Surplus and its Mission Grow the "Zero Food Waste" Movement

One of the problems that are often experienced by the F&B industry is the size of the food waste or wasted food comes from hotels, restaurants, caterers, supermarkets, and society in general. From our statistics, around 13 million tons of food in Indonesia is wasted every year.

Departing from these issues, platform Surplus officially launched. This service allows F&B businesses to be able to sell excess food products and imperfect produce which is still safe and suitable for consumption at certain hours before closing the shop, with a half price discount (closing-hour discounts/clearance sales).

"Unlike other platforms, in particular Surplus is not only food market which sells food products like some other players, but the concept is only to sell excess food products and imperfect produce to customers, to solve problems food waste," said Managing Director of PT Ekonomi Circular Indonesia Muhammad Agung Saputra.

On the other hand, partners can get new customers and additional income from excess products. It is estimated that a 50% margin of each product sold will be more profitable to sell.cover HPP (Cost of Goods Sold) than wasted. The monetization strategies applied are revenue-sharing with partners about 10% of every transaction through the application.

"The number of Surplus partners is currently around 400 more spread across Jabodetabek, Bandung and Yogyakarta. Meanwhile for the category of partners who can join Surplus are those who generally have the potential to produce a lot of excess food products such as bakery & pastry, cafes, restaurants, hotels, supermarkets, catering & agriculture," said Agung.

For partners who want to take advantage of the Surplus application, they can upload photos of excess food or imperfect produce which will be sold quickly through the Surplus Partner application at certain hours before the closing time of the food shop/restaurant.

Then for customers can determine the desired food choices through a special menu. Furthermore, the selected food can be picked up in person at the related restaurant or shop, or you can choose to use GoSend delivery which has been integrated exclusively in the Surplus application. For payment options, Surplus provides options such as Ovo, Gopay, and Dana.

"Every transaction in the Surplus application, the customers and partners have contributed to support the movement zero food waste because it has saved the environment from threats food waste, said the Great.

Pandemic and and Surplus targets

Launching during the March 2020 pandemic, it turned out to be quite difficult for Surpus to run a business. The pandemic makes partners who have joined at the beginning become inactive and difficult to acquire partners to join during the pandemic. Another impact is that the target surplus customers, namely students, office workers and boarding house children, are very difficult to acquire, due to the PSBB and WFH policies and learning from home.

"However, after a year of surviving the surplus in the midst of the pandemic, we were able to create a positive growth trend in terms of transactions with YoY of around 1500% (period April 2020-April 2021). It is hoped that this positive growth trend will be maintained until the end of the pandemic," said Agung.

This year there are a number of targets that Surplus wants to achieve, including being able to reach 10.000 active users and reach more than 1000 partners and join the zero food waste movement. So it can reduce the speed food waste around 10-15% in the Jabodetabek, Bandung and Yogyakarta areas by the end of 2021.

"We are also preparing a fundraiser in the form of through crowdfunding through the Kickstarter platform which is planned to belaunching in the next 1-2 months. We are also very open to investors who have the same vision and mission or are looking for investment in green startups or companies that produce social and environmental impacts," said Agung.

Menurut report ANGIN titled "Investing in Impact in Indonesia", in 2013 the concept of impact investment or startup with a "green" or environmentally friendly approach, is still very rare in Indonesia. But now it's more familiar because there are VCs that make fund specifically for investment in impact sectors.

There are a number of impactful investors who have invested in Indonesia, both local and foreign players. Some already have a representative team in Indonesia. The total reached 66 investors, with details of 61 of fund abroad and the remaining five from Indonesia.

Meanwhile, the number of mainstream investors who have disbursed a number of funds for the impact sector is far greater, almost twice as many as 107 investors. With details of 32 local investors and 75 investors from abroad.