You can cut the gym membership, cancel the subscriptions, stop buying takeaway coffee, but you'll still have to eat.

Food is a budget line that nobody can truly opt out of, which is annoying.

But thankfully there are strategies to help us really reduce the cost of living.

Squeeze.

Because once we dig into these strategies, you might realize you're leaving serious money on the table that you could be using for something more fun.

Michael Garvey is the founder of foodprint, an award winning app that's redirected millions of dollars worth of surplus food from cafes and restaurants, supermarkets, back to regular people at a fraction of the price.

Yay for eating for less.

But she's not just here to talk about the app.

She's got a genuinely different way of thinking about food money and why the way most of us shop is actually working against us.

If you are out there and thinking about throwing some food away, I want you to think about if you would ever just open your wallet and tip it in the bin.

Because the cost of living crisis isn't just hitting your wallet, it's also hitting the small businesses you love as well.

And the two problems might actually have the same solution.

Our local growers, if we don't support them through like those tough times, then they're not going to be here to like, back support us.

And in the good times, let's be real.

There are also some bigger questions here about where our food even comes from, how secure that supply actually is, and whether that's also making things more expensive than they actually need to be.

It actually genuinely scares me when I think about our food security as a nation.

With the current state of the world, we are the end of the world.

We are the literal last cab off the rank.

So welcome to Making Sense.

It's the podcast for people who want financial freedom without giving up their coffee.

I'm Frances Cook, financial journalist and fellow financial freedom seeker who makes money simple for you.

Today it's how to eat out more, spend less and actually feel good about it.

This episode of Making Sense is supported by Odoo.

The all in one solution to make running your business smoother and more affordable.

Go to odoo.com that's O D double O dot com for more.

Michael Garvey.

Welcome to the podcast.

We have been meaning to chat for so long so I'm really pleased to have you on.

Look, cost of living.

We were just talking about this before.

It's nuts out there.

It has been one thing after the other for the last few years.

And here we go again.

Are you seeing a difference being someone who is in the food space, deeply in the food space?

Are you seeing a difference in terms of how people are dealing with their food shop, feeling about their food shop?

You know, how's it all going for people?

Yeah, definitely.

And also, hi, and thanks for having me.

I'm so excited to be here.

But yeah, definitely.

The way that people are shopping, talking about food, what they're buying, what they're not buying, has definitely changed in, I mean, in the last 12 months, really.

But I think we're, you know, right here, right now, in another period where people are hunkering down and looking at what else they can change.

You know what, they've already made a whole lot of changes and now it's like, okay, cool, what else can we cut to get through this next phase?

And it's pretty scary out there, really.

Well, because that's the thing, right?

Food.

And I feel like this has been the problem with so much of cost of living stuff.

It's really hitting core categories that you can't just cut entirely.

You've got to eat.

We all need food.

We all need food to survive.

And, you know, you hear stories of people bulking up on just plain rice or something like that.

That's going to fill them up, but it doesn't have a huge amount of nutritional value.

And so then it's.

Then you end up with the flow on effects of how they're able to perform and function and all of that.

Yeah, when you're talking to people, I mean, how much do you have interaction with people?

I mean, obviously you're running food print, you're seeing this real beautiful bird's eye view.

And do you get to talk to people about it as well?

Like, what are you picking up in terms of trends of what people are doing?

And also, you know, any stories people are telling you?

I'd say that I probably more so speak to the eateries that we partner with.

And those eateries can be anything from food retailers, hospitality businesses, cafes, sushi, you know, a really wide range of different food businesses.

And probably the key thing that I get from them is that people's spending is down.

So whereas, you know, in the past two people might come in at morning tea, they'd each get a coffee, they might each get a cake.

Now, you know, one's getting a coffee, one's getting a tea or a water, and then they're splitting their muffin in half and they're going for the muffin or the scone.

That's the cheaper option on the menu, as opposed to the fancy cake that they might have gone for.

Or they're not getting that cake at all.

They're just going for, you know, their coffees.

So the people that are still coming out are reducing their spend.

And then what we see for that with the businesses that we work with is that it's harder for them to predict and forecast what they're making, which kind of generates waste, which is also where we come in to support them in that way.

So, yeah, it's definitely hitting across the board.

And then I would say that the other real big change that sort of happened kind of at the same time as the last 12 months, I guess, is that we've really started working with a lot more food retailers.

And so.

So especially the likes of Foursquares, we've got a couple of new worlds we work with, good fours, fruit worlds, a whole range of different food retailers, and those are just absolutely popping off at the moment.

And you can see people buying their weekly shop through the app, or a decent chunk of it that they're then supplementing with what they've got at home or sourcing elsewhere.

