Overall, my experience with Flashfood was excellent. The items I picked up were always fresh, with no bruises or mold. Customer service was friendly and knowledgeable, and I didn’t wait long to get my orders. I thoroughly enjoyed the variety in each bag, and the overall ordering process was convenient and hassle-free.
To unpack the Flashfood business model and underpinning philosophy in greater detail, I interviewed Esther Cohn, Flashfood’s Head of Communications & Public Affairs.
1. How did the idea to create Flashfood come about? What was the inspiration / motivation?
Our founder Josh Domingues began thinking about food waste after a conversation with his sister, who shared her frustration with throwing away $4,000 worth of food at her catering job. Josh dug into the research on food waste and discovered that global food waste ranked as the third-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. While it occurs at most levels of the supply chain, Josh identified that where he might be able to have an impact on the problem was actually within the grocery store. The idea was simple – build an app that could alert today’s digital consumers about discounted groceries before they were thrown away.
2. How do consumers save on groceries by using Flashfood?
Grocery stores list items on Flashfood at 50% off their original retail price. By shopping with Flashfood, consumers cut their grocery bill in half. On a daily basis stores post produce, meat, and dairy, and other fresh items and shoppers purchase through the app and head in store to pick them up. Flashfood enables shoppers to better access nutritious, high-quality staples at affordable prices. Since launching, we’ve helped shoppers save over $333 million dollars on their groceries.
3. How do grocery stores benefit from partnering with Flashfood?
Grocery stores in America produce around 16 billion pounds of waste annually. By partnering with Flashfood, grocery stores recover money on food they were previously throwing away; reduce their waste disposal costs; attract new customers from our network of 1.5 million users; and increase store foot-traffic. So far, we’ve helped grocery stores divert over 136 million pounds of food from landfills.
4. I have seen a lot of discounted produce on the app. Is the $5 produce box the most popular item on the app to date?
Yes! It is far and away our most popular item in every market. Not only do we throw away over 30 million tons of produce per year, with fruits and vegetables making up a massive amount of our food waste – at the same time only fewer than 1 in 10 people in the US eat the recommended amount of fruit and vegetables. Both of those problems shouldn’t exist at the same time: there’s a disconnect. We’re hoping our $5 produce box makes it easier for Americans to bridge that gap. To date, we’ve sold over 3.2 million boxes.
5. How many stores do you collaborate with at the moment, in how many states?
Flashfood is available at more than 2,300 stores across 33 states and 10 Canadian provinces. We’re adding new stores every day, so keep an eye out! Also, let us know if there’s a store near you that should have Flashfood, big or small we’d be happy to add them to our network. We recently launched the Tell Us Where page for shoppers to suggest which grocers they’d like to see us at.
6. What do you consider to be the most significant accomplishment for Flashfood so far?
It’s definitely the progress we’ve made towards our mission. Our shoppers are feeling the strain on their grocery budgets, but they’re also savvy enough to know that Flashfood is a tool to make food more accessible and affordable.
What makes our work meaningful is when we hear from shoppers themselves about the ripple effect Flashfood is able to make on their lives outside of food. I recently spoke with a shopper who’s a senior living on a fixed income. Flashfood allowed him to stretch his budget amid fluctuating grocery prices in his community, in addition to helping him enjoy nutritious meals. As a result, he was able to save over $750 in a year, money that was then dedicated to a family trip where he was able to spend quality time with his mother.
Impactful experiences such as these are what make the Flashfood team proud of the work we’re doing everyday. They inform our business approach to technical projects like launching a new shopper app, but also drive our team culture of showing up and making a difference.
7. What are some of the challenges you are facing coming from stores and consumers, respectively?
For stores, the largest challenge we’re seeing is simply how easy it is to throw food away. It’s built into the system and is part of why the problem of food waste is as big as it is. Our job as a marketplace is to encourage our retailers, who are responsible for the supply side of the marketplace, to post as much as they can and waste as little as they can. We do this by rewarding them for posting and making the Flashfood app as fun and as easy as possible to use. Later this year we’ll be launching a brand new app for our partners
On the consumer side, we just need to be available in more places and in more stores. We’re in 33 US states, but there are still thousands of grocery stores where we haven’t launched yet. The more accessible we are, the more people that will have access to fresh, affordable food. That’s our mission and we’re going to get there!
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For previous coverage of Earth Day related themes, you are welcome to check out my posts here and here.
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