Andrew Woo

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P1 Interview Notes ​

General Questions ​

  • Could you give a brief overview of your background?
  • How do you currently keep track of the food items in your household or restaurant?
    • How often do you check the expiration dates of the food items you purchase?
  • Do you face challenges with food items expiring before you can use them?
  • What do you do with food items that are about to expire?

Interview #1 ​

Who: Liu Jin Quan (Immigrant Seafood Owner From Florida)
Time: Saturday 11pm-12am

Questions ​

  • What do the typical food expirations for your buffet look like?
    • How do you deal with the fact that seafood can’t be kept for long times?
      • 16 months or 4 months, 2 months, shrimp → one year
  • How do you decide how much food inventory to purchase?
  • How do you currently keep track of the food items in your household or restaurant?
    • How often do you check the expiration dates of the food items you purchase?
  • How does working with seafood complicate or ease your ability to minimize food waste?
    • What regulatory compliances about food waste do you need to follow
  • How early can you tell that there will be leftover food that won’t be consumed?
  • What methods or systems does your buffet currently use to track and manage inventory and expiration dates for food items?
  • How do you ensure that buffet items are served before they expire?
  • What do you do when food items are about to expire?
    • If you discard them, about how much a week?
    • Do you currently have processes in place for food donation, disposal, or repurposing?
  • Have you considered donating excess buffet food to food banks or shelters?
    • If not, what are some of the benefits or drawbacks of collaborating with food banks and other organizations for food donations from the perspective of your buffet?
  • What role does technology/digital tools/apps already play in your buffet's day-to-day operations?
  • Are you open to using technology, such as mobile app to help manage your buffet’s food inventory and potential food donations?
    • What do you think are pros and cons for using a mobile app?
  • What types of information or notifications would be helpful for you to know when food items are about to expire or when you have excess inventory that can be donated?

Notes ​

非常感谢您能够接受我们的采访。我们是MIT的学生，计划开发一款能够记录食品过期日期的应用，以帮助减少食品浪费。我们之所以希望采访您，是因为我们了解您经营一家餐厅，想请教一下您是如何处理即将过期的食材的
您可以大概说一下您的信息和餐厅的经营模式吗？
叫货 sauce 3 month 保鲜期
不想浪费，每次order都要先用，早期货，先摆放出来，今天卖出去是什么样子
除非正好卫生局发现细菌，报纸，看见
除非被投诉，吃到不知道
过期时间，快要过期只会扔掉，美国吃了不好，医疗保险一两百万，告，不想碰雷，把别人吃生病很麻烦
会不会return给供应商，真的不能会扔掉
Order 太多，超过预算？这一批货，如果真的过期，20箱crab，几万，拆掉=》看看里面是不是真的坏掉，看颜色可以看出来，绿色，冰箱
客人吃的时候会不会拿太多，需要扔掉，不是buffet
点太多客人会说不好吃，退了，需要扔掉，不管有没有吃都要扔掉，不知道有没有生病什么的
最短最长海鲜过期时间，要看什么海鲜，美国东西都是冻的，有的时候是香肠，六个月，有的四个月，生蚝=》两个月，卖生蚝很严格，要看客人三个月内有没有人告你
进货如何决定数量，两个礼拜的量，三次单， 不需要换的太多（如果发现过期直接跟供应商退掉）每个月生意做多少?
扔了很多吗？下雨，电杆吹掉，停电=》冰箱都化掉
叫货，写下来，这个礼拜，下个礼拜用多少，多少牛肉，写下来，每个礼拜看看一两次，这个礼拜有没有多做少做生意
一个礼拜前可以发现，要么卖掉，要么丢掉
每个星期丢多少，很少，除非客人吃了不喜欢，sauce不一样等，才会扔掉
没开箱就不能退，开箱会退
海鲜不能捐给别人
Sauce的问题，没卖掉，怎么办 =》直接丢掉
如果有一个软件会记录货物，会对你有帮助吗，会精准
软件需要手动记录过期日期，但是会提醒你什么时候过期，会麻烦吗还是很有用?
过期的事情，他们是当天去看如果货没有过期，就开箱，什么时候开箱，什么时候写上去，两天之内卖掉，停电下雨=》周末浪费2个礼拜的货不能用
退给卖家怎么办？扔掉， 50-60 not a lot of money loss to company but in terms of food waste its a lot
他们还可以退到厂里，生产厂家=》扔掉
东西过期，要用的时候看一眼，分类？做出来几天就卖完了

