Through digitalization and AI, the FoodTracks software helps reduce the surplus of baked goods and thus campaigns against food waste and climate change.
Every year, more than 18 million tons of food are unnecessarily wasted in Germany. A large portion of that comes from baked goods - around 1.7 million tons end up in the trash year after year.
An alarming proportion of this, 36%, results from returns from bakeries. Food is the outcome of exploiting valuable resources such as agricultural land, water, energy, human labour and raw materials. Wasting these resources unnecessarily accelerates climate change, through the increase in greenhouse gas emissions, and land use change, as well as the degradation of water quality, biodiversity and the creation of pollutants.
More than 700 million people worldwide go hungry every day, while at the same time tons of edible food are thrown away. Beyond the negative environmental impact, and the obvious ethical imbalance, this also has economic impacts, e.g. through the increase in food prices.
FoodTracks collaborated with the Thünen Institute to analyse the effects of its software on quantity and delivery planning at the Heitzman bakery. Order quantities were optimized in 141 branches, based on historical sales data and while considering school holidays, season and public holidays.
The figures speak for themselves: 122,000 kg of food were saved in only 10 months. This corresponds to a nutritional value of 329,000 kcal and a CO₂ consumption of 239,000 kg.
It is not only ecologically but also economically worthwhile to reduce food waste. The bakery was able to benefit from savings worth €465.000,00 through optimized returns processing. These figures illustrate the clear positive link between sustainability and business success.
The results also show that AI and centralization do not eliminate jobs, but rather allow for a more targeted use of labour, as process and therefore time optimization resulted in a more efficient and less stressed workforce in the branches.
