FoodCloud records first donation in Kenya as expansion continues

Food Cloud, the Irish social enterprise that aims to tackle the amount of food wasted here and around the world, has recorded its first donation in Kenya after introducing its platform to the country.

The firm was established in 2013 as the result of a project at Trinity College. Iseult Ward and Aoibheann O’Brien’s idea was to connect food producers to charities on a local basis to ensure that surplus food would reach those who could make use of it.

“We started with a very low-tech solution,” said Aoibheann O’Brien. “But we quickly realised that we would need a serious tech platform, and a partner.”

FoodCloud started by partnering with a single Tesco store on Talbot Street in Dublin in October 2013. As the Tesco partnership began to expand, the firm outsourced its technology development to improve the usability of its platform.

When other retailers like Aldi, Lidl and Dunnes came on board, it enabled FoodCloud to develop a bespoke platform of its own. Ten years on, it operates in five countries and over 3,000 stores.

“Our platform is now in its fifth generation and is completely designed by our own tech team,” O’Brien said.

She added that the digitisation and formalisation of food donations is what makes FoodCloud unique. “There is something similar to FoodCloud in almost every country in the world, but most of it is not digitised,” she said.

In Kenya, our goal is to cut out the middleman between rural food donations and rural charities

Expansion to the UK, the Czech Republic and Slovakia came via Tesco, while the move into Kenya was supported by Irish Aid.

“In Kenya, our goal is to cut out the middleman between rural food donations and rural charities. We want to avoid donations having to be distributed via Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, and instead going directly to their destinations,” O’Brien said.

FoodCloud is also continuing to tackle food waste on the production side.

“We realised that food is also being wasted earlier in its production cycle, so we established warehouses in Dublin, Galway and Cork,” said O’Brien, adding that the warehouses work as hubs to which food producers can deliver surplus food in bulk.

“Nando’s and KFC supply us with frozen protein products, but we also work with farmers and other producers,” she said.

The foods delivered to the warehouse are mostly foods that have an expiry date that is too close for distribution to a store, but which can be used by charities well within the usable time frame.

FoodCloud employs 82 staff, but O’Brien said it can also rely on what she described as “an army of volunteers” that includes corporate partners.

“Businesses like AIB, for example, have established volunteer days, where their staff come to work with us for a day,” O’Brien said.

The funding for the company comes from a mix of donations and the small fees that charities pay to be part of the FoodCloud network. In 2022 it had a turnover of €8.5 million, of which just over €341,000 came from membership fees.

“We received a research and development grant from Enterprise Ireland that helped us establish our platform in Kenya,” O’Brien said.

“At the start, a lot of charities and producers had doubts about donating food, but we have established ourselves over the last 10 years.”

This Making it Work article is produced in partnership with Enterprise Ireland