Imagine receiving a notification on your phone in the afternoon telling you that the shop downstairs has fresh food on sale at a discount. Done? Done: it's called Last Minute Sotto Casa. And we all benefit — in savings and satisfaction. Ethical satisfaction, too.
There is an app that lets shopkeepers put their fresh goods — which risk going unsold — on sale at reduced prices, and allows people to come and buy them. Doing good for their own wallets, for the shopkeeper, and beating waste. It's called Last Minute Sotto Casa.
There already exists, and is working even if still in its early stages, a platform for our mobile phones (there is also, of course, a website) that combines all these advantages. It is free. It gives new lifeblood to that entire circuit of small shops and minimarkets that keep the social fabric of the neighbourhood alive. Fresh, good food in shops is not thrown away. It is not taken from the poor or from the Banco Alimentare, which in any case would not move for three chickens and a ricotta.
Real money is saved — a lot of it. Shopping returns to the dimension of the convenient rather than the impulsive: the wholesome pleasure of buying whatever is available at the shop downstairs is reborn. And, since we're there anyway, we also pick up a jar of sauce, two rechargeable batteries and a shower gel, to the delight of virtuous, anti-waste shopkeepers.
The founder of Last Minute Sotto Casa, Francesco Ardito, explains to us how it works, who it benefits and why we should all have this app on our phones.
Let's start with the food waste figures. The global and Italian statistics are chilling. Is there one particular figure that shocked you, that stirs outrage?
Yes. But since the figure of 1.3 billion tonnes of food wasted every year in the world is so enormous it's hard to visualise, I'll quote a Corriere della Sera headline: Milan's bakeries throw away 18 tonnes of bread a day. Multiply that figure by all the major cities, and by all the delicatessens, greengrocers, minimarkets, and we'll have some idea of the scale of the waste! There are small supermarkets everywhere, in every neighbourhood.
You have something of an obsession with small supermarkets. Why?
Because the Last Minute Sotto Casa platform is open to all people and all shopkeepers, and everyone can share their offers of fresh food close to its expiry date. But how much stock will a greengrocer be able to put on offer because it's too close to its use-by date? They might put up an offer once every ten days at most. A small supermarket, on the other hand, will probably have mozzarella, eggs, frankfurters, entire crates of things to put on offer almost every day.
So, to answer the question, there are two reasons why small supermarkets are the first that should sign up to Last Minute Sotto Casa. One, they have a constant flow of goods of the most varied kinds. Two, they already love us because otherwise they're forced to throw things away, to put them in the end-of-line basket. Imagine the convenience of having a digital megaphone with which to tell all the customers in the area, "100 metres from you, there's fresh ricotta and sauce on offer." Our tool helps local residents, it helps them, and on top of that, since you're there anyway, you always pick up something else.
How does it work?
By joining Last Minute Sotto Casa, all shopkeepers instantly share their offers on fresh, near-expiry goods. Instead of throwing them away, they alert all citizens who have downloaded the app for free — naturally: for iOS, iPhone, Android and on the website. We have set a small fee for shopkeepers to publish and circulate their daily offers on fresh food that would otherwise go to waste.
We spent a long time working out which of the possible revenue models (a startup is sustainable only if it sustains itself) to adopt — whether to differentiate by category (no), whether to retain a few cents from discounted sales (no). It's clear that our source of income will come solely from traders. We will keep a free tier for everyone, with offers possible on a few product categories, to keep their community alive. Beyond that, for local minimarkets, there will be a monthly fee or a freemium mix model.
We also noticed something. We started in Turin, and found that, even though Last Minute Sotto Casa is a platform created essentially to share discounts and special offers on fresh food in the shops downstairs — so, to save money — in the more "upmarket" neighbourhoods there are ten to fifteen times more registered users than in the more working-class ones! As if people had grasped the rational, ethical and social purpose of not wasting, in addition to the dimension of pure financial saving.
It would seem that everyone gains from this: shopkeepers, people, the environment.
Indeed, I like to describe my startup as a "win win win" model. Everyone wins. People receive alerts from shops near their home that have near-expiry goods. Shopkeepers don't throw them away and in fact make a little something from them. Costs, waste and environmental impact are all reduced. The profits will go towards the structure, covering the initial investment, and new offices. We are a service company, an innovative startup with a social vocation (which entitles investors to tax benefits).
How much waste is actually avoided? What are the first tangible results of your work?
We conducted interviews with the owners of 22 shops in Turin, going in and asking them: "When you run an offer, how much did the products weigh?" We asked fishmongers, minimarkets, greengrocers. By calculating everything they put on sale and multiplying by the average number of offers in Turin, we're looking at a tonne to a tonne and a half of food in Turin alone that is sold, at a very low price, instead of being thrown away still perfectly good.
Proven proof of a winning idea, for a startup, is the institutional recognition it receives. What prizes have you already won?
Legambiente awarded us the "Premio innovazione amica dell'ambiente 2015". Altroconsumo – Expo awarded the "Healthy & sustainable food consumers communication", Aica the "Premio associazione internazionale comunicazione ambientale", Il Club Dirigenti Vendite & Marketing the "Odisseo 2015 – l'eccellenza alimentare" prize, Edison the "Pulse 2015" prize, the "European Impact Award 2015", the "Premio innovazione giovani Confcommercio"; we were the only Italian finalists at the European Social Innovation Competition 2015. On 25 February we receive the "Premio Nazionale Innovazione" from the Minister of Education Stefania Giannini, while I am in Amsterdam presenting the startup.
How would you phrase the invitation to download the Last Minute Sotto Casa app for free?
As a notice to shopkeepers: give us a hand in not letting fresh food get thrown away. Because it is absurd that there is fresh food that in fifteen minutes will be in the bin, while in front of you there are ten local residents ready to come and pick it up and pay for it!
The website is already live, www.lastminutesottocasa.it, and everything is done through the app for Android and iOS. The user pays nothing, ever, and receives offers with complete ease.
What numerical targets do you have?
In my view, this app can reach millions of users. We have no hesitation in saying that our short-term expansion plans include reaching millions and millions of users, and then exploring foreign markets.
What makes you think you will reach these figures?
We're seeing signs of exponential interest. Let me give two examples. One: a Crai supermarket in Collegno that has a Facebook page with 220 likes published a wonderful post about waste, and was inundated with 140 comments and shares combined, all from customers writing "well done" and praising the post. Two: we had a meeting at Bocconi University in Milan with Professor Paola Dubini, director of the degree programme in Economics for the Arts, Culture and Communication, who put her students at our disposal to analyse new developments in four areas (the most promising European countries for expansion, competitor projects, business model assessment, engagement strategies) and told us: "you risk becoming another Airbnb"… An Airbnb against waste in shops — if only! Now, though, we need to get all shopkeepers on board. We're collecting sign-ups. At conferences I always ask: how many of you have a trusted local shop, one whose owner you know personally? The barista, the fishmonger, a minimarket. If everyone told the person who does and showed them the app…
Let's do it. And let's remember that downloading the app is very easy: on the App Store for iPhone and on Google Play for Android. The website is www.lastminutesottocasa.it and the Facebook group is Last Minute spesa sotto casa.