell the volumes produced;
• During Covid, the E-shop was developed, allowing B2C sales to grow.
   

The key takeaways

Here are some ideas proposed by the students to tackle this problem:

• Considering and proposing new packaging, such as bag-in-box for example;
• Reflect on the delivery by cargo bike;
• Hiring people in social reintegration for the deliveries;
• Using a distributor to increase sales and delegate deliveries.