It’s lunch time and the click-clack of chopsticks is the one sound on this sunlit neighborhood middle in Kowloon, Hong Kong. About 30 grey-haired diners sit at small tables, dipping into steaming bowls of rice, pork stomach, leafy greens and lotus root soup.
Au Shu Kei, 88, sporting a flannel shirt, denim jacket and surgical masks, walked right here from his condominium 10 minutes away. A retired lodge shuttle bus driver, he comes 5 days per week for lunch.
Does he have a favourite dish? “I am not a picky eater,” he says, “as long as it’s healthy food.” He provides: “The service here is good.”
How this meal occurred is a component logistical acrobatics, half each day miracle – with some assist from know-how.
Orchestrated by an NGO aptly named Food Angel, it entails a military of meals collectors fanning out to markets, eating places, inns and groceries throughout Hong Kong to choose up surplus meals that may in any other case be thrown away as a result of it’s a little bit wilted or bruised or just uneaten. They accumulate 45 metric tons every week; greater than half from ParknShop, a grocery chain owned by listed conglomerate CK Hutchison Group. Other donors embody airline Cathay Pacific and luxurious lodge The Peninsula Hong Kong.
Racing in opposition to time – and expiration dates – Food Angel turns this rescued bounty into 20,000 sizzling and chilled meals each day and helps ship 11,000 different meals and meals packs by means of a community of charities and merchandising machines, in addition to dwelling supply to a few of Hong Kong’s poorest neighborhoods.
“Basically, we rescue food which is still edible, following strict food safety protocol, and turn them into meals for the needy community free of charge,” stated Zoe Lee, Food Angel’s Chief Strategy Officer. Recently, the NGO’s work has been pushed by know-how together with Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Field Service and Business Central software program and Power Apps, hosted on Azure.
Hong Kong is a monetary hub and culinary capital. It’s additionally a spot the place a big underclass – many aged – wrestle simply to place meals on the desk. Hong Kong tops the world in longevity, surpassing even Japan.
The aged inhabitants reached 1.3 million in 2020, accounting for one-fifth of the overall inhabitants, in keeping with the Hong Kong Poverty Situation Report revealed by the federal government. Forty 5 p.c of the aged – or 583,600 – have been recognized as poor earlier than any authorities help.
As one of many world’s most densely populated cities, Hong Kong additionally has an enormous waste downside: its three working landfills are near full. Hong Kong’s Environmental Protection Department estimates that 30% of the ten,809 metric tons of municipal waste dumped into landfills every day comes from meals. For the previous few years, the federal government has been actively selling meals donation, recycling and composting.
All these components make the case for meals rescue right here notably compelling.
Food Angel was launched in 2011 by Bo Charity Foundation, an NGO based by Gigi Tung, a former kids’s gymnasium entrepreneur. Years in the past, Tung witnessed a typical road scene that for her threw in sharp reduction Hong Kong’s wealth hole.
“In an area with luxury stores, I saw a granny struggle to push a cart piled with cardboard up a slope,” she advised an interviewer on Hong Kong Cable TV in 2012. “This showed the inequality of society. I thought about ways I could help her. The most direct one was to provide her with meals.”
Tung coined the slogan “Waste Not, Hunger Not, With Love.” When the pandemic hit, waste and starvation each shot up, and extra individuals wanted Food Angel’s model of affection.
Today, the group produces double the variety of sizzling and chilled meals – 20,000 a day – as earlier than the pandemic.
As Food Angel grew, so did the complexity of its work. Up till two years in the past, it relied on a hodgepodge of cellular messaging, pen on paper and a number of spreadsheets to function.
It was messy. There was no approach to know what or how a lot had been collected till drivers arrived again on the warehouse after their rounds. Food collectors and drivers typically missed one another by minutes at assortment factors, with nobody the wiser till hours later.
Two years in the past, as demand for companies jumped, Food Angel started working with a tech marketing consultant to determine a greater means. “Food Angel’s operation is quite unique,” stated Kenny Zee, the NGO’s head of IT. “We could not find any ready-made system that fulfilled our business requirements.”
The staff ended up customizing an answer utilizing Microsoft know-how. Dynamics 365 Field Service is used to handle logistics and is built-in into an app the staff constructed utilizing Power Apps, a Microsoft software that permits individuals with out intensive coding information to create their very own apps. Drivers now are assigned routes through a cellular app, which incorporates data resembling what dimension automobile can squeeze into a set spot and whether or not there’s a ramp out there. Drivers faucet in what they’ve picked up and the way a lot at every assortment level.