A really big one with those retailers has been meat.

Meat is what everyone's talking about at the moment.

Price of mints going up and up and up.

Last I checked, I think in one of the food inflation stats, beef mints went up.

This is off the top of my head, but I think it was 50%.

50%?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's insane.

That's supposed to be the cheap cut, right?

And it's just all of a sudden become really, really expensive.

And so when they have meat on the app, especially mince, steak, chicken, any of that kind of stuff, it's gone in seconds.

So it is really a race to get that off the app.

That's fascinating.

We're going to dive more into the app soon because I think it's really, really interesting what you can pick up there.

But I want to sort of zoom out a little bit because I'm such a believer in these moments, you can feel very disempowered.

And so I think the first step is always identifying what can you control and controlling what you can control and being willing to let go of some other stuff, but take ownership of what you can.

Knowing the difference can be so important.

What do you think in terms of what we're dealing with, with food right now?

What do you think is a wider society issue that we need to have a good talk about?

What do you think are things that we, as Individuals can be taken control of again.

Yeah, I think what you said there is remembering what we can control ourselves, that is the most important place to start with.

So looking at what is within your control and.

And that's largely what you're spending, where you're spending that money, what you're spending it on, the things that feel a little bit more out of your control, there's still other little things that you can do to support that.

You know, whether that's writing to your local mp, whether that's communicating with the businesses that you're purchasing food for food from.

Sorry.

There's little things that you can do that might not feel like they're gonna have great big impact, but you can still be doing those, and they do still have impact.

The other thing that kind of flows in with that is it's an election year this year, so we get this opportunity to vote.

And so that's another thing that can give us back that little bit of power and control over some of those bigger things that we may feel removed from.

I think, especially at the moment, with the price of fuel, looking really locally to source your food is gonna be amazing because you are not gonna be paying the mileage on food.

And so, you know, is there community gardens or something like that where you can get, you know, a box of fruit and veg from that's really close to where you live.

And there's gardens like that dotted all around the country.

If you just sort of look for them, you might not necessarily have control over what's going to be in those boxes, but it's fun because you'll get to explore and try some new foods and maybe find things that are, you know, in season and available to you and find things you didn't.

Didn't know that you're going to enjoy.

I think another thing there, which I just touched on is seasonality of food.

So knowing what is in season.

And I think we've become really disconnected from our food system.

We are so used to having everything available at our fingertips all the time, whenever we want it, for whatever price we're willing to pay for it.

And a lot of the time when things are crazy, prices that is due to that seasonality.

So, you know, last year everyone was popping off when cucumbers were $5 in the middle of July.

Well, surprise.

Cucumbers are a summer vegetable.

So if they're growing in winter, they're using fossil fuels to heat hot houses.

So the emissions that are related to all of that is skyrocketing.

But also the cost of actually producing it.

So if you're eating things that are in season, you're going to be removing a lot of those additional costs and the prices should be feeling a little bit more affordable.

Yeah, I so agree.

This is something that I've really had to sort of educate myself on because like I'm a girl who loves like scrambled eggs and some cherry tomatoes for breakfast.

Happy girl.

Chuck some whole grain mustard on there.

We're having a good time.

But like that's not going to work in winter.

You know, those tomatoes are insane prices in winter and just sort of getting to grips with, okay, this is how I change my eating patterns throughout the year and this is how we do this.

Sounds really simple.

And yet this is the case with so much money chat.

Nevermind, food chat.

Don't overlook the simple solutions just because they're simple.

The simple ones can often be these things that stack in a way that is so much more powerful than you would think when you're just looking at things individually.

And I love what you were saying there about, you know, eating more local because I've put out a bit of stuff as, as things have been going a bit nuts, I put out some stuff on my social media talking about, you know, food prices and people were jumping in the comments.

Social media can be horrendous, don't get me wrong.

But sometimes the comment section is brilliant and I love it.

And I love so much from the people who drop in the comments there.

And they were talking about, yeah, you know, shopping local, getting to know sort of local growers.

Yeah, you're missing all of those transport costs that when fuel prices are going up, that really stacks on.

And you also, you know, some of those local farmers, when you're getting it closer without the middleman, you're not paying the middleman either.

And I have discovered things like kohlrabi.

Yeah.

Vegetable I never even knew existed turned up in one of these boxes.

I was like, what is this?

What do I do with this?

It's like a little alien spaceship.

Yeah.

One of my favorite veggies now.

Really love it.

Super versatile, goes with anything.

It's pretty inoffensive like and really easy to cook.

You can do it any way you want.

Yeah, yeah.

But I think sometimes it's some of those like small little habits, you know, like you talking about your tomatoes.

