Copia

Waste less, feed more.

Copia helps businesses track and manage their food waste, donate edible excess food to those in need, and reap significant financial benefits from reducing waste and feeding the community.

Why?

Every year in America, we waste 2 times more food than there are hungry mouths to feed in the world*. Extreme food waste in the presence of hunger is one of the most disturbing, yet solvable, paradoxes of our time. Businesses throw away hundreds of millions of pounds of food while others face hunger on a daily basis, and these groups often live across the street from each other.

As food donation gains momentum across the US, the issue of “donation dumping” is rising. Nonprofits receive more food than they can store and are left with the burden of disposing the excess, defeating the purpose of donating in the first place—to eliminate waste and ensure excess food feeds people, not landfills.

Our app, Copia Connect, is designed to enhance the donation experience for our nonprofit partners. When a donor inputs a donation, our algorithm matches the donation to a nonprofit that can accept it at that time, prioritising those that have requested on-demand donations.

Funding would allow us to…

…expand at a faster pace, establishing permanent roots and additional food donor and food recipient participation in new locations. Since we launched in 2016, we’ve expanded to 13 cities and recovered nearly 2 million pounds of food. We’re on track to feed 3 million people in 2019 and are currently piloting a service with a national restaurant chain in the United States, which would result in an additional 1.7 million meals donated to nonprofits every year.

We would also place a huge focus on operational efficiency with the employment of experienced engineering, operational, and sales management professionals.

What’s your blend for success?

Since the beginning, Team Copia has been defying the status quo. We don’t settle for the way things “have always been” and our blend for success is to break boundaries and push innovative thinking. Our goal is to push conventional ways of thinking to inspire systemic changes to our food supply system.

*World Food Program USA 2019