Analisa Winther

Charlotte Aschim is CEO and Co-Founder of the Norwegian startup TotalCtrl, which makes food waste prevention software for grocery stores, hotels, and restaurants. Charlotte has been named one of Europe’s most inspiring food waste change makers, one of the top 80 Norwegian leaders under 35, and is a European Green Capital Ambassador. TotalCtrl is looking to integrate with other software companies food management solutions so if you’re in that space, get in touch! in this episode, we also cover:

• 1:40 How TotalCtrl works
• 6:00 Players and difference in the food loss and food waste space
• 14:50 The impact of regulation
• 16:00 The Norwegian food scene
• 21:25 Vision for the future and desired collaborations

Join our community on Instagram and find more episodes at www.nordicfoodtech.io 

K Group is the 2nd biggest grocery retailer in the Finnish market. They’ve been celebrated for being the most sustainable trading sector company in the world by World Economic Forum and are the only Finnish company to have made it on the list every year since 2005.

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Despite this achievement, K Group has struggled to communicate the responsibility they’ve taken around their business practices to consumers. In this conversation, we speak with Customer Insight Director Heidi Jungar to explore how Kesko has approached this challenge including what sustainability in retail means to them, how they are taking responsibility, and what grocery shopping will look like in the future. 

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• 11:00 K Group’s sustainability and conservation programs

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• 14:25 Insights around what drives consumer buying decisions towards sustainability 

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• 19:10 How K Group gives customers their data back 

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• 21:10 K Group’s vision for the future grocery store

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• 36:00 Vision for future food system

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Episode Transcript

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Related Links

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How other Nordic grocery retailers are thinking about the future of food

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How to successfully launch new plant-based products 

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Dumpster diving to shed light on supermarket food waste

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Delås Farm on REKO Rings: the Nordic movement to buy directly from farms

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Coop Crowdfunding on enabling their customers to invest in food startups

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ICA Vaxa on developing products to shift the Swedish food system

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Liked this episode? Subscribe to the show for a few dollars a month to support the creation of more content like this! You’re also invited to join our community on Instagram

In this episode, we address what we know from science when it comes to adopting diets that support a healthy, sustainable food system. My guest is Amanda Wood who is a researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. Launched in 2007, the Centre’s vision is to advance a world where social-ecological systems are understood, governed and managed to not only enhance human well-being, but also enable the sustainable co-evolution of human civilizations with the biosphere. Amanda was a co-author of the influential EAT Lancet report and subsequently wrote an analysis on how the Nordic food system would have to be transformed in order to meet the report’s recommendations. 

• 7:30 Five actions areas that will transform the food system
• 19:00 Vision for the future food system
• 26:50 Wishlist for change from policy makers
• 31:00 Research areas we’re still missing to move forward
• 35:30 Signs that the food system is changing for the better

Episode Transcript

Related Links

Nordic Food Policy Lab on policy’s role in supporting healthier diets

Gustaf Brandberg started investing in food after visiting the Stockholm Resilience Center

C40 Cities as procurement centers and levers of change

Ellen MacArthur Foundation on regenerative food cities

Daniel S Ruben on visions for a future food system

The Nordic Food Policy Lab was launched by the 5 prime ministers of the Nordic countries in 2017 to curate and share examples of Nordic food policy for health and sustainability. They do this through global partnerships and dialogues. Their goal is meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals through food policy. They also help other countries in achieving the goals.

In this episode, Marie Persson provides an overview of what is happening within food policy across the Nordics. We also take a look at the COP25 UN climate negotiations from a Nordic angle and what a sustainable, healthy diet looks like.

• 7:30 Overview of the Nordics strengths and weaknesses when it comes to food & food policy
• 9:40 Why food is such a tricky political conversation
• 16:30 Examples of individuals taking climate action through food
• 20:20 What is needed for policy to encourage sustainable production and consumption
• 25:35 Why more chefs and behavioral psychologists are needed in politics

This episode is part of Taste the Transition, a series of lunch conversations during the COP25 climate negotiations highlighting individuals taking climate action through food. Tell us your vision for the food system on www.nordicfoodtech.io/answer or by using the hashtag #NordicClimateAction

Too Good To Go enables consumers to buy food that would otherwise be thrown out at the end of the day. The idea started in Denmark and has quickly spread across Europe with everyone from mom and pop bakeries to big grocery retailers getting on board. Today they’ve saved some 25.5 million meals and opened up a new customer segment for many food businesses. 

