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Did you know that 18,5% of fresh food bought by restaurants ends up wasted? Overall, restaurant waste causes 16% of greenhouse gas emissions.
Hello everyone, we are Akshit and Pablo from hackathon team Roots! Today, we are going to tell you about our story with Roots at the Feeding The Future hackathon and how this platform can help reduce the carbon footprint of the restaurant industry!
First, get to know us a bit! We both study in the same university, Technische Universiteit Delft, in the Netherlands. Akshit loves running, while Pablo is more into watching TV, but we share the same interest in computer software and coding.
We got to know about Feeding The Future Hackathon through social media. The idea about Roots had already been built before, and we found that it could be a suitable solution for the challenge with Forum Virium Helsinki.
So you might wonder why we named our solution “Roots?” Roots are the anchorage part of plants and play a role as the transmitter, delivering nutrition and nurturing the trees. Our solution is associated closely with farming, and just like roots, farms provide the food that we eat every day.
The story of Roots takes inspiration from the Foodsharing Delft community. In our place, every month, the team gathers to collect nearly-expired food from supermarkets to give away to the public for free. On the other hand, these supermarkets have not been able to order a sufficient amount of food due to the lack of data prediction. Some solutions have been created before us to solve these problems, but we bring Roots to the next level through the fusion of Artificial Intelligence and Group buying. The platform helps prevent food waste by using past sales data to forecast future order amounts. The deep learning algorithm can predict the future with 86% accuracy, which is 16% more compared to current methods, helping restaurants save 30% of the budget.
Watch our solution HERE
When joining this competition, we would have the chance to raise awareness of the public towards food waste and also get Roots validated from the professionals. The overall experience has been so great. During the hackathon, we encountered some problems regarding communication and data insufficiency, but now looking back, we are confident that we have done great jobs. Our mentor Kaija gave us valuable feedback on how to improve the platform and introduced us to some connections. The organizing team supported us throughout the whole event. We especially love the platform Remo. Due to COVID-19, we had to adapt to the new situation and move everything online. But with Remo, we had the feeling that we were living in a real event; meeting new people in the Networking Lounge, hanging out in the Lunch area and working in HackerSpace.
We have made so far 60% of the progress. This opportunity from Feeding The Future has helped us reach closer to the final steps. In the upcoming months, we are looking forward to having more customers and hopefully to deploying the platform by the end of the year.
We are on our mission to a zero-carbon footprint. Thank you for supporting us on our journey!
Akshit and Pablo
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