  • 您的自助餐通常的食品过期情况是怎样的 （大概有多少会过期呢）？
    • 您是如何决定购买多少食品库存的？
    • 您目前是如何记录店里会用到的食材，以及他们的过期日期？
  • 如何应对海鲜不能保存很长时间的问题？
  • 您多久检查一次食品的过期日期？
  • 您可以多早地发现将有未消耗的剩余食品？
  • 您如何确保自助餐项目在过期前被提供？
  • 当食品项目快要过期时，您会怎么做？
  • 如果将它们丢弃，每周大约有多少？
  • 您目前是否已经制定了食品捐赠、处理或再利用的流程？
  • 是否考虑过将多余的自助餐食品捐赠给食品银行或庇护所？
  • 如果没有，从自助餐的角度来看，与食品银行和其他组织合作进行食品捐赠有哪些好处或缺点？
  • 您是否愿意使用技术，如移动应用程序来帮助管理自助餐的食品库存和潜在的食品捐赠？
    • 会觉得麻烦吗？
  • 您认为使用移动应用的利弊是什么？
  • 有关即将过期的食品项目或有多余库存可以捐赠时，哪些信息或通知对您有帮助？

Interview #2 ​

Who: Phoebe Heyman (Food Pantry Coordinator @ Food Distribution site: Magaret Fuller House)
Time: Sunday 1-2pm
Info: very short description of what they are looking for from prospective donors

Questions ​

  • Can you provide an overview of your food distribution site, including its size, the population it serves, and the types of food items you typically receive and distribute?
  • What kinds of food items do you accept?
    • Canned? Fresh?
    • Ready to eat (like leftover pizza, donuts, drinks, etc.)
  • What are your current practices for ensuring the safety and quality of donated food items? Specific regulations or guidelines?
    • How do you manage food donations with time-sensitive needs, such as perishable items that need to be distributed quickly?
  • What types of challenges do you face in terms of receiving food donations? Are there any categories/types of food that are often needed more than others?
  • How much of the donated food has already expired or been damaged?
  • What are the current typical sources of food donations? (Restaurants, grocery stores, individuals)
    • What percentage are small households versus restaurants?
    • Do you have or have you had any successful official partnerships with restaurants, foodservice establishments, or individuals for food donations?
    • Are there any specific preferences or limitations in terms of the quantity or frequency of food donations that your food pantry can handle effectively?
  • Are you open to using technology, such as a mobile app to help manage your food inventory and facilitate food donations? Are there existing technologies that you use?
    • How do you currently manage and track inventory in your food pantry, and what role does technology play in this process?
    • Do you currently have a way to express your specific food donation needs to potential donors (e.g., an online wishlist or regular communications with donors)?
  • Do you have any recommendations or insights that could guide the development of an app aimed at connecting food donors with food pantries like yours?

