Recipe for success: Can an app save the world?

Saveful wants to help eliminate Australia’s $36.6bn annual food waste problem and it’s attracting heavyweight supporters such as Qantas, Nestle and Bega.

Saveful wants to help eliminate Australia's $36.6bn annual food waste problem.

Can a recipe app save the world?

Saveful, a free Aussie app that aims to eliminate food waste, is helping individuals make an impact on the climate crisis in the easiest way possible.

The app, which was created by former advertising and marketing executives Kim McDonnell and Mike Chuter, is aimed at making a sizeable dent in the $36.6bn of food that is wasted annually in Australia alone.

Saveful works by providing customisable recipes to help people use the food they have in their homes. The app enables you to enter ingredients and will serve recipe ideas to cater to your preferences and dietary requirements.

“We know that the average Australian family throws away one in five shopping bags of food, or that equates to about $3000 a year of food that they’re buying and throwing in the rubbish bin,” Saveful chief executive and founder Ms McDonnell said.

Saveful co-founders Mike Chute and Kim McDonnell with chef Matt Moran. Picture: Joseph Byford Photography

“We know that 83 per cent of Australians are struggling right now with the cost-of-living crisis yet 70 per cent of all of the food we put in our rubbish bins is still perfectly edible.

“So how can we help more Australians put more food on their tables, who are struggling with the cost-of-living crisis?

“We know that saving food is the single most impressive, inspirational thing we can all do … and it’s the easiest thing we could all do on a daily basis in the fight against climate change.”

The app has some heavyweight backers, including Qantas, Nestle, Rabobank, Bega, Simplot, Goodman Fielder, SunRice, SPC, AGL and Gumtree, among a host of others.

It boasts 33,000 users but Saveful is on a mission to drive significant growth.

To that end, Saveful partnered with the Advertising Council Australia, with the app serving as the brieffor the annual Young Lions Competition. Under the partnership, rising stars of the advertising, marketing and media industry created marketing activity to promote the app to Australian consumers, with the talent behind the best executions winning an opportunity to compete in a global competition at the annual Cannes Lions festival in June.

The move is part of a strategy to engage corporate Australia with the app to help supercharge its growth and use across the country.

“We made a commitment when we launched Saveful to offer it for free for every single Australian family because we wanted it to be accessible,’’ Ms McDonnell said. “We wanted every Australian family to be able to use the tool to put more food on their family’s table and we’d love every single Australian household or every single Australian to be using Saveful on a regular basis. But the only way that we’re able to offer this for free is through the support of our corporate partners.”

The Saveful app wants to help eliminate Australia's $36.6bn annual food waste problem.

Saveful is not only helping eliminate food waste, it’s also collecting a stack of valuable data about consumers’ shopping patterns and eating habits that can be overlaid with household composition, postcode and suburb.

“We have all of these incredible data insights and for our partners we’re able to provide a one-to-one communication channel directly to consumers at home at key moments of truth when they’re looking for what they’re going to cook for dinner or how they’re going to eat,” Ms McDonnell said. “A lot of our partners see the value in that and they also see the values in the social impact of being associated with a brand like Saveful, which is all about driving positive impact across so many aspects of society.”