And it's the same again with any kind of money chat like, okay, cool, so tomato price of tomatoes has gone up, they're out of season.

What am I going to substitute that for.

Is it going to be some onion or some spinach or whatever else that is, and just building those little habits.

And then once you've done that, you know, several times, that will just become your norm and you'll have your winter veggie eggs and your summer veggie eggs, and you'll flick between them and.

Yeah, so it's just building those little tiny habits.

And if once a month you go, oh, I'm going to treat myself to the tomatoes, then so be it.

But you're going to have reduced the cost for three out of four weeks.

So I think we need to still be able to treat ourselves sometimes as well.

But it's just looking for where those, where those wins are.

Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good.

Yeah, if you get it right, 70, 80% of the time, brilliant.

Perfect.

And I also think, you know, if you do get in these veggie boxes, something that you're not familiar with.

Okay, again, AI bit of a mixed thing sometimes, but you can chuck in there.

I've got this, this, and this.

What can I make out of it?

Right.

Have you ever, like, had a little mishmash?

Just play with the things you've got that have been mystery foods?

Oh, like a hundred percent.

I. I'm.

I would describe myself as a pretty creative cook.

I'm by no means like a trained chef or anything like that, but I very rarely cook with a recipe.

You know, half the time I'm like, cutting up my onions and my garlic and my ginger and frying that off, and then the meal will just take a real left turn and it's like, all right, well, I guess we're going this direction now.

But it's just about being creative with the things that you've got.

And it doesn't always work out.

Sometimes you end up with a bit of a doozy, but, like, just eat it.

And also substituting, like, if you are someone that needs to cook to a recipe, that is fine too.

Um, but if you have some kohlrabi and, you know, you don't have a kumara, then that's a fine substitution.

So being conscious of what things you can easily substitute.

So, you know, a root vegetable for a root vegetable is usually gonna be a pretty good substitute.

A a green veg for another green veg or, or a leaf for a leaf.

You know, there's a lot of things that you can do.

You don't need to be kind of leaving that half bag of rocket in the fridge because the recipe called for Spinach.

And now you've got half a bag of each.

You can usually substitute something out, and that's also going to save you money.

It's going to reduce your food waste at home.

It's so funny how you describe your cooking process, though.

I can tell you're a woman.

After my mom's heart, my mom is a big believer.

And you can make anything.

If you put onion, garlic, or ginger in it or some combination of it's going to taste good.

That's the start of a meal.

Okay, we're going to come back to the veggies soon because for those who are watching the video, we have props to.

And I'm so excited to get into the props, but we will come back to those soon.

First, I want to go through sort of.

When we're looking at people's overall food spend, do you think there's a money leak that most of us miss?

Yeah, I would say it's waste.

No surprises there.

That's kind of my space.

You know, there's research out by Love food, hate waste.

Like, we throw away over a thousand dollars of food per person each year,.

Which means some people are throwing away far more than that.

Exactly, exactly.

Because there are a lot of people who don't throw away anything, you know?

Yeah.

I think sometimes people can be too quick to throw food away or disregard it.

A lot of that comes down to education or perceptions.

If you are out there and thinking about throwing some food away, I want you to think about if you would ever just open your wallet and tip it in the bin.

Would you do that, Frances?

No, not me.

No, no, no, no, no.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

So why do we do that with food?

Because if you think about where that food came from, you were at some kind of shop or market or supermarket or wherever you were, and you opened your wallet and you paid for that food.

So if you're, you know, coming home and then just throwing it in the bin, then it just doesn't make sense.

So we don't sort of value the food for what it actually is.

I think that's.

That's part of it.

Some people have, like, really weird perceptions around leftovers and not wanting to, like, eat something that they've maybe put in the fridge or that kind of thing.

And I'm like, what do you mean, leftovers?

This is meal prep.

Yes.

Rebranded.

Yeah.

Like, I do not understand why people are always referring to it as leftovers.

It's like, no, I intentionally cooked, like, three meals for my person of one so that I have Lunch for the next two or three days or whatever it is.

So it's just thinking about it in a completely different way.

And then the other thing is when you have maybe a little bit of something left, you've kind of cooked one and a half portions or you've just got a little bit of something.

So it's either can you take that for your lunch the following day and just eat that and then grab something else to compliment it or eat it, see how you feel, whatever, or is there a way of know, incorporating that into the next meal that you're going to be cooking?

Like are you going to upcycle it?

Like, you know, it might sound a bit rogue, but if you've got like a little bit of rice, can you chuck that in with your like mints or something like that that you're cooking the following night?

Egg, fried rice, anything like that, it's going to help bulk out a meal, but it's also going to make sure that that food isn't wasted.

