Healthy foods for all – collaborations to recover healthy unused food

In an earlier project, two business plans were developed focused on social solutions for food waste: one business plan targeted auctions, another supermarkets. In the current project, the implementation of these business plans were realized and tested. Business plan 1 focused on the integration of food surpluses from a supermarket into the working of a social restaurant. Business plan 2 focused on a collaboration between Flemish auctions for vegetables, food aid organizations, and social economy companies.

Currently, only preliminary results of these practices are available. The final report will be ready by the summer of 2017. Based on the provisional report, it was affirmed that it is an interesting challenge to bring together two worlds, i.e., the social and regular economy. Self-evidences such as the uniformity of social restaurants and that food surpluses always have a positive financial effect on an organization, were questioned and the project brought many new insights. However, the aim to reach disadvantaged people through these kind of efforts stands firm.