06/21/2017
Hunger isn't just a global problem — it's "the world's dumbest problem." At least, that's how Komal Ahmad, CEO and founder of Copia, sees it anyway, and she's making it her life's mission to eradicate hunger and dramatically reduce waste globally with technology that seamlessly delivers surplus food from grocery stores, companies, caterers, and events directly to people in need. Her platform, Copia, is what she calls the "Uber for food recovery," has already helped to feed hundreds of thousands of people in the San Francisco Bay area — and is on track to feeding a million people, all with high-quality food that would have otherwise been wasted.
The inspiration to end hunger came when Ahmad was a senior in college. She had just returned from Naval ROTC summer training, when she came across a homeless man on the street — a fairly common sight in the Bay Area. Still, Ahmad was moved. "Something about him just compelled me to stop and invite him to join me for lunch," she says. “I don’t think I could have ever imagined that one lunch would have changed my life forever, but that’s exactly what happened.” Komal Ahmad, 26, said in an interview in Millennial Magazine. As Ahmad watched the man wolf down his food in front of her, she listened to him tell his story. He had just returned from his second tour in Iraq, was still waiting for his Veteran’s benefits to kick in, and because they hadn’t, he hadn’t had anything to eat in three days. "I was sitting across from this vet who gave the most selfless sacrifice for our country, only to come home to face another battle, that of hunger and homelessness," Ahmad says.
Adding insult to injury, right across the street they watched Berkeley’s dining hall throw away thousands of pounds of food. “It was this very stark reality, of those who have and waste, and those who are in need and starve, and those two people right across the street from another.” She realized she had to do something.
Ahmad's next step was to get in touch with the dining halls on campus to see about reallocating excess food to people in need. The school was willing to donate surplus meals to Ahmad, if she distributed them on her own. Ahmad happily agreed — only to find out that doing so wasn't quite so simple. She was in class when she first received a call from a campus dining hall manager. There were 500 gourmet sandwiches leftover from a campus event that were going to be discarded, unless Ahmad wanted them. She didn't even have a car — after all, she was a college student — so she rented one, loaded the perishable sandwiches into the vehicle with the air conditioning blasting, and then called up every shelter, food bank, and non-profit within a 40 mile radius to see who could use the extra food. Many didn't answer. Some said they didn't need any food for the day. Others agreed to take 10-15 sandwiches. Frustrated and parked on the side of the road, her car full of food no one was able to take, Ahmad decided there had to be a better solution for distributing food. "It shouldn't be this hard to do the right thing, to do a good thing, to feed people" she says.
She thought how great it would be if people who had food could say, "Hey, we have food," and people who need food could say, "Hey, we need food," and we could match these two people and clear the marketplace. And that's essentially what we've built. A sophisticated technology-enabled logistics company that can scale to feed people and reduce food waste globally.”
If you have excess food, simply login to Copia’s app or website, express how much food you have left over, and request a pickup. Copia's algorithm will match your food to recipients currently looking for food donations. Then, a Food Hero (professional food handler) from Copia's delivery team will pick up the food, and distribute it to where it's most needed at the time. For instance, if a company has 3,000 pounds of food left over after a conference, 500 pounds of that food might go to one food kitchen, while another 900 pounds might go to a homeless shelter or veteran’s agency — and so on, until the food has been entirely divvied up. It's all about figuring out who has the capacity to accept what and when.
If it seems simple, that's because it is. Since its start, Copia has recovered over 830,000 pounds of food, feeding over 700,000 people (for reference, that's more than the population of Luxembourg). During Super Bowl 50 alone, which took place in the Bay Area this year, Ahmad and her team recovered 14 tons of food — enough to fill four 16-foot-long refrigerated trucks to the brim, and feed 23,000 people at non-profits and shelters all over the San Francisco Bay Area. "We were essentially able to, eliminate hunger and the necessity to purchase or make more food for over 18 non-profits for the entire week" Ahmad says. To date, Copia has not wasted a single pound of food.
But Copia's potential to distribute food and other vital resources goes far beyond the Bay Area. During a talk at the 2016 Women In The World Summit in New York City, Ahmad explained how Copia has received over 50,000 requests for global expansion, including from senior government officials in Germany and Austria who reached out to say they were interested in bringing Copia’s platform and operations overseas to Europe to help redistribute food and other resources to Syrian migrants who had entered their countries.
“Everyone wins with Copia,” Ahmad said. “We win because we’re feeding hundreds of thousands of people in need – including veterans, senior citizens, women and children — with high-quality food. Corporations and food providers reduce the amount of food that they’re wasting lowering disposal and over-purchasing costs, while receiving significant tax savings. They see their impact firsthand by feeding people directly in their community. We also help our environment by keeping out of landfills.”
The piece of technology Copia has built is so extraordinarily advanced that it can also be applied to the redistribution of other resources in the future. “Soon we will be able to use our platform to redistribute medical supplies, medicine, books, clothing, technology, and so on.” And, it's this type of opportunity for worldwide growth that Ahmad wishes for Copia. "If I was going to dedicate my life to something, it wouldn't be something that would operate on a small scale. It would be something that scales globally in order to serve hundreds of millions of people.”