Facts

  • Country: Netherlands
  • Type of provider: Restaurant and more
  • Focus:
    • Rethink: Instock works on rethinking supply chains in the food system and thereby sets up a framework for reducing food waste and using residue materials for new food products; Rethinking how to create dishes with maximum use of the ingredients, thereby minimizing waste;
    • Reduce: By utilizing various cooking techniques and creative ideas, Instock works towards reducing food waste and associated negative externalities of producing food.
    • Reuse: Instock collects food items meant to be discarded and uses them in their restaurants, as well as distributing them to other catering establishments.
    • Remanufacture: By collecting surplus bread from bakeries or residue material from beer production, Instock produces beer from bread and uses residue grain to produce granola.

Summary of the project

Instock's founders are motivated by the fact that around a third of the world's food is wasted and lost throughout the food value chain. In addition, humanity's efforts to feed the global population are becoming increasingly challenged by a growing population increase. In order to have a chance in resolving these challenges, solutions have to be developed to reduce food waste wherever possible. Therefore, Instock provides a few of those much-needed solutions.

Instock's idea started out as a pop-up restaurant. In 2014 Instock opened three restaurants in Amsterdam, Utrecht and The Hague. In recent years it grew into something much bigger. Their underlying concept is dealing with food waste by taking a positive perspective, thereby creating quality consumer awareness around food waste. The idea was recognized by Albert Heijn which offered its funding and partnership from the beginning stages of Instock's development.

Currently Instock includes a restaurant in Amsterdam, a web shop and a distribution center. The restaurant is working with rescued food waste. In addition, Instock's chef's work hard to produce quality, wholesome and tasty dishes out of it for its guests. The chef's accumulated knowledge is collected in two cookbooks which are available on their web shop. Furthermore, Instock's beer made from surplus bread and potatoes, as well as granola produced from residue grain from beer production are also available on Instock's web shop. Last but not least, their distribution center is a central part of their supply chain which they make available for other catering businesses. Food rescued from farmers, supermarkets and other food industry businesses are delivered to the distribution center where it gets sorted and supplied to other businesses. The rescued food includes imperfect products which are still perfectly fine or surplus products which are a result of inefficiencies in the food value chain.

Additionally, through all these business efforts, Instock's team work hard to spread information, knowledge and inspiration in relation to food waste. As mentioned previously, their stylish, positive approach to food waste makes Instock a powerful creator of quality consumer awareness which inevitably helps fight humanity's vast problem of food waste. Instock works on rethinking supply chains in the food system and thereby sets up a framework for reducing food waste and using residue materials for new food products; Rethinking how to create dishes with maximum use of the ingredients, thereby minimizing waste.

More information

Do you want to know more about this organization? Please visit their website: https://www.instock.nl/en/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/instockamsterdam

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/instock_nl/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ51rkGyCL4&ab_channel=Instock



























Over deze practice

R-strategie:Reduce, Remanufacture, Rethink, Reuse
Betrokken partners:Albert Heijn Nederland

PRACTICE

Countering food waste

Instock is a company which manufactures beer and granola, has a restaurant and supplies catering establishments with food products. One third of the food in our world is wasted and Instock wants to do something about that. The organization takes on this challenge quite literally by using products that would otherwise remain unsold and by create awareness of the issue.

Countering food waste