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Joyce Yip

When Carla Martinesi had her Eureka moment about starting a food-rescue service in the summer of 2020, she quit her marketing job – much to her mother’s dismay.
Almost three years on, Chomp has saved thousands of meals from 125 vendors including big names such as Slowood, Flash Coffee, Baked by Shangri-La, Levain Bakery, and The Baker & The Bottleman.
The Chomp app suggests nearby partner venues that offer discounted food. Users pay via the app and pick up in person within a certain time to minimise carbon emissions from deliveries.
On average, the offers are half off the retail price and usually come in mystery boxes – where the merchants tailor the selection based on daily leftovers – though this is left to the vendors’ discretion.

Flash Coffee, for instance, sometimes lists ingredients that are nearing expiry – such as Oatly, a plant-based milk. Chomp takes a commission on every transaction.
Martinesi’s brainchild is one of nearly 70 food-rescue programmes in Hong Kong – some dating back to the early 2000s. Despite their efforts, 1.3 million tonnes of food, the equivalent of 100,000 double-decker buses, were still disposed of in 2021 – according to the latest statistics from the Environmental Protection Department.
Though the food-waste recovery rate has been steadily rising, it is still only 4 per cent. Singapore, by comparison, has recovered 16 per cent and upwards since 2017, according to its National Environment Agency.
Technology a new weapon in fight against food waste for restaurants, NGOs
Food rescue is a mammoth challenge that has long plagued Hong Kong, but this has not stopped organisations like Chomp – alongside a number of other start-ups in the past few years – from taking a crack at it. Yet, what could they bring to the table that others have not already, especially when encumbered by a pandemic?
For Martinesi, Covid-19 was the springboard to Chomp. She saw restaurateurs’ struggles during the height of the city’s strict social distancing measures, when only tables of two were allowed and doors had to close at 6pm.
“With the restrictions, a lot of restaurants closed within a week but had already ordered a lot of produce that ended up in the bin. So we’ve designed our model to save food, yes, but also help out the restaurants,” Martinesi says, adding that Chomp’s flexibility allows partners to test customer responses to new recipes or list seasonal products.

Food-rescue programmes range from event-based, ad hoc collections to neighbourhood-wide or even cross-district, depending on logistics, the volume collected and the availability and quality of storage.
The biggest headache is logistics, which can mean a race against time, says Anne-Claire Béraud, Hong Kong country manager for Yindii. The Thailand-based app is similar to Chomp but mandates a half-price discount on all items and exclusively offers mystery baskets, to deter repeat customers from going after the same product.
She says Yindii is designed to fill the gap between food-rescue charities and the waste bin.
“Our objective is not to take food from people in need,” says Béraud. “But the reality is that most of the time charities pick up only once or twice a week or month. Plus, our vendors’ surplus is unpredictable and small, meaning charities won’t necessarily go pick it up, especially when the shops all close at around the same time. This just costs too much money.”

Eric Lam Cheuk-kin, Asia’s head of marketing for Pret a Manger – a Yindii partner since 2021 – says its 27 outlets joined to mainly sell its soup and hot foods – items its food-charity collaborator, Feeding Hong Kong, cannot take due to easy spoilage.
Pret a Manger holds hot items for only four hours, so Lam is grateful for Yindii’s help on both social and economic levels.
“We do our best in forecasting and giving leftovers to our team members; otherwise, we have to resort to the worst [option] – throwing it into the bin,” Lam says. “Yindii can reduce food waste from a commercial perspective so at least we can get that cost back.”

To date, he estimates Pret a Manger has sold 10,000 baskets via the app.
Another benefit is that the monetary transactions between vendors and customers eradicates the liabilities that come with donations, says Béraud.
“If there’s no structure in place, restaurants won’t donate surplus [food] because they’re liable,” she says. “The government must implement more incentives for companies to donate more easily.”
Daisy Tam Dic-sze, an associate humanities professor at Baptist University, differentiates her bread-rescue programme, Breadline, with convenient drop-off points and an automated sign-up system.

