It’s been a long yet short trip to Ireland, but to finish things off, we visited Food Cloud for our last site visit. Food Cloud is a food waste company based in Ireland that not only transports excess foods from companies to smaller businesses like local pantries, but also is pioneering various other initiatives to bring down the overall amount of wasted food in Ireland. From a young age, I was always taught to never waste food, so I felt deeply connected to the story of Food Cloud and its mission. It’s such a waste to me, not only from a household financial standpoint, to just buy and let food become wasted, but also from an environmental standpoint, with all the necessary water, labor, and transportation to bring a crop often thousands of miles to your home, only for it to become spoiled. While I resonated with Food Cloud’s mission, one thing that surprised me was the community that Food Cloud made as a part of its business. I remember someone asking who their main competitors were, and they responded that there were no competitors in their market, because if they were able to reduce food waste as a whole, that was good for them. I think that this answer really showed how much of a collaborative environment the food waste industry is, and how deeply it is tied to the local community. Although Food Cloud transports food in a B2B (Business to Business) manner, thus not being able to engage in the community as much as other methods such as B2C (Business to Consumer), it is still a critical supplier of food for people in need. Connecting to local food pantries, food stores, and restaurants, it is still able to make its mark on the community. In the site visit, we also saw the two trailers that Food Cloud uses as its food truck, and that really showed to me that Food Cloud is trying to embed itself into consumers and create a more solid foundation for its community.

Food Cloud has come a long way from its founding almost twenty years ago, starting with cramming leftover food from a single grocery store and driving it to a charity, to becoming sponsored by the government and DHL. I believe that what made Food Cloud so successful is its own culture and the culture of the industry as a whole. From what I’ve seen in the site visit, Food Cloud is a very friendly and open community that is community driven and community led. Being a small team, they are able to communicate and bond more than big companies, which I think contributes to the community that Food Cloud builds around them. This helps because of how collaborative the food waste community is, welcoming Food Cloud and helping it become a key player in Ireland’s mission to stop food waste. One thing that I found innovative in Food Cloud’s business as a whole was the technology that Food Cloud uses. They were talking about developing and currently using an app, where business can report what foods they are able to donate to Food Cloud, even up to the number, so that Food Cloud is able to prepare the right vehicle to bring to transport all the leftover food. I felt that this not only helped businesses easily get rid of leftovers at the end of the day, it helps Food Cloud keep a good idea of its present, and somewhat future outlook of its inventory and what is coming into its warehouses. Overall, I was very impressed by the work that Food Cloud does, both morally and professionally, and I hope that they are able to make a significant dent in food waste in the years to come.