Find Deals and Help End Hunger with Food For All

Food For All has a mission: to provide food for all. The new food ordering service is trying to reduce food waste in the United States. It’s estimated 40 percent of all food produced ends up as waste, shocking considering the current state of world hunger.

The app lets people buy a restaurant’s daily leftovers or day-old foods in an effort to help restaurants cut back on waste. The goal is to reduce the amount of waste piling up in local landfills and the reward is a gourmet meal at a discount price.

Food For All allows users to search for food deals close to their desired location, place their order — foods that won’t or did not sell by the close of business — and pick up the food at a designated time. The restaurant will not provide menus, but will give you a general idea of the kind of food to expect. The food is 50 to 80 percent off. The app is not just targeting traditional, sit-down restaurants, but also cafeterias, buffets, bakeries and coffee shops.

The app is operating a pilot program in Cambridge, Mass., and hoping to launch the final product in both Boston and New York City in the summer. The working prototype, self-funded, includes more than 30 restaurants participating in the program.

Last spring, Food For All began working with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Sustainable Technologies and Health program to focus on the environmental impact potential of the app. Throughout the research they found reducing food waste would promote sustainability by reducing CO2 emissions and water and energy use during food preparation.