There's a new app in development that might actually make you want to wait until late at night to make dinner plans. The reward will be a gourmet meal at a discount price that kind of helps the environment, too. Food for All would let you buy food restaurants have left over just before they close for the night.
Just to clarify, you are not buying someone else's leftovers, but rather food that didn't sell, which restaurants would otherwise be throwing away. The app allows you to enter your location and choose from restaurants near you, where you can schedule a pickup. The restaurants will not provide menus, but with prices of 50 to 80% off, you might be happy to get whatever they're serving.
"My family back in Mexico comes from the hospitality business,” founder David Rodriguez told BostInno of why he began developing the app while finishing his MBA at Hult International Business School, in Cambridge, MA. “I saw how much food was wasted in hotels, restaurants and venues...I wanted to do something about it.”
According to the app's Kickstarter page, restaurants, caterers, and other vendors in the U.S. throw away about 43 billion pounds of food every year. This waste has a significant environmental impact — from the natural resources spent producing this food for no reason to the transport and disposal of unused food in landfills. One solution to this problem is the ongoing effort of organizations such as New York's City Harvest, which picks up leftover food from restaurants, bakeries, and supermarkets and delivers it to food banks. Still, there's more to be done.
The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health's Sustainable Technologies and Health Program has collaborated with Rodriguez on the app, which is in beta testing at restaurants in Cambridge. The Kickstarter campaign hopes to finish the product in time to launch in Boston and New York by July 2017.