Abstract
It is well established that food supply transparency is crucial to sustainability and food security. The world will need to feed 9 billion people by 2050 and according to the World Economic Forum, this increases the demand for food production by 60% (World Economic Forum, 2019). Addressing food wastage in the supply streams forms a crucial part in reducing the pressure on food production demands.Food Wastage is a major concern within the Food Industry globally. As improved production and distribution is being tackled to ensure adequate supply, the lack of available and viable methods for reducing wastage by measuring and tracking waste data at its source is an on-going challenge.This research investigates the barriers to adoption of food waste tracking solutions among five types of foodservice operators in Singapore using the Design Thinking approach. From the insights gained through user interviews, literature review and market scan, a prototype that addressed the adoption barriers identified was conceptualized, developed and tested in a local commercial kitchen. The user testing sought to demonstrate that monitoring the output of wastage during the food preparation process using an automated digital system is indeed valuable to kitchen staff and operations and that the solution can be made affordable, simple to implement and useful to operations as well as demand prediction of future ingredient orders, so that only what is needed is procured and processed. User feedback from the testing was gathered to provide inputs to future enhancements and potential productization of the solution. Currently, Food Wastage data collection is a challenge due to the manual process involved and inaccuracy of recording information by kitchen staff. The few available solutions in the market are expensive and require change to operational workflows; in which Foodservice owners are resistant to adopt. This research investigates the potential design and development of a digital solution that does not interrupt existing kitchen workflows while keeping implementation simple and its costs low. Vegetable wastage is the primary focus in thisresearch due to its substantial contribution to the entire food loss and waste ecosystem.The research and user testing concluded that a waste tracking solution can indeed be designed and built at a viable cost which is feasible to implement and desirable to kitchen staff, operations and management. The output of this research is a potentially viable commercial product design proposal.