Free lunch, anyone? Foodsharing sites and apps stop leftovers going to waste

In New York and San Francisco, across Germany and in east London, early adopters are sharing their leftover and excess food. Will others get over the yuck factor and follow?
A plastic tub in on the fridge shelf, labelled "leftovers"
For food sharing services to really take off, enough people need to be happy to eat strangers' leftovers. Photograph: Steven Puetzer/Getty

If you're stuck with a half-eaten pizza and can't face throwing it away, a startup originally from Seattle has the solution. Leftoverswap's app lets you offer your leftovers to locals, who sign up to be notified when there's free food to be had in their area.

"Some people are shocked and find the concept absolutely disgusting while others love it and some wonder whether it's real," says co-founder Dan Newman. But with some 10,000 users in US cities like New York and San Francisco as well as in Europe, Australia and Asia, Leftoverswap is very real indeed. It is, in fact, part of a growing trend: the food-sharing economy.

"Foodsharing is still on the edges of mainstream", acknowledges Newman. "People are just getting comfortable sharing their bedrooms through companies like Airbnb. But I think there's a large part of the population that want to do their best to share the resources we have."

With developed countries wasting up to 40% (pdf) of their food – British households, for example, throw away 20% of the food they buy, and more has been thrown away before it even reached the shop – sharing what's in your fridge seems like a sensible solution.

In many German cities, that means giving away not leftover pizza but veggies and bread you can't finish. "Food waste has become a very hot topic here, and at the same time the sharing economy has boomed", says Barbara Merhart, a Munich-based coordinator for "Food waste and the sharing economy are a good combination. Personally, I don't buy groceries any more. Why would you spend money on it?"

Unlike Leftoverswap, is a non-profit organisation. But the two outfits' mission is the same: to connect those who have edible goods to give away with those who want them. According to Merhart, many of's recipients aren't just those on a tight budget: many are professionals like Merhart, who simply want to keep food away from the skip, and who don't see the point of paying for something that can be had for free.

"The original idea was for people to post on our website if they had leftovers in the fridge that they wanted to give away," she says. "But now shops, bakeries and restaurants are participating as well." With shops and restaurants having to worry about potential legal implications of giving away food items that are about to expire, getting companies to take part is harder than it sounds. But giving food to the local community is not just good for the earth, it's good for neighbourly relations, and now grocery shops approach about partnering. Even upmarket hotels are giving leftovers to the group.

And in a way, food sharing is the most social aspect of the sharing economy. Because food is perishable, and because it doesn't make sense to crisscross a city in pursuit of leftovers, donors and recipients often live close to each other. "You check on the website what's available in your neighbourhood," explains Merhart. "Then you agree with the donor on where to meet." calculates that its nearly 40,000 members – in 218 German cities, but also in Austria, Switzerland, Mexico, Israel and the UK – have saved 33 tonnes of food.

But what if the banana is brown or the bread stale?'s rating averages 4.95 out of 5, and Merhart says she's never received a food item that wasn't edible. Still, the hygiene and quality of strangers' leftovers remains a challenge. Leftoverswap plans to address the issue by introducing a member rating system like the one used by sharing companies like Airbnb and the ride-sharing service Uber.

California-based Cropmobster offers a different spin on food sharing: the website allows farmers to post excess crop that would otherwise be sent to the compost, and volunteers sign up to collect it for further distribution to charities. London-based startup Eatro, in turn, features food sharing minus the leftovers. To be precise, it features home chefs who can offer their goods for delivery to customers in their neighbourhood. "For many of our chefs, our website is the first step from just cooking at home to starting your own food establishment," says co-founder Bar Segal. "Others are just really passionate about cooking and want to share it." Customers pay just as they would any restaurant or take-away service, and Eatro takes a 15% cut on each transaction, but the sharing aspect is obvious in the delivery of the goods: the chefs themselves deliver the meal within a one-mile radius. Eatro is currently available in east London but is planning to expand across the capital.

Early adopters are clearly enthusiastic about food sharing. The question is whether enough people can overcome the yuck factor the same way they overcame their hesitation about having strangers using their spare bedroom.

The food hub is funded by The Irish Food Board. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled advertisement feature. Find out more here.