Notes ​

  • Overview of fuller house
    • Part of larger non profit margaret neighborhood house 1900s started
    • Part of settlement house movement, immigrants moving to us, help immigrants settled, help with resources, childcare etc,
    • Food pantry four days a week → most food pantry only help residents of city
      • Highest volume?
      • Population ~ ½ of people: older cantonese/chinese people or senior citizens, living with family , ½: live in cambridge, 80% live in public housing, lots of senior citizens, live in multigenerational households
      • Families with young children, more than ½ of patrons are female, experienced growth recently, ukraine immigrants, spanish speaking people, kazakhstan, Bengali
  • 3 times per month, registration cards, literally paper with name/dob/number of people, switch color when they re-register, majority of food from greater boston food bank
    • Some food pantries use barcode scanning system now, might want to implement in the future, but right now paper is easier than worrying about changing system
  • At most 5% - 10% of food is donations from individuals or groups (that conduct food drives). Around holidays (nov-dec), higher percentage of donations (maybe up to 10%, like from corporate groups/schools)
    • Even at peak, no more than 10%
    • Total: 9000ish pounds of food a week, 40000 a month, she’ll send us statistics by EOD or tmr
    • Keep track of stuff (low tech): 80% from greater boston food bank, comes in 2 forms
      • She orders, delivered on a weekly basis from food bank (giant warehouse, provides food for eastern half of state food pantries, they get it from company donations or grocery store donations, or USDA (paid by federal govt, esp frozen meat))
      • A lot of this is nearing expiration or has expired (pass date printed) but is still good
        • No regulation on what happens if food passes date printed
        • Training on how to determine food is still adequate to be served
        • Usually only signifies something about the quality of the food
        • Don’t put much effort into it, put in all for food bank
      • Significant portion → food rescue → supermarket things that don’t want to sell anymore
        • Supermarket have incentive to stop selling food earlier
        • Required by law to give to food pantry or food rescue
        • Food 4 free and love and spoonfuls(?)….
          • Inspect food for mold and expiring stuff
          • Fruit and vegetable that are possibly moldy → compost
          • Try to distribute everything
          • Try to give out prepared food same day
          • Not a lot of storage space
    • Yes occasionally have to throw out → rescued but prepared meals from corporate cafeteria → thursday afternoon → made previous thursday (don’t keep it)
    • How much to give to each party:
      • Give everyone pretty much same around, track how many people are in each individual → but no system that determines how much food
      • Families with children usually get extra
      • Dietary preferences, Halal meat, eggs → for people who don’t eat meat
  • Don’t have system for keeping track of everything
  • Have to recognize people
  • Barcode type system → develop system where it is easier to allocate different amount of food to people that have food
  • Inventory tracking system: people will ask for specific things (diapers, baby wipes, frozen chicken, etc). If they just want one thing, she’ll just give it to them usually
    • Inventory once a week (or not if they have basically nothing left, then she just orders everything from scratch)
    • Keeps track on paper, used to do it on computer, but didn’t have enough consistently leftover that would make tech system make sense (takes only about 10 min to see what’s left)
    • Small space, but might move into bigger space which would require more consistent way of tracking inventory on the computer (and maybe by people besides just her)
    • Don’t mark what’s left by hand when people take it, just look at what’s left at the end
    • She has in her head how much she wants to keep for the rest of the week
    • 50-90 people a day, need to have enough food left after friday to do saturday service, so might cut off service early (70 people)
  • Individual/corporate donations:
    • Can’t accept baby formula (but don’t get this that much anyways), have to throw out after expiration dates
    • Some big companies have team building exercises to make packaged meals (pbj, applesauce, etc), they’ll go pick it up
    • Food youtuber, Nick degiovanni(?), world’s largest cake, stunt-cooking
      • They’ll donate the food afterwards (once a year)
    • Google, Marriott, biogen, biomed realty, cambridge ringe & latin school, other elementary schools, cambridge center for adult education, some religious groups, temple beth elogim (???), happen a few times throughout the year
    • Largest concern: want better way to allocate different amounts of food to people based on family members
      • Implementing is hard because it has to seem transparent to people throughout the food pantry experience
        • They’re just gonna be upset in some cases (and easy to get fixated on these cases)
        • Majority of people are interested in just taking what they need
        • Total transparency about rules would help, but complicates that with the language barrier. Currently 80% english is not first language, 70% is not. No access to in-house interpretation, haven’t been able to find canto volunteers who speak english well enough to translate something complicated. Only one cajun/creole speaking person with other job.
        • Access to interpretation services would help a lot (clear sense of what’s fair, what the rules are, like come only 3 times per month, etc)
        • Not everyone can read (despite language) or has good eyesight
      • See other people getting more than you is bad
      • Must make clear visually to people how many family members people picking up for
      • Fraud: register multiple households, or pick up for someone else (can’t unless they have disability)
      • Use their own card and friend’s card, disguise themselves, etc. Frustrating to combat, hard to say what solution could be
      • Current way to combat: hardest during covid when everyone wore masks. One of the strategies was to let people come 3 times instead of 2 (so they use their own card more often and she could recognize their faces)
        • People register with some form of id (proof of address, piece of mail, or if homeless or living in cars (5/700 fams) don’t require anything)
          • food pantries cannot require any specific type of govt auth to get food (no photo id)
        • Bringing ID is more hectic to check everytime, they could just bring family member’s ID, just one person to check, volunteers can’t do this because require background check
      • Right now food pantry software doesn’t have barcode compatibility
      • Boswell, designed specifically for food pantries
      • Once they develop barcode compatibility, she’ll probably try to switch
      • Charity tracker, has barcode compatibility, tracks clients, but overhead of switching. She likes Boswell for reporting purposes, so wants to wait
      • Hard to get basic stuff at non-profit: same is true for chargers, would always go missing, unreliable electrical outlets
      • Wants better system of tracking inventory (closer record is good, having all the data and numbers isn’t super important, wont affect people’s lives, but important for grant writing, publicity (project Bread), affiliated organizations)
    • Other concerns: limited funding, hard to get basic supplies, like trash bags, toilet paper, duct tape. Have lots of staff turnover/management changes, normal non-profit challenges

