Meet the Grantees: Toast.org and ReFED Team Up to Support Organizations Fighting Restaurant Food Waste

In the fall of 2023, Toast.org, the social impact arm of Toast, announced a partnership with ReFED, a nonprofit committed to ending food waste in the U.S., to support a $1 million Catalytic Grant Fund to find and help discover and develop the next great solutions to end restaurant food waste.  From a pool of over 150 applicants ReFED selected six organizations to receive funding, based on their ability to provide simple, affordable solutions that could fit the unique needs of the restaurant community. Selected organizations include Afterlife Ag, Center for EcoTechnology (CET), ConnectedFresh Company, Food Rescue US, Green Dining Alliance and Prism.

We sat down with founders from two grantees—Prism and Afterlife—to understand how they discovered their unique food waste solutions, what drives them, and how they’ll be putting grant funding into action.

Afterlife Puts Waste on the Menu

Afterlife Ag is a New York-based company that collects food waste from restaurants and uses a proprietary substrate to turn that waste into mushrooms that they then sell back to those restaurants. Founder Winson Wong credits growing up in his parents' restaurant with helping inspire the idea, and giving him an understanding of how food waste plays into the business. A career in startup investing also advised his approach to the problem as he looked to develop a scalable solution that would actually stick.

“Food waste generates over 10% of greenhouse gas emissions every year, and this is only increasing, the reality is there is not enough proper food waste processing capacity, anywhere,” said Wong. “Even restaurants that love composting and want to do more, they don't necessarily want to pay more for it, so we needed to create something that has more value. That's where mushrooms came in.”

Prism Strives for Fresher, Longer

While some restaurants are fortunate enough to have localized supply chains with fresh ingredients delivered fast from partners such as