So the other thing is, you know, the education around best before and use by dates and what they actually mean.

So we have two different dates in New Zealand.

So we have best before dates, which literally just mean the food is going to be best if you eat it before.

But if you think about something like flour or rice, those have a best before date on them.

Right.

It doesn't mean that if that date was the 1st of March, on the 2nd of March, that food is.

Fudge is bad.

You know, most people before the food is gonna be good for at least six months afterwards.

So long as it's being stored.

Right.

So long as it's, you know, safe.

Use by dates, on the other hand, that's usually on things like meat.

I actually don't eat meat, so I'm not speaking on a huge amount of experience here, but yeah, I wouldn't encourage people to eat food past a use by date.

But that's where things like if you've got meat that's coming up to a use by date, pop it in the freezer and that's gonna give you another three months to use it.

So, so there's lots of different ways that you can get around that.

But the, the biggest aspect I think when looking at those dates as well is use our senses.

We've got these amazing senses and you can use most of them.

I don't know, maybe not hearing though.

If your food is fizzing then probably you don't want to eat it.

You can hear your food red flag.

But you know like, start by looking at it.

Does it look normal?

Does it smell normal?

You know, if it's something like a yogurt, like put a little bit on your finger, does it feel normal?

Then taste it.

And if it passes all of those, then you're probably fine to eat it.

I also love, like, the example of the herbs and spices.

Like, go to your mother's house or your grandmother's house and check out the dates on those.

On those spices.

You know, there will be something in those dishes.

Yeah, we love them, but it's horrendous.

But they're also fine.

Exactly, exactly.

So it's just a lot of, like, common sense.

And I think for a lot of people, it's just shifting where that common sense sort of sits.

So I also think, like, taking it in out of the realms of your automatic habits with food and just being a bit more conscious.

Like, if you try to flip a situation like this and find the silver lining, it does force us to get out of some of these habits with our food and be a bit smarter.

And then maybe we can take those smarter habits forward into the future and just be smarter in general when things are hopefully a little bit less crunchy.

Crunchy.

Because even, you know, this is such a, like, very specific bugbear of mine.

But when people, like, chop the stem off a broccoli, and it's like me being raised by a very hippie mother who does not like any sort of food waste, grows all her own food, has a compost bin, has always, I.

Need to eat that.

She's the best.

You would love her.

But then, you know, shacking up with my lovely husband, who is great and does all the cooking.

So believe me when I say I try to approach things constructively because you never upset the cook.

They might stop cooking, but, you know, he'll just automatically chop off the entire stem of the broccoli and put it to the side as if that's going into the bin.

And I'm like, what are you doing?

That's half the vegetable that.

That can absolutely go on the stove and, like, chop off the little dry bit, but it's like a centimeter of dry bit, and then it's fine.

Yeah, stems are like.

They're so tender and delicious.

They're great.

The best part.

Exactly, exactly.

And so I think when you sort of force yourself out of habits and be like, okay, hang on, just for a week, I'm going to be really conscious of how I handle my food and just pay attention to it.

I think there's more food wastage than a lot of us realize, just on automatic habits, right?

A hundred percent.

And I think one of the other things, if you have it available to you when you're not already using it, using the council like compost bins or food waste bins can be a really, really good way of actually bringing your food waste, like at home, like into, you know, making it visible to you.

Because when you're chucking it in the bin with everything else, it's kind of getting hidden, it's getting covered up with all of that.

But I think, you know, a lot of people have said to me like, oh, I started using that compost bin and whoa, I can't believe how much I throw out, you know, the weight of it each week.

And when you're just kind of piling it on top of each other, it's much more visible.

So that's also a really great way of obviously doing the right thing with any scraps, but also being way more aware of what you're actually putting in.

There, bringing it to your own attention 100%.

Okay, when we head to the supermarket, is there anything we should be keeping in mind there?

One thing is gonna be around, you know, can you shop to what is on special?

Sometimes it's around flipping like how you might meal plan as well.

So again from like a waste perspective, meal planning is always heralded as like one of the best ways to help reduce food, food waste in the home.

Make your plan shop to your list, then you won't have any waste left.

But what you can do is kind of come up with like a general plan and then shop around it in the supermarket.

So you know, you might decide that you're going to make tacos this week or something but you know, you might have all the, the other ingredients.

But when it comes to the meat, again speaking out of my knowledge area here that you know, being flexible on what meat you might buy based on what's on special or what's, what's cheapest or available.

Again, like with your vegetables, being aware of that seasonality, swapping things out based on, on what is in season and then also checking labels again looking at where that food is coming from.

I think there's been some really interesting conversations in that space in the last, especially the last 12 months, you know, with the cost of food.

