Colorado Springs startup FoodMaven rescues ‘lost food’

Every year in the US, billions of pounds of perfectly good food is thrown away, but a Colorado Springs startup, FoodMaven, wants to capture this lost food and put it to good use.

It's an online marketplace with a simple goal, to capture and claim food that would otherwise go uneaten. All across Colorado Springs, delivered in green and white vans, food that would have been on its way to the trash finds its way to the kitchen. 

"If we just utilized everything, we wouldn't have people going hungry," said Megan Cornish, VP of External Affairs with the tech start-up.

The food is perfectly good. Sometimes it's just "lost."

"Lost food is anything that gets lost in the food system, just like it sounds," she said. 

Cornish says they're transforming the food system by taking oversupplied or imperfect food and redirecting to local restaurants and organizations.

"We're moving product from the farmer, from our suppliers, to our warehouse. We intake the product, put it up on an online marketplace and that's where chefs can shop for products that they're looking for," she said.

It's estimated about 40% of food in the United States ends up in landfills or the trash. Only half of that is post-consumer waste, meaning the scraps we scrape off our plate or the food that goes bad in our fridge. The rest of it is good food that gets wasted if local ranchers or farmers can't find buyers in time. 

"[FoodMaven] has discovered that small farmers and ranchers actually lose food or food gets wasted at a greater rate because they don't have direct access to market channels," she said. 

Cornish says asking the right questions when you eat out can send a message to area restaurants, encouraging them to buy local and re-capture lost food. 

"Then chefs know that the consumers care," she said. 

One in eight Coloradans don't know where their next meal is coming from. FoodMaven donates 20% of its products to local organizations battling hunger. FoodMaven is growing and they need more drivers. Click here for more information.