Interview #3 ​

Who: Jonathan Krones
Time: Monday 10-11am

Questions ​

  • Legal or regulatory considerations for liability of food safety: outside his wheelhouse
    • In the US, no one is safe from lawsuits
    • Find law review article about expiration dates in the FDA/food safety, he doesn’t think they have any legal weight
    • If you eat something before its sell by date, he doesn’t think it being before sell by date gives any more claim to sue than if it were after
    • Apps do all kinds of things and aren’t really sued, so he thinks we’re ok, but should do more research
  • For systems level questions, ask about IDSS
  • As food decays, produces greenhouse gasses, use them to measure impact
    • resource 1
    • resource 2
    • App needs to take into account how food is actually decaying, which could depend on a bunch of variables (temperature, storage, etc)
    • Draw a line in probability distribution of when to throw it out, will probably do better than labels
  • Have you come across any data or statistics that highlight the scale of food waste in the restaurant industry and in households?
    • In your research, have you come across successful case studies or initiatives where technology or apps have effectively reduced food waste in both commercial and residential settings?
    • Are there any known best practices or strategies that have been effective in reducing food waste in both restaurant and household settings?
    • Can you share any data or findings related to the financial implications of food waste, both in terms of costs incurred by restaurants and the economic impact on households?
  • Based on your research, what are the key contributors to food waste?
    • From your research, have you identified any specific patterns or trends in the types of food items that are most commonly wasted?
  • What are the potential environmental and economic impacts of reducing food waste at the consumer level?
  • Are there any legal or regulatory considerations, such as liability or food safety standards, that should be taken into account when designing an app for food waste reduction?
  • Are there any cultural or regional variations in food waste patterns that should be considered when designing the app for a diverse user base?
  • What methods do you suggest to measure the impact of our solution, at both large and small scale?

Notes ​

  • What do expiration dates mean, who regulates them: research these things
  • He’s moved away from looking at food waste, refed is the go to place for food waste stats/management techniques, SDG (sustainable development goal) 16, champion’s 12.3 food waste organization
    • Go here for waste data
    • !! waste data is generally terrible. Lots of big guesses, assumptions
    • States in US have passed organic waste bans (in MA, any inst that generates a ton of food waste a week is prevented from sending it to landfills/incinerators, has to be diverted to composting, Massdep might have data)
      • Policies all try to create incentives for better recycling infrastructure
  • Key contributors to food waste:
    • “Folly” to find the biggest problem and try to intervene there, won’t solve it ourselves
    • Expiration dates is a factor, so if there’s an opportunity for improvement, then that’s sufficient to justify moving forward
    • For food waste, distribution of things contributing to issues is much flatter
    • In rich countries (US, Europe, China, Japan), majority of food waste happens at consumption (overconsumption), In poorer countries, majority happens at production (no reliable informatics/agricultural production, susceptible to weather, dying in transit, etc)
      • Food is perishable, have to grapple with biological reality of food and technologies that manage it
      • Expiration date is a technology
      • Smart containers/material which recognize as food starts to decay, tells you what to use next: MIT startup being deployed at retail/restaurant scale
      • Dynamic pricing: if something dies in the next few days, cut the price to get people to buy it
      • Expiration dates are unclear: is it inedible after? Is it 95% quality before? Are they tools of “planned obsolescence” to make you buy another jar or something that you otherwise wouldn’t buy often (mustard)
      • Intervention should happen at communicating quality. If playing with timing can make a ton of profit, then maybe worth
      • Marketing is always trying to play with a sense of belonging/identity, but not as simplistic as trying to trick customers. They’re trying to walk the delicate line of how many bytes of moldy mustard are acceptable before the brand value is tanked by some social media post
      • Stated expiration dates will always be vastly more conservative (the risk and reward is not symmetrical on either side of that date)
        • Too soon → environmental damage, less important
        • Too late → brand damage, health impacts, more important
      • With a more dynamic experience, opportunity for input and feedback, there should be way to regularly update estimates for when foods might have crossed threshold of needing to be discarded (probably more useful than just notifications based on expiration dates)

