The Munch platform in Hungary | Food, environmental and social awareness
MUNCH the platform to prevent food waste in Hungary
MUNCH the platform to prevent food waste in Hungary
Munch is a platform that enables restaurants, bakeries, shops, and hotels to sell or donate their unsold but high-quality food at a discounted price, offering it to consumers, who can also make donations.
Here we have the Too Good To Go app which is highly popular, but 4 students in Hungary created the platform Munch, also to prevent a food waste and thus creating food, environmental and social awareness. They even made a strategic partnership with the Hungarian Food Bank, which makes it possible for them to help those in need. This project called MunCharity, connects Munch customers and the people in need with the surplus food of the restaurants. A contribution by Katalin Gecsei from Hungary.
The idea behind the Munch platform
Globally, 1/3rd of all food produced, ends up being wasted, while one in nine people do not have access to the right quality or quantity of food. If the food waste would be a country, after China and the USA it would be the third biggest country in the world in terms of the carbon dioxide emission. To counter this problem the Munch’s team created this platform that enables businesses to sell surplus food directly to consumers while also providing a platform to directly donate surplus food to those in need.
Munch was founded by four university students, Albert Wettstein, Kirill Perepelica, Bence Zwecker and Botond Zsoldos in the summer of 2020, with the aim of creating a project that was based on a triangle sustainability model: food awareness, environmental awareness and social awareness. Bringing together customers and restaurants with food they would otherwise throw out – or as the company calls it, munches – is a bargain for everyone. However, the company also helps in feeding those in need with coupons for munches at drastically reduced prices, or even for free. In March the Hungarian Food Bank and Munch even made a strategic partnership as described above.
In ten months Munch has created contracts with more than 200 partners (restaurants, bakeries, hotel chains and retail businesses) including Starbucks and the biggest Hungarian bakery franchise, Lipóti, in 7 different Hungarian cities. They currently have 55,000 Food Savers, who registered through their application or website. In the online community, such as Facebook Groups, the initiative has so far been joined by 25,000+ Food Savers, who share their personal Munch experience every day. Most importantly, Munch saved more than 30,000 packages thanks to the Food Savers. This means 120 tons of prevented food waste and these numbers are growing.
“Everyday we are working for a better, and more sustainable future, where the food has a value and not one gram of it is thrown away, while on the other side of the world millions of people are starving”, says Belayane Najoua, Public Relations Manager of Munch.
