According to the European Commission, nearly 100 million tons of food are wasted annually in the EU; and will raise to 120 million tons by 2020 if nothing is done. In 2014, the European Commission put forward objectives for food waste reduction in the EU with the aim of reducing food waste by at least 30 percent by 2025. “All actors in the food chain have a role to play in preventing and reducing food waste, from those who produce and process foods (farmers, food manufacturers and processors) to those who make foods available for consumption (restaurants, hospitality sector and retailers) and ultimately consumers themselves”.
Nowadays, most produce comes from big farms located far away from the final consumer, which need massive amount of resources (natural and non-natural). Due to the big distances between farms and final consumers, produce is usually picked before its ripe which translates into lower quality of food, low nutrients by the time of consumption. Not only that, but the whole production and transportation processes leave a massive environmental footprint.
Because of this, consumers and the hospitality sector are increasingly concerned with knowing where their food comes from, how it’s grown, the quality, and the impact it has on the environment. This changing attitude has led to the rising popularity of local food movements across the globe as well as triggering the rapidly emerging trend of urban agriculture: growing vegetables in the city.
In fact, a study done by AT Kearney shows that for a large percentage of consumers, local food outperforms natural and organic food. They found that customers associate sustainability-related attributes with locally sourced food as much as, or more than, organic food. Even though organic still runs strong, the willingness to pay for locally sourced items shows that it could be the next big thing in the food sector.
InstaGreen´s goal is to close the gap between producers and chefs/consumers by bringing fresh, locally grown, organic produce back into the city. While at the same time shortening the supply chain and drastically decreasing the carbon footprint by eliminating pesticides and herbicides from the growing process, reducing the natural resources required for growing produce as well as the processing and transportation costs, both financially and environmentally. With this in mind, we have developed a proprietary food-on-demand service, initially targeting environmentally high-end and conscious restaurants and at a second stage cafeterias in offices, schools, hospitals, etc., followed by individual consumers.
Increasingly, restaurants, especially conscious and high end restaurants, and chefs are taking note of the rising interest from consumers in eating locally, ecologically and responsibly. Chefs prefer locally sourced ingredients for their flavor and freshness and consumers recognize the advantage of knowing where their food comes from. Local farmers and farmer markets have traditionally been the source of top quality food for chefs, however, especially in big cities, access can be limited. Now, there is a new trend emerging; in big cities many top chefs are increasingly starting to grow their own food to ensure not only quality but also that they always have the ingredients they need.
All of these facts have led us to create an innovative offer with a combination of a product, a service and a production process that allows actors in the food chain to be in touch with the products at all times and take part in the reduction of environmental impact.
The overall objectives of the InstaGreen project will be to scale up and bring the current InstaGreenHouse and InstaGrow prototypes to industrial production level that is easy scalable, also allowing for a franchise business model, optimize the performance of the InstaGreenHouses and InstaGrows, and build a cloud based platform that will allow continuous communication between customers and InstaGreen.
