French app combats food waste through community and information

Meal Canteen arranges the planning of meals and offers nutritional information to reduce food waste in communal eating environments

Spotted: The aim of the Meal Canteen app is to reduce food waste. Through the app, users are able to book meals in advance of attendance. This allows catering staff at restaurants and schools to plan the amount of food they need in advance, ensuring a reduction in their food waste. 

The app also provides information on where products originate, how they were made and what allergies they may contain. The long-term thinking with this approach is that by giving consumers more information about the food they eat, their eating habits can be redesigned to choose only the food they will finish, thus reducing food waste.  

The start-up, comprised of 11 members, is working on new developments in the app, including a function to monitor calorific intake. They are also extending their reach to the employees of a group of banks, offering a meal payment function to the package. 

Since 2018, the app has built up a user base of around 10,000, with its sights set even higher. Denis Olivier, founder of Meal Canteen, explains that “In 2019, we raised a total of almost one million euros”, and by summer 2020, they are aiming to raise between one to five million euros.