We were hearing it when we, when you know, last year when butter was all the rage, the cost of butter, but we were actually able to access American butter for cheaper than New Zealand grown butter.

And like it's just ludicrous that that is the case in this country.

We're kind of going through it again at the moment with, you know, the end of last year there was peaches, you know, the waddies factories closing down.

That's all gonna really impact the local produce that is available.

And I think the scary thing with that is when we look at like wider food security issues and the current state of the world, fuel, like everything, you know, Covid, we saw these supply chain disruptions and all of that sort of thing.

We grow so much food in New Zealand, we should be able to access it for a reasonable price.

It's crazy that it is cheaper to bring food in from overseas, but so I think we just need to be really, really aware of that and supporting like our local growers because if we don't support them through like those tough times, then they're not going to be here to like back support us in the good times.

As we see fuel costs skyrocketing, which they are at the moment, then those costs of that cheaper fuel, sorry, that cheaper food from overseas is going to increase because of the distance that it needs to travel to get here.

But I think on the more, I don't know, zooming all the way out and thinking about some of our societal problems, a lot of our problems with food I think come down to our infrastructure.

We move food around this country by road and so we are paying that fuel cost in our food all the time.

And so that again is contributing to those costs of moving that local producer around.

And we just, we need to get on top of it, we need to fix it.

We need to have more sustainable, cheaper options to move food around.

I was at a food Hui last year and there was a whole day dedicated to like New Zealand growing grains.

And we grow a huge amount of grains in this country, mostly in the South Island.

And it's amazing.

It's local, so much of it is organic.

But the other half of that conversation was bakers based in the north island.

And those bakers going, we really want to bake with New Zealand growing grains.

But it is twice the price to buy something that is growing in Canterbury than something that's growing in Brazil.

What's happening there?

It's the scale of what they're able to produce in other countries and then the transport costs.

So for us to transport across the Cook Strait is just crazy.

The prices because of.

Yeah, just that.

That fury and getting stuff across that.

We can take it across oceans.

Yeah.

And not across that little Cook Strait,.

And it's because it's going by road at either end, you know, but that stuff from Brazil is probably.

And I'm going to make it probably, it's probably getting picked, sent on a massive train and getting ships direct, you know, like.

So they're able to.

Based on the scale, but also the more economical ways of transport, they're able to get it for such a cheaper price.

It actually genuinely scares me when I think about our food security as a nation.

With the current state of the world, we are the end of the world.

We are the literal last cab off the rank.

But we also grow this amazing food here.

So we need to be really looking at how we can fix our infrastructure to support our local farmers and growers and make sure that kiwis are eating kiwi grown food because we're amazing at producing it.

Such high quality, beautiful food.

Like, whenever I see like New Zealand meat, I always feel really comfortable that it's been grown and made in a much better environment than something like broad problematic generalization here.

Sure.

But American meat, I'm not so trustworthy of it.

I've seen a lot of footage that makes me extremely concerned.

And so, yeah, it's wild to me, like when we look at, you know, like you say, the fuel issues that have been coming up recently, where we're so reliant on all of these external factors and then it all comes to a head when there is a war in Iran and suddenly we have a crisis on our hands and then it's actually not that far behind that we have this food problem because fertilizer comes through the exact same channels.

We've got all these problems, but also we are importing so much food and like you say, I think moments like this are a good moment to reassess of actually I understand theoretically that everyone sort of in this global system can lean into doing what they do the best.

And so if everyone specializes in their thing, does that the best, we all swap with each other.

Brilliant.

Co.

But can there be a level on which that goes too far and then when something happens, the system gets a bit dicey.

We don't have anything we can rely on for ourselves.

I mean, core important categories like food and fuel.

I feel like we need a bit more buffer in the system.

Don't.

If, if you could wave a magic wand, what would you change on our food system?

Yeah, just making locally sourced food available to everyone and in.

And not just, I guess, not just available to everyone, but in everyone's reach.

There's huge problems at the moment.

And it's just getting worse and worse with food insecurity.

And, you know, we just hear more and more stats, you know, food banks at the, you know, bursting at the seams like they just can't keep up with the demand and they're getting hit.

By people who are, you know, middle class people.

Yeah.

Not that it's okay for people on lower incomes to be going there either.

I wish everyone could have good food security.

But it really concerns me when people who should be fine are going to food banks and needing them.

And you also have to remember that those people are doing everything in their power before making that call to go to the food bank.

Because there's some, you know, there's some shame sort of attached to that for a lot of people.

And so they're really at, you know, at the end of what they can do on their own before they're, before they're going there.

And then, you know, sometimes they're getting there and being turned away.