Founded in 2020, Breadline hosts bi-weekly pickups from 144 bakeries, restaurants and convenience stores across Hong Kong. Similar to Feeding Hong Kong’s Bread Runner programme, Tam’s app lists pickup times for each bakery.
The bread collected is then dropped off at The One in Tsim Sha Tsui in Kowloon or Causeway Bay’s Windsor House on Hong Kong Island – unlike Feeding Hong Kong’s sole location in Yau Tong – before it is donated to charities such as ImpactHK and Refugee Union, public housing estates and mental rehabilitation shelters.

Since its establishment, Breadline has recovered close to 190,000 pieces of bread and engaged almost 850 volunteers, of which 30 per cent are regulars.
Tam credits her success during the pandemic to Breadline’s focus on Hong Kong Island, where food-related community partners are comparatively fewer than in other districts.
“If you’re a shop in Sham Shui Po [in Kowloon], you have all the community partners around you: you don’t need volunteers,” she says, adding that her system keeps in mind the fact that “time as well as people’s compassion and efforts are also resources, even though they don’t cost anything”.

Taking bread rescue to another level is Breer, a start-up conceived by four students at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology during the suspension of physical classes in 2020.
Breer collects surplus bread from a few bakeries and all of Maxim’s Hong Kong chains. This loot is then either donated or processed to extract the barley and brewed into one of three beers, including the crowd-favourite, Bolo Bao IPA.
“Hong Kong loves its bolo bao [pineapple buns],” says co-founder Anushka Purohit. “So we wanted to make something that’s close to our hearts that often goes to waste at the end of the day.”

Each bottle of the IPA carries a customised QR code indicating the water saved, sustainability impact and the bakery from which the bread was collected.
To date, Breer has saved 15,000kg (33,000lb) of bread and brewed around 12,000 litres of beer, which can be found in places such as Craftissimo, HKTVmall, Slowood, Ho Lan Jeng. Despite these wins, Purohit remembers the challenges she faced when asking for donations.
“A lot of business owners wouldn’t just give things away – even if they end up in the bin – they want to see how much they can milk them,” she says.
“For some of these bakeries, it sometimes almost gives them a sense of satisfaction that their surplus is going to the bin rather than to somebody who needs it. They don’t want to be liable.”

A Good Samaritan Act that encourages corporate participation would help boost donations, she says, but to truly tackle waste at its roots demands data, and most importantly, a change in our relationship with food.
“Hongkongers really don’t realise the food scarcity the world faces and the kinds of privileges we enjoy in this city,” says Purohit.
Breadline’s Tam agrees, blaming overproduction and lack of communication between food producers, purveyors and consumers.
“Our relationship with food is quite alienated as we only know it via consumption: it’s accessible, cheap, plentiful and available all the time,” she says, adding that she once received 10,000 surplus mooncakes on the Mid-Autumn Festival.

Prepaid meal reservations and shorter supply chains might help restaurants better grasp demand, though she is quick to add that implementation might be hard in a city like Hong Kong.
“I can’t say this is a solution, but at least it drills in the idea that food is not available in constant, infinite amounts. Make customers honour their reservations and commit to them, or ask them to buy mooncake vouchers. But that’s wishful thinking given the high profit margins.”
Despite the doom and gloom, all four programme founders remain optimistic: for one, doggy bags are less stigmatised and penalties for leftovers at buffets and all-you-can-eats are increasingly common.
“Culture is alive, it’s not dead,” says Tam. “The people of this generation are changing old values. When we tell our parents not to order so much or ‘let’s pack this to take away’, we manage to transform the value of good hospitality and practice. That’s an ethical value that’s much more used in today’s discourse.”


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Hong Kong’s food-waste recovery rate is a mere 4 per cent but a slew of new food-rescue programmes aim to improve that and tackle the city’s culture of waste
Innovative ideas include mystery boxes of daily leftovers to taking the barley from bakeries’ surplus bread and brewing it into beer


Hong Kong’s food-waste recovery rate is a mere 4 per cent but a slew of new food-rescue programmes and apps aim to improve that and reduce the city’s culture of waste.


Hong Kong

Environment