Wasting food? No more! – Hungarian app helps restaurants and customers

Photo: Nóra Csécsei - Daily News Hungary

Wasting food has always been a very serious and sad issue. Due to the way restaurants work and the fact that people tend to overbuy groceries, this is becoming a more and more pressing issue. Luckily, a Hungarian startup aims to mitigate at least some part of the problem.

Meet Munch. Munch is a website and mobile app where you could buy leftover food from restaurants near you for half the price. The coronavirus and the measures have taken their toll on most restaurants and people. This new application aims to mitigate the wasting of food and it is also beneficial for people and restaurants. Restaurants could sell perfectly good food they do not manage to sell during the day and people can buy high-quality food for a much better price.

According to Szeretlekmagyarország, it all started when four young Hungarian guys decided to create a company that focuses on environmental, economic, and social sustainability. This is how Munch was born.

“We founded the company eight months ago. All of us knew that we wanted to create a social enterprise that is about more than just profit. We have all agreed that we want to find a solution for wasting food,” Albert Wettstein told Szeretlakmagyarország.

With the advent of smartphones, the application can easily be installed on any device both for iOS and Android. The app is GPS based – similar to most food ordering apps – and you can find the best deals around your location. The more restaurants register, the more matches you are going to get.

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“Currently, we have around 150 registered restaurants and 20,000 people have downloaded the app. Since we started, 13,000 servings of food have been saved,” Bence Zwecker, one of the founders, proudly said.

If you find what you would like to order, or rather save, you need to pick it up on location. There are more than just one reason for this. Firstly, because these servings are usually half the price, delivery would cost much more than the food itself. Another reason, the founders highlighted, is that this way, it creates human interaction between the person who saved the food from the trash and the restaurant whose loss the customer had mitigated.

Szeretlekmagyarország also reports that the application has won the Highlights of Hungary special award for their idea just las week. Currently, they have registered restaurants in Debrecen, Szeged, Sopron and, of course, Budapest.

The founders emphasised, however, that as they are an app-based company, if there are enough restaurants in a certain area, they could launch their program there immediately.

Munch has achieved quite a few things since its launch, but the founders also aim to help those who cannot even afford food at half the price. Bence Zwecker said that they are currently working on the IT and logistics solutions for the problem.

They are in collaboration with a food bank and would like to help by donating the food for them that is not saved by customers.

This is a company that aims to benefit all people. The restaurants can mitigate their loss or even make some money on the food they have prepared but cannot sell during the day. The customers benefit as they can eat high-quality food for much less, the company can sustain itself via the app, and they have also helped get closer to solving the pressing issue of wasting food.