And so imagine that, you know, you've worked yourself up that, okay, today's the day I'm gonna do it.

That's not an easy step to take.

And then you do it and you get turned away like it's horrific.

Access to locally grown food is, is the biggest thing that we just need to be focusing on.

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Well, you mentioned earlier election year, so is there anything that you would like to see from whichever party, who cares, but someone do something that, that's a big one.

Like can we have some policies please?

Anything from anyone, but I mean, is there anything you think government should be doing to support that?

It would be really, really great to see some bold policies from parties that I think have been talked about in this country for a really Long time and people are too scared to touch them.

Whether that is in relation to supporting food accessibility, to keeping the prices of fuel down, different ways of easing the cost of living.

Let's give them a shot because the current system is failing.

Too many people.

You mentioned before about the transport issue as well, that that's been picked up in these conferences and things that you go to.

Do you think we need more infrastructure on transport to sort of get this thing around?

Would that help with prices, do you think?

How great would it be if we could chuck some.

Some Canterbury, growing grain on a train and get it across the Cook Straight and to Auckland or the north island, you know, overnight, and vice versa, with food that's growing?

So better infrastructure around, how we're transporting our food around, we transport everything by road and road is expensive and fuel inefficient.

That really, to me, has to be rail.

You know, we got rid of all the trains.

We had them.

We had them.

We got rid of them.

We had the trams in Auckland, we got rid of them.

You know, like, all of these decisions that were made that have just then sent us backwards and then now the focus just always seems to be on build more roads, build more roads, build more roads.

But we know that roads are not the future.

They might be the right now.

But I think this country's really, really guilty of, like, planning for the now and not planning for the future.

And I get it.

It's hard because no one wants to be the government that's like, well, we're going to tax the shit out of this so that your kids are going to be all right or your grandkids are going to be all right.

No one wants to be that.

But at some point someone has to.

I so hear you on that.

I so hear you on that.

I mean, this is one of the reasons that you got into this space as well.

Right.

So let's have a little chat about your space, particularly as well, because Food print launched it 2019.

Yeah, yeah.

So you launched Food Print.

Obviously, this came from somewhere.

Tell me what inspired it.

What made you look around and say, we need a different solution?

And then also, what does Foodprint do?

What's your contribution?

So foodprint's a food rescue app.

We partner with local eateries and that can be anything from your local cafe to a supermarket and kind of anything in between.

Anyone that sells food, really, and it's a platform where they can sell that food for a discount to prevent it from going to waste.

I got into this space to prevent food waste.

But the great part about that is that by default or by how the model works, I'm also a platform to supply cheaper food.

Food sustainability and that connection has just always been part of me.

I don't eat meat and I haven't eaten meat for 24 years.

As a teenager, we were studying dairy farming.

You know, I remember coming out of this lesson and standing behind C block and going, it just doesn't make sense why we grow all this grain to feed to the animals, to then eat the animals when we can just feed the, just eat the plants ourselves.

And that was sort of my, you know, that was, that was my teenage thoughts that stopped me eating meat so long ago.

So, yeah, I think it's just that food sustainability piece has always just been part of me.

The interconnectedness of our food systems and climate change.

To grow our food, we need the appropriate climate.

But then food waste, which we waste a third of the food that we produce is also significantly contributing to climate change.

And so it's a really balanced relationship.

And we've also seen the impacts when that balance is out.

You know, Cyclone Gabriel, we saw, you know, do you remember all those, like, orchards down in the Hawke's Bay?

All those apple trees that were just covered in mud and sand silt, those onions just rolling down in the road in Pukekohe with the Auckland anniversary flooding, you know, all of those weather events that just destroy crops.

And then what we saw in the seasons after that was like kumara.

I think that was probably the big one after that year because all of our kumara growing, or most of our kumara growing crops were really affected by one or other of those weather events.

The price of kumina that year was insane.

And also what I found really interesting, especially from like a food waste perspective, was that the kumara that was available, it wasn't what we would normally be used to seeing.

You would see tiny, tiny little ones or huge ones.

And so it was really humbling that year, I think, to see, to keep the supply there, we had to go out, you know, out to the edges of what would normally be thrown away or used in other, other ways that wouldn't be, you know, direct to consumer.

In that sense.

If I can do something that's gonna both support our food system but also be a way of reducing emissions, that's, that's me.

I'm very passionate and I'm very privileged that I get to live within, live and work within my values.

So then you're, you're looking at this and you're like, okay, passionate about food waste, gonna help people like get this food that is otherwise going to waste and so they get it cheaper.

Yeah.

So everything on the app is at least 30% off and the eateries are in control of what discounts they do.

So the majority of food kind of goes for between a 50 and 70% discount.