Interview #4 ​

Who: Jim Lachance
Time: Monday 10-11am

  • Could you give a brief overview of your role?
    • Executive chef, manage dining hall
    • Responsibilities: write menus, supervise people, order, mentor, cook
  • Ordering
    • 30k a week
    • 6
  • How to ensure that everything you order is consumed?
    • Menus and recipes => can kind of guess how much is needed, make recipe make quantities
  • If any food can be reused
    • Food for free → community college or high school kids, food insecurity → make meals out of it (15-20 years)
      • How much? Tend to not have left overs but on average 150
    • Jim has personally given food to churches
  • What are some complications associated with managing food waste with regards to serving MIT?
    • Food insecure on campus, give it to them
    • MIT students with food insecurity, feed graduate students pretty often
    • How much fluctuation in consumerism do you see on a daily basis and how does that impact waste management?
      • Know average of every week and self regulate based on popular times
    • If not able to reuse food, goes to Food for Free
  • How is waste being managed currently in the dining halls?
    • Waste not → green bags are compostable, each cook has to put stuff into compost, how much compost → give feedback
    • How would you rate the process of the current waste management system?
      • Bad on students part
    • What about recycling, compost, etc? Is the system working (e.g. are students discarding items in correct bins?)
      • Students are worst problem with composting
      • Bins get mixed up a lot
      • Mitigate: program as company, everyone divides up to have bin for food, paper, bin that doesn’t fit any slot, weigh it everyday, poster (how much went in to compost today), reduce waste by 50% before
  • How much food waste does each day typically generate?
    • What are the most prominent causes of the food waste accumulation?
      • Caused by students taking more than they can eat
      • Control portions but its all you care to eat
        • Buffet style contributes to people taking more than necessary?
          • Long time ago → used to be retail style, very little waste
          • Value tension → make sure students don’t have to worry about money and amount of food
          • Buffet style balances out for school for students with food insecurity
  • How does the current dining hall system keep track of inventory and decide how much food to order?
    • Inventory every week, shopping list → put menu and recipe, owned by company
    • Working on 2.0 where it helps keep track of what’s left,
      • Rack refrigerator to put left over
      • Mostly in his head, pretty efficient cuz he is 13
      • Relies on experience, seasoned cooks
    • How successful is the dining hall in using up items before their expiration dates?
      • Pretty easy, nothing sits around,16 cases of chicken breast, won’t be here by friday
  • What are the three most pressing concerns you have with food waste in dining halls that you wished had a solution for?
    • Wished that composting was better on the students side
    • Keeping the cooks on board with the compost, don’t want to take extra step
    • Cooking for a large population is hard to track and manage?
      • Yes
      • Composting is not done, 1000 meals, no one remembers to do it
    • Starts off as compost contest, but bring it down, try to make it engrained
  • Food waste seems to be heavily dependent on the consumers in this system, how do you encourage them to decrease food waste?
  • Due to the buffet nature of the dining hall, what initiatives or programs have you implemented or tried to implement to minimize food waste in the dining hall, such as portion control, menu planning, or food recovery efforts?
    • How many people → menu planning → fresh food used up, menu written
    • Pears expire, lots of people fruit get taken
    • Food for free gets frozen
  • How do you handle food surplus and unsold items in the dining hall to minimize waste?
    • How do you collaborate with local organizations or charities to donate excess food from the dining hall and reduce food waste while helping the community?
  • How much food waste is due to expiration?
  • How do you handle food that is past its prime but still safe to consume? What strategies do you employ to repurpose such items to avoid unnecessary waste?
    • Rice is a big one → stews, → usually run it on grill as a special, → give to food for free
  • Plastic wrap → recycling bin
  • Serve on china that is small → portion control
    • Formula → meal served per labor hour, 8 hours, fixed cost, divide hour by cost of food → metrics,
  • Thanksgiving
    • Send emails, ask if people let us know holiday plans so can plan meal and portion control
  • Motivation → world is going to run out of food if issue is not fixed
    • Less you waste, more you can feed other people with
    • Local farmers, only need one case of this, maine has a lot of farms → tell them how much to grow
  • Have an app that talks to 5 major vendors
  • Sharing between dining halls to minimize waste
  • One bucket the whole day for liquid
  • Control food waste through any kind of meal
    • Avoid waste, cook in batches, 30-45 minutes
    • Leftover in batches cook in another meal
  • Data on what people likes to eat
    • Each hall data is different
    • Adventurous food
      • Is it less predictable?
      • But there’s batch cooking, see trend in meal period not as well, don't cook anymore
      • Every half an hour
      • Up batch during busy hour
    • Sunday to Thursday
  • Food waste is a shame, even though you can control it
    • Cooks tell friends not to take more
  • Least food waste in dining hall
  • More education on the students part
    • People don't realize food waste is a problem