Extra Plate

Reducing food waste at the household level by promoting food sharing while enhancing community and cultural connection.

Many families have a lot of food that goes to waste that can be channelled to other communities in need of food.

Due to COVID-19 outbreaks, Most restaurants have shut down, people are also in need of connection but have little or no opportunities available.

Students have been equally affected. From my experience studying with international students, I have seen how difficult it is for them to access food due to limited work opportunities(low income).

Immigrants are affected due to limited resources to access food whilst dealing with cultural shock, not being familiar with the food in the UK.

solution

We aim to tackle food wastage, access, and shortage by enabling sharing of food among communities.

We are solving food wastage by creating a web application/system that will allow community users to safely share food among themselves.

Families create profiles, provide the contact information and a brief description of why they would like to share their meals, the recipients will log in and access the food items.

The platform will enable restaurants to share their food with community members instead of wasting it.

Beneficiaries 

Students, Low-income families will sign up and look for food/groceries within their area.

Our focus is solving food wastage at the household level by promoting food and grocery sharing among communities while enhancing cultural and social connections.

Food wastage 

According to the UN, the amount of food wastage is estimated at $1.6 trillion per year thus, US$ 680 billion in industrialized countries and US$ 310 billion in developing countries. In the UK  per capita waste is about 77kg amounting to approx 5.1 million tonnes yearly. see the image below.

The implication of food wastage impacts about 820 million people which is pictured as enough people to fill one of the largest stadiums in the world over 10 thousand times!

Locally here in the UK, According to the Urbantz survey, North East and East Midlands, 21% of people were unable to buy essential food. 
Food shortage in the UK has been partially created by inadequate food supply chain and Covid-19 related issues 

Families have reduced access to food due to increased prices in food, pandemic and reduced food supply. Food poverty is more pronounced now more than ever in the UK.

According to democracy: Nearly 2.6 million people will be unemployed by Mid 2021 the and the poverty rate of food poverty is among the worst in Europe. 

3.Culture

Communities are fragmented due to COVID-19. The ongoing pandemic has drifted families and individuals apart hence making it difficult for people to have a social life and share food a top source of cultural connection.

Low-income communities

Despite the UK being the fifth largest world economy, 14.5 million people of the population live in poverty. As per the YouGov, "residents of the UK were multiple times more likely to have experienced or to know people who have experienced, shortages of food and fuel than people in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden and Denmark, and somewhat more likely to have experienced them than those in the US."

Our solution will be able to help individuals with low income to have more access to food and groceries at the community level while increasing connections in the community. 

Local students and international students.

The survey done by the City University of London, among 1,200 students, results reveal that 41% of students were worried that their food would run out and almost 35% of students reported high or very high, levels of food insecurity. These factors were partially contributed by the pandemic and lack of supplementary income at school. Inadvertently, the problem reduced mental health well being among the students.

we aim to connect students at the universities across the UK with their local communities, and friends to increase food and grocery access through Extra plate.

People searching for specific cultural/specific food items in the community. 

Due to the COVID-19 restaurants have had a hard time staying in business hence creating a cultural gap in terms of food sharing. Extra plate would like to connect people again.

- I live among the students and hence, daily dialogue with them makes me understand their problems at a personal level.

I am at the ideation stage and designing the prototype for the app.
so far my fellow students and community members like the idea at school.

We aim to use a web platform for management and a mobile app to connect users.

The app will enable the producer/giver to upload the food and the available groceries. 

The users/consumers on the other hand they will log in and search for available groceries and food near their neighbourhood.

We aim to launch the solution to reach about 100,000 individuals who face food poverty and students at Reading city.

Expanding the program at university based cities in the UK and globally.

We aim to achieve this by collaborating with food sources like giant groceries stores and chain restaurants and food banks in the communities involved.
 we also aim to reach every households by increasing the marking of the platform through social media and google advertisement.

1. Measure through the number of subscribers per area or city, both the users and the producers/givers.
2. Measure the individuals return rate of the users on the app.
3. Measure the number of households willing to share groceries and food chains willing to be a part of the platform.
4. Looking at the number of meals shared and groceries shared across all the markets will be serving 

1. We are at the ideation phase, we would need market verification needs/ and product design. Thus we would need technical and product design.

1. Marriam Dia: background in Land and food systems at the University of British Columbia in Canada.
2. Jesse- computer science student.

Sobey(UK)
Save on food (Canada)

I would to advance my career in technology and social entrepreneurship and inspire more girls to get involved in technology especially in resource limiting setting.