The eeries have the option to put stuff up for 100% off and sometimes they do.

Again, that will go very, very quickly.

But yeah, it just depends on what the product is, you know, how quickly they need to move it, all of that kind of thing.

So they're just in control of that.

And you mentioned that stat.

This is going to stick with me.

A third of food is wasted.

At what point in the chain are we getting the most wastage here?

So it happens right throughout the supply chain.

Homes are pretty bad.

And then there's also a lot that doesn't leave the farm.

I think a lot of people don't make the connection between the two.

Is that that third of the food that we waste, guess who pays for that?

We do.

We do.

So I think put in a real simple way, imagine I had say three avocados and the cost or the price to consumer of one avocado, once we've taken into consideration all of their transport, all of the production, everything should be a dollar.

But we're throwing away one of them.

So now we've got two left.

We need to cover the cost of that one that we've thrown away in what we're paying for.

So those all of a sudden become A$50.

So if we can reduce the food waste, and maybe this is a bit idealistic of me, but if we can reduce the amount of food that we're wasting, then that is also a way of helping bring down costs of food because then we're actually paying the true cost of it.

Every food business, whether they are, you know, a farmer, a supermarket, a cafe, a bakery, everyone will be building in a percentage waste cost into their eventual cost.

And that will.

That percentage that they're building in will be changing based on who they are and what they are.

And hopefully they know what their waste percentages look like and all of that kind of thing.

But that is all getting passed on to us as consumers.

It's so interesting that you say that because yeah, it really, really strikes me that for a lot of these cafes, supermarkets, whatever, if this stuff was otherwise going in the bin, if that able to sell it even cheaply, that's still more money than they were otherwise doing.

And you've got to pay the trash costs as well.

So it's not just making money from it.

You're saving a cost, surely.

But do you ever get pushback?

Because you do hear some horror stories of companies that would rather put stuff in the bin than have people able to get it cheap.

So do you get pushback?

Yeah, we a hundred percent do.

And I think one of my favorites is like a quite big, well known bakery here in Auckland that a customer tagged us in an Instagram post and it was like a bin overflowing with bread.

Like when I say overflowing, like there was a baguette on the floor and the lid was up.

Like it was absolutely overflowing.

And they were like, we don't have a problem with waste.

I don't understand that mentality from a business point of view.

Yeah, I don't.

I don't either.

I think sometimes people, and maybe not great at maths or that they're worried that, you know, by discounting their food it's kind of going to like damage their brand or something like that.

But I think with food print, the beauty of it is it's like this secret little if you know, you know, club which a hell of a lot of people do know about, which is great.

But it's really different from putting, you know, a 50% off sign at the front of your shop.

Yeah, 100%.

And it's, it's so, yeah, interesting to me the choices people make on that front.

But props time because I love this.

For anyone who is not watching the video, don't worry, we will talk you through it.

But you brought us through some goodies that you got through the app this morning.

And what I'm stunned by is the amount of different things.

Run me through what you've got and how much it cost.

Food.

Pawn us here.

I'm into it.

Let's do it.

Okay, so look at this.

Popped this into this beautiful crate.

Just crate is mostly fruit and veggies that I got as a, as a fruit and veg box.

It was $10.

So we've got a bunch of, or two bunches of spring onions, I don't know how many.

Six odd tomatoes there.

There's a handful of onions at the bottom.

There's about six to eight potatoes, a cabbage, a broccoli.

I mean, I was at the supermarket.

We've had another.

I was at the supermarket over the week.

So it's falling out the box.

Yes, I love it.

Capsicum.

But yeah, like broccoli's at the weekend were like 3, $4, which is.

Broccoli is my favorite vegetable, but I will not pay $4 for it.

I think your producer was saying earlier that he paid about $4 for some spring onions at the weekend.

So yeah, for all of this for $10.

And this is actually.

And none of it for those who aren't watching the video, none of it looks like wilte or whatever.

This is all food that I would really happily eat right now.

Yeah, 100%.

Like these aren't even all the way ripe.

So this particular company there like a new mostly online orders.

They're called the urban market and they have minimum order quantities and so they are just trying to grow the business.

So they are purchasing stuff in and then, you know, they're putting all of their surplus stuff on footprint to, to prevent it from going to waste before it needs to go to waste.

Do you know what I mean?

So they're just really smart in that sense.

This is a bunch of bananas that I got elsewhere.

I actually got this one at the weekend and I normally just eat bananas in my smoothies.

So I grabbed these bananas.

I think this was a dollar fifty for a kilo of bananas.

They're a bit brown for anyone at home, but I will just peel those and chuck them in the freezer.

All right, so next up, I have some cakes here from a local bakery.

