Q-Point Wins Food Valley Award 2016

14 Oct 2016 --- Q-Point Consultancy, with their food waste solution, were declared the winner of the Food Valley Award 2016. Their approach, already successfully tested in zoo restaurants, has great potential. In the Netherlands alone the hospitality industry wastes an estimated 51,000 tons (€.4 billion euros) of food each year. The prize was awarded during the Food Valley Expo, October 13, 2016.

"We are thrilled that we won the Food Valley Award," says Carel Jaspers, director and founder of Q Point BV (www.q-point-bv.nl). "It's a great opportunity to bring our innovation to the attention of an international audience." The Wageningen consulting agency will, in the coming months, introduce the food waste-reduction approach to the entire hospitality industry. "Our innovation is of interest to all those places visited by day trippers," says Jaspers. "We are already broadening our approach to involve suppliers to catering establishments."

Paradigm shift in thinking
Q-Point’s approach helps companies in the catering and hospitality industry to accurately estimate the amount of food needed, and the times when it should be available, based on concrete data. This enables them to target food waste reduction in their organizations. The method has been successfully applied in zoo restaurants, where one of the restaurants saw their waste reduce by 75%. They prepared and served the same volume of meals, yet purchased almost 30% fewer ‘raw’ materials. The idea was initially developed for Burgers' Zoo; later Emmen Zoo and the Apenheul joined in. Other partners were Wageningen UR and software specialist Nostradamus. The initiative brought about a mental shift in participating restaurants and staff: they discovered that they could offer quality, choice and be customer friendly, without holding large stocks.

Food Valley Award
In this twelfth year of the Food Valley Award, an independent jury evaluated the entries on their degree of innovation, economic viability and cooperation. In addition to Q-Point, Scelta Accelerator Taste of Scelta Mushrooms, and Sensor Spots non-invasive oxygen measurement for containers, were also nominated.

Food Valley Expo
Business and Innovation Tours, impressive pitches by startups, new technologies and the latest developments in the fields of nutrition and health: Food Valley Expo 2016 offered plenty of opportunities to meet new business partners and try out new ideas. More than 650 visitors from 17 different countries participated in the Food Valley Expo.