This afternoon, we traveled to Food Cloud’s Dublin warehouse which also serves as the nonprofit’s headquarters. As I am passionate about the environment and nonprofit work, I loved being able to learn more about this organization and how they work to serve others. Their business model, which has been quite successful, uses two solutions to connect food waste to local charities and communities in need: retail and hubs. Their first solution, with which the organization was founded, is a retail app that directly connects supermarkets to local charities in order to distribute daily amounts of food waste. Their second solution uses three warehouses in Dublin, Cork, and Galway as hubs for taking in large amounts of surplus food and then distributing it in more manageable quantities to communities in need. By addressing some of the sources of food waste in the complex food supply chain, Food Cloud is making it easier for supermarkets to do good for their community and help those who are food insecure all across Ireland.

As I look to compare Food Cloud to some of our other company site visits, the Guinness Enterprise Centre comes to mind. Both are nonprofit organizations that want to support and help others, but their methods of doing so are quite different. The GEC wants to help Ireland by supporting startups and economic growth while Food Cloud wants to help Ireland by reducing food waste and feeding those who are hungry. I am grateful for the opportunity to visit so many interesting and impactful organizations in Ireland because I feel that I will walk away from this trip knowing more about international business and more about myself. Not only did we have some great conversations with some incredible individuals, but I was also able to work in a group to collaborate on our course project. By working with the same group of people throughout the program, we were able to learn how best to communicate and be on the same page about our work. I think that through collaboration, I learned the importance of having clear team expectations so that we all end up with a final product that reflects everyone’s hard work.