Food Waste Summit

Wednesday Oct. 23 from 12-4 pm l Skyline Room, Oakland Convention Center

The VERGE 19 Food Waste Summit is a half-day, invitation-only working session, organized in collaboration with the World Resources Institute, focused on accelerating the technologies, partnerships and best practices that are dramatically reducing or eliminating food waste from corporate and institutional foodservice operations.

It’s become well known that about a third of the world’s food  — roughly $1 trillion worth annually — never gets consumed, ending up instead in landfills or disposed of in other ways. That adds up to a massive waste of resources that is a significant contributor to climate change and resource scarcity. All this during a time when hundreds of millions of people don’t have sufficient access to fresh, affordable and healthy foods.

In recent years, a wide range of partnerships, campaigns and other initiatives have been launched, as well as dozens of corporate and institutional commitments, to reduce or eliminate wasted food in restaurants, cafeterias and catering operations found in companies, public agencies, hospitals, hospitality venues and other institutional facilities. Technologies, from blockchain and artificial intelligence to the Internet of Things, are key enablers of new and powerful solutions to accomplish these goals.

One key ingredient is collaboration — the blending together of different parts of food and waste value chains to fully understand what it takes to eliminate food waste. The VERGE 19 Food Waste Summit will bring together many of these stakeholders to create a collective understanding of the systems, best practices and enabling technologies required to solve this issue. 

 

Past Summit Participants

Agenda

The Summit begins with an opening lunch to establish the focus and frame for the session. Participants will then engage in a series of facilitated discussions centered on both broadening and deepening their understanding of the roles of key players needed to decrease or eliminate food waste, followed by more focused discussions laying out specific opportunities and challenges. The Summit is designed to be an interactive, roll-up-your-sleeves experience, with few speeches and slide presentations.

 

What You Can Expect

  • Deep learning about the nature of food waste and the various approaches to solving it in corporate and institutional foodservice operations

  • Focused networking with a diverse group of leaders who can be powerful and effective allies and potential partners

  • Collaborative investigation of key actions you can take, individually and through your organization, that can accelerate change

Who Should Attend

Participants include leaders in:

  • Corporate and institutional foodservice procurement and operations
  • Hospitality and food service management, including schools, hotels, restaurants and corporate campuses
  • Foodservice distributors
  • Government, hospital and education food service operations
  • Technology solution providers
  • Food rescue organizations
  • Foundations and nonprofits
  • Municipal facilities, foodservice and waste management

Topics We Will Address:

  • Adopting and scaling best practices in menu planning, food preparation, and procurement to optimize food-utilization

  • Ensuring all food that is still safe for human consumption is rescued (and eaten)

  • Influencing the behaviors and expectations of “eaters” in order to waste less food

  • Engaging frontline staff to adopt behaviors that support food waste reduction efforts 

  • Developing a robust business case for reducing food waste

  • Diverting food waste from landfills to higher-value uses (i.e. to compost, use for alternative products)

  • Collecting actionable data on the quantity and causes of food waste

  • Accelerating the market for cost-effective technologies that reduce food waste

  • Leveraging technology to better align procurement so that what’s ordered matches what’s needed