Food waste occurs throughout the supply chain. Upstream, waste begins at farms and food manufacturing businesses, where it is typically left in fields to be tilled over or converted into animal feed.

Yet over 80% of waste occurs downstream within consumer facing businesses — grocery stores, restaurants, and institutional foodservice — and homes, where current recovery and recycling rates are estimated to be only 10%.

Of the $218 billion spent each year on food that is never eaten, roughly two-thirds is spent by consumers. This is due to high volumes of uneaten food, the high cost to purchase food at retail, and the high value of meat — a popular family purchase item. Almost four-fifths of food waste stems from perishables, primarily fruits and vegetables, because they are inexpensive and quickly go bad.

The proposed model focuses on connecting the customers to restaurants one hour before they close, for meal discounts as high as 80 percent. Customers can enter their location and explore nearby deals, and they pick up their order at a time specified by the restaurant. The user can login on a particular restaurant website and then the pre-existing database appears in which the user can check with the offers or the discounts related to the leftover food at that particular restaurant.

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