In this episode, we speak with Mikkel Fog Holm-Nielsen who runs special projects for Too Good To Go’s management team. Join us as we discuss their ambitious strategy to fight food waste across multiple fronts. By 2020, they aim to work with 75,000 businesses, inspire 50 million people to reduce their household food waste, impact regulation in 5 countries, and have a food waste curriculum in 500 schools.

• 2:00 How Too Good To Go got started
• 5:40 Creating a business around food waste
• 14:10 Vision for the future food system and what’s missing to get there 
• 17:20 How they are fighting food waste via business, politics, education, and household behavior 
• 27:30 Company culture and why much of the team from Endomondo, which sold to Under Armour for $85 million, joined Too Good To Go

Arla is the 5th largest dairy company in the world. Owned by 12,500 farmers across seven countries, they have an ambition to become the most transparent value chain in dairy.

In today’s episode, we discuss this ambition with Tomi Sirén who is the head of Digital and Technological Innovations at Arla. Based in Finalnd, he’s spearheading a variety of projects focused on moving their sustainability agenda forward with emerging technologies including the Arla Milkchain. Listen in as we talk about:

• 5:30 Arla’s digital transformation
• 9:00 Arla Milkchain – how they are using blockchain to trace their products and animal welfare (see video)
• 21:00 Collaborations Arla is looking for and what obstacles they are facing to scale
• 26:00 Other sustainability projects at Arla
• 28:40 Vision for the future and what we’re missing to get there

Almi Invest is Sweden’s most active startup investor. With 3 billion SEK under management, they make about 50 new investments each year and have invested in 660 companies overall, some of which have been acquired by Google, Microsoft, and Apple or IPOed at a billion kroner level on the stock market. 

Join us as we speak with investment manager Karin Ebbinghaus about Almi’s GreenTech fund, which only invests in companies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The fund has about 650 million SEK under management or 60 million euro. Listen in as we talk about:

• 3:50 Almi’s investment thesis 
• 15:10 What a GreenTech model looks 
• 17:35 How to measure a GreenTech model’s impact
• 21:20 How Almi’s GreenTech fund fits into Swedens’ national strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2050
• 30:10 Almi’s vision for FoodTech ecosystem in 10-15 years

Amass has been recognized multiple times not only as one of the best restaurants in the world, but also as one of the most sustainable. For them, a zero waste kitchen has been an incredible creative constraint inspiring major changes to how this fine dining institution cooks, recycles, sources, and operates in their local environment. Today the restaurant’s food and ingredients are 90% organic. Food waste has been reduced by 75% since they started in 2013 and their annual water consumption is down by 5,200 liters. The restaurant’s facilities also include a garden with 80 varieties of plants and an aquaponic farming system.

A Native New Zealander, Kim Wejendorp was the Sous Chef at Amass Restaurant in Copenhagen before becoming their head of R&D. In this conversation, we talk about how they undertook the sustainable transition, the creative process that produces a zero waste kitchen, and what kind of partners and innovations they are looking to partner with.

Episode Transcript 

Related Links & Episodes

More interviews with Nordic restaurants

More episodes on fighting food waste

Matt Homewood on dumpster diving to stop supermarket food waste

Electrolux on designing appliances for a plant-forward kitchen

Restaurants as a center for applied science and R&D

About the show

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Not long ago, Frida Jonson and her co-founder Lovisa Madås realized that the FoodTech and AgTech worlds were unfolding in parallel. No journalism outlet was covering all sides of the story from farm to fork. So, they started AgFo, a digital media outlet covering the intersection of agriculture and food in Sweden. 

AgFo’s journalists travel all over the country reporting on different trends, perspectives, and innovations in the food system. Today, Frida gives us a front row seat to the conversations being had, the emerging trends, and collaborations to look out for. We also discuss why journalism is important for ecosystem development and connecting diverse communities.

Aquaculture is the farming of fish. As the fastest growing sector in animal food production, the industry has started to attract the interest of Silicon Valley. This might also be because aquaculture is some 20 years behind traditional agriculture in terms of development leaving it ripe for innovation.

We speak with Carsten Krome who is the Managing Partner of Hatch, the first global aquaculture accelerator program operating across Norway, Hawaii and Singapore and an investor into aquaculture with the fund Alimentos Ventures. He provides an excellent introduction to the aquaculture world and what we can look forward to in this space. 

Carsten has his own entrepreneurial experience through his start-up as a prawn farmer in Malaysia and he holds a Ph.D. in feed science from the University of Stirling as well as a Masters in Marine Biology from the University of Kiel in Germany. 

If you liked this episode, check out this podcast with Ocean Harvest from Denmark on regenerative ocean farming as a solution to climate change. For more conversations, join our community on Instagram or check out other episodes on www.nordicfoodtech.io.