Dante Pettis of the San Francisco 49ers runs onto the field for his team’s Sept. 16 game against the Detroit Lions at Levi’s Stadium, the first game that Copia started collecting food waste from stadium restaurants. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
NFL players are used to seeing high-quality protein-rich food in their cafeterias, served up as nourishment to help them prepare for or recover from games and practice. A juicy steak. A lean grilled chicken breast. Roasted potatoes and vegetables. But what happens to the food that goes untouched? Historically, that has ended up in the trash.
For-profit company Copia is working to change that. The technology company reduces food waste by picking up untouched food from places such as NFL stadiums, offices, cafeterias, events, and restaurants and delivering it to non-profit organizations and shelters.
Copia’s platform enables nonprofits to create profiles and make requests for food donations, while its algorithm matches them to places nearby where there is an abundance of food that fulfill the need.
“Every day in America, we waste enough food to fill an NFL stadium to the brim,” said Komal Ahmad, the founder and chief executive officer of Copia. “Extreme food waste in the presence of hunger is one of the most disturbing, yet solvable, paradoxes of our time. Businesses throw away millions of pounds of food while others face hunger on a daily basis, and these groups often live across the street from each other.”
In places of socioeconomic inequality, such as the San Francisco Bay Area where glistening Silicon Valley headquarters sit alongside low-income housing, Copia’s platform is meeting an underserved niche.
Since 2016, the San Francisco 49ers, whose Levi’s Stadium is a stone’s throw away from the headquarters of Google, Facebook, and Apple in the South Bay, have been working with Copia to salvage the excess food that has gone untouched in its players’ cafeteria.
To date, they’ve recovered and redistributed more than 26,000 pounds of high-quality food from the cafeteria, providing more than 22,000 meals to the surrounding Santa Clara community. The average volume per pickup is about 66 pounds.
“Much of it is protein, and this is especially valuable for our nonprofit recipients who aim to deliver wholesome, nutrient-rich food to their food-insecure clients,” Ahmad said.
This season, Copia expanded its partnership with the 49ers beyond just the players’ cafeteria and into the Levi’s Stadium restaurants, some of which are open all year long whether or not there’s a game or event going on.
Copia began executing game-day food recovery from the stadium’s restaurants on Sept. 16, and is currently scheduled to do pick-ups at every 49ers home game this season.
For the 49ers, there are multiple benefits. For one, the franchise is giving back to the community, which is part of the team’s efforts to be more in-touch with the surrounding residents. (Those efforts are also reflected in the new branded gym it’s opening for fans.) The team is also incentivized with tax write offs and analytics provided by Copia (one of the company’s paid services), which provide the 49ers with metrics on food waste so they can make smarter operational decisions and save costs over time.
By the end of the current season, Copia will be able to provide the Niners with a host of data about game-day food recovery, which might help the franchise better plan the service at concession stands and restaurants. Copia said that businesses using its detailed category tracking system have seen anywhere from a 20 percent to 50 percent reduction in average monthly surplus, which has resulted in tens of thousands in savings.
“Copia’s category tracking system allows businesses to deeply understand where waste is happening by exploring which types of food are generally going uneaten,” said Ahmad. “A business may discover spikes in excess protein on Fridays. From there, they can adjust their purchase patterns for this item.”
The company is expanding its waste-tracking capabilities so that in the future it will be able to help businesses track edible and non-edible food waste, compared with just edible right now. That would help firms get a more accurate overall snapshot of the amount of food being wasted every day, so that they can better manage their inventories, said Ahmad.
Copia is currently operating in eight metropolitan regions in the U.S. and is on a mission to expand across the U.S. and then, eventually, globally.
“The most recent study on global food waste reports that by 2030, we will waste 2.1 billion tons of food every year. That’s 66 tons every second,” said Ahmad. “This is a massive problem.”