Now they bake fresh every single day.

My mouth is literally watering.

Yeah, well, I also love it looks really good for you.

They're so beautiful.

And you can see, see that there's like so much care and love that has been put into creating these that obviously don't want them to go to waste.

So I think cakes like this are normally going for like, I don't know, seven to nine dollars at the moment.

But these were like 350, I think so each.

So, yeah, amazing in that sense.

We'll bring around crate number two.

So a lot of this stuff I grabbed from a four square and I think this is um, yeah, just showing, trying to show a lot of the range that we get.

So first up was some chicken.

So that was about half off, I think.

I think it was 5ish dollars for 400 grams of chicken.

Again, I don't, I don't do chicken.

But what they do with this is they will freeze that down before it hits its use by date few days beforehand and then they can sell it through the app and they've put a new beast before date on there.

So it's extending that life by about three months.

A loaf of bread, some hot cross buns.

Again, like a soup.

I'm like a noodle.

That's always my lunch.

I know, right?

A noodle fiend.

So these are like the fancy noodles, but they were $2 from a Asian supermarket that we work with.

And I think this is also one of my favorite is some Santa cookies.

So obviously these will be like, well within their date, but, like, they're Santa cookies, you know, so they're kind of out of season.

So the shop doesn't want to keep Santa cookies on their shelf, you know, in.

In February, March.

But there's nothing wrong with them, so they're still able to sort of sell them.

And it means that they can free up that shelf space for, you know, for their hot cross buns or something else that's seasonal.

But know that they've got that avenue to.

To sell these through the app.

So, yeah, there's a huge range of.

Of different products available.

And so if anyone has any suggestions or wants us to work with their locals, like, let us know.

Let the locals know that that's the best way to get other businesses on at the moment.

That's.

That's wild to me.

So all of that food would have been wasted?

Yeah, yeah, potentially.

Or, you know, maybe some staff might have taken it home, but, you know, for the business, they would much, much rather sell it and make some money off of it, as well as bringing a new customer into their store.

You know, that's a huge bit of feedback that we get from the eateries that they work with.

They love that foodprint brings in new customers who they haven't seen before.

And likewise, customers tell us that they're like, I just discovered like, a whole new bakery or a whole new cafe that is now my favorite, but I didn't know it was there.

So, yeah, it's a really great way of exploring and supporting the local food businesses, you know?

Yeah, yeah, real win win there.

Look, if someone is really wanting to get the food spend under control, obviously.

Start with food, but, you know, if there.

Is there something people could do this week to change their food spend and take a little bit of control in this area?

Look at what you already have, that's a really good way of, you know, reducing your costs and.

Yeah, making the most of what.

What is there even.

Like, last night I made like a really random kind of pantry.

Pantry me.

Like, I had some fresh veggies, but I also just chucked a whole bunch of stuff that I was like, oh, I've got half a jar of this and a little bit of that.

And that's something I'm doing at the moment as well, is just trying to focus on, like, what can I make with what I have before, like, running out to the shops?

And I think a little bit of AI, just a little sprinkle of AI through on that is, you know, I've got a bunch of these ingredients.

How do I combine them to make a dinner?

If you're really stuck, what have you got?

And then ask the computer to solve it for you.

It's amazing what it comes up with.

Also, soups, curries, stir fries.

They're your best friends, right?

Yeah.

And those are all really good ways of using, like, odds and ends.

You know, you can chuck in just a little bit of this, a little bit of that, blend it up in a soup, and it just all kind of mushes in together and tastes delightful.

Or again, like a stir fry.

It doesn't matter if you don't have, you know, if you've got a half a carrot and three spring onions, you know, you can put that in and mix it up.

And, you know, with the stuff I like, the more VGs you put in it, the more color it has and the nicer it looks.

So, yeah, I think just don't be afraid to use what you've got in creative ways.

Love that.

Okay.

Where can people find you?

Where can people find foodprint?

Yeah, so foodprint is free to download from both the App Store and the Google Play Store.

Follow us on socials oodprintnz and connect with me on LinkedIn.

Michaelgarhy.

Love it so much.

Thank you so much for coming in and helping us with our food spend.

We all need it at this point.

And also, thank you so much for bringing in cakes for me personally.

Let's just do more food episodes because love it.

I'll come back anytime.

Right, Brian, see you every Tuesday.

That'd be brilliant.

Cool.

Thank you so much, Francis.

Thank you so much, Michael.

Now, if this episode helped you, then first of all, send it to a friend so we can all level up together.

Until next time, though, have a great day.

This podcast can only give you general information about how things work in most situations.

It's not individual financial advice if you're after that.

A financial advisor is always the best bet.