How the Crafty Platform Minimizes Office Food Waste

Cultivating a sustainable workspace is good for the environment and business. At Crafty, we look at sustainability from two angles: reactive and proactive efforts. 

• Reactive Sustainability: These practices answer the question of what we do with waste once it happens. Most people are more familiar with these efforts, such as recycling, composting, etc.
• Proactive Sustainability: These practices work to minimize pantry waste before it even happens.  Proactive efforts are the underdog of sustainable practices, and lucky for you, we'll dive into how the Crafty Platform enables you to do just that.

Now, before we jump in, we are literally going to talk some trash. 

Explore How Food Waste Impacts the Environment

Roughly one-third of all food produced, 1.3 billion tons, goes to waste. This waste could feed 3 billion people, but instead, it contributes 6-8% of greenhouse gas emissions, and it's simply a waste of money. Imagine just throwing one-third of your F&B budget in the trash.

Reactive efforts like recycling and composting can't get your money back, but proactive efforts can yield big savings. Leading workplaces are implementing proactive efforts through technology to decrease waste by streamlining their spending. Capgemini Research Institute discovered that 59% of executives believe technology will play a key role in their organization's sustainability transformation efforts. 

4 Crafty Platform Features to Minimize Waste

Kermit the Frog may think it's not easy being green, but here at Crafty, we can show you how easy it can be. Let's unpack how the Crafty Platform makes that possible. 

Inventory Automation Tools

Good inventory management is crucial for lowering food waste. While many online marketplaces allow recurring purchases, they don't necessarily consider existing inventory before placing a new order. On the flip side, national food vendors eyeball your inventory, which you have no way of tracking. Either way, you end up with an admin mess and stockrooms full of expired products.

The Crafty Platform's automated inventory tools eliminate the guesswork and optimize your inventory levels. We're all familiar with Goldilocks, right? Yes, she broke into the nice bears' home, but the girl was onto something. Sometimes, you just want exactly what you need. Not too much, not too little, but just right–and the philosophy behind our platform. 

Our on-site team takes inventory every time they enter your space so you can keep track of your inventory across all locations in real-time. Inside the Crafty Platform, we centralize that information for you and set minimum product thresholds or Periodic Automatic Replenishment levels. If the recorded inventory level hits that minimum, the system automatically has the next batch on the next order!

Order automation decreases product waste, so you're less likely to have a backstock of products that eventually expire if you can't go through them quickly enough. At the same time, you don't have to worry about a disruption in your office snack delivery service because your inventory stays at that "just right" sweet spot.

Office Pantry Historical Spend Reports

Creating and maintaining an office budget is much harder than it seems. In a hybrid working environment, traffic may fluctuate daily as employees do not come into the office at the same time. Workplace teams also know that not every month is equal, depending on the holidays, weather, and employee travel schedules.

Crafty clients use their unique historical spending data to predict future workplace trends and allocate their resources more effectively throughout the year. We took a look at the data across 300+ offices and found that December tends to be a lower spending month due to the holiday closures and higher levels of out-of-office employees. On the flip side, our data showed that March tends to be a higher spending month due to better weather and more in-office traffic. 

Spending insights like this can be used to decide how to allocate and maximize an organization's existing F&B budget. If a company treated every month equally, December would get the same order volume as March, and likely result in more food waste because there aren't enough employees to go through it before it expires. When March rolls around, the difficulty will be finding enough budget to keep shelves stocked for the uptick in traffic.

The Crafty Platform makes it easy to spot broader and more company-specific trends early so you can allocate your budget appropriately to keep the experience consistent, all while minimizing waste.

Category and Subcategory Reports

Wouldn't it be nice to wave a magic wand and know exactly what food and beverages your employees want most? 

It's as close to "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo" as you'll ever get! Our robust reporting makes it easy to see what categories and subcategories are performing well so you can put your money where your employees' mouths are. 

You can better allocate your spending toward the most consumed categories or spot opportunities for equipment optimizations that may save you money in the long run. Let's run through a few examples. 

• Category Allocation: Every day, you notice the jerky is always fully stocked, yet the bars are constantly getting reordered because they are flying off the shelves. Take this as a sign to make a switch so you can stop wasting money on jerky that rots away in the stockroom and allocate that toward more variety in bars.
• Equipment Optimizations: If you spend 50% of your budget on water and sparkling water, that may be a sign you want to transition to a water machine like the Bevi. A Bevi can pour around 90 glasses per hour, save 50,000+ bottles or cans annually, and save you anywhere from $3,195-$41,965/year. 

Product Performance Report

The best way to make food and beverage purchasing decisions is to base them on facts. Numbers don't lie!

Crafty’s Product Performance Report shows your five most popular and least popular products to identify opportunities for product swaps. Product waste is enemy #1 for the environment and your budget, so this report makes it easy to spot product improvements so you only spend where it counts.

"The platform is a godsend," says Miranda Myers, Employee Experience Manager and EVP Americas Lead at Kin + Carta. "Having one place to go back and see when things were delivered is great. It allows us to trace and understand what's trending, what we can pull back on, and if we need to make product changes."

Conclusion

Food waste isn't cool, but you know what is? Workplaces that build F&B programs using data-driven insights to minimize food waste and curating an office pantry catering to employees' preferences! Learn how to craft a sustainable workplace with Crafty.