SME Challenge: Support Food SMEs to become more sustainable

The SMEs participating in this process with their respective sustainability challenges are:

• FELFEL: FELFEL is the leading provider of employee catering in Switzerland with over 700 smart vending machines located throughout the country and 150'000 end customers.Food production emissions make up more than a third of global GHGs, of which roughly a quarter ends up as food waste. At the Climathon, we want to find out how we might minimise the upstream (sourcing) and downstream (waste) impact of our food offering in order to come closer to net zero.We would like to join with stakeholders from all relevant internal teams including product development, technology, revenue management, operations and sustainability. We hope to extend our internal experience with inspiring inputs from specialists and the wider Climathon community.

Challenge: How can we minimize the environmental impact of our products? How can we improve our Co2 footprint all along the supply chain?

Existing solutions: There are loads of ideas. Examples include: Extending vegan options; source more locally; too good to go style discounts; climate-focused subsidies; improved donation operations; decentralised distribution; circular packaging etc. The ideas are almost endless... at the Climathon, we want to quantify their impact to know where to focus.

• CookEat: CookEat is an online, peer to peer marketplace for homecooked food. They believe the environmental impact of the solution can be huge: Every portion shared with another household results in a kitchen staying cold; this means no water or electricity used and no foodwaste! They promote the use of plant-based ingredients and also enable saving opportunity costs when guests don’t need to go shopping (vehicle emissions) or order in from takeaway solutions that are poor for the planet.

Challenge: How to break down social barriers in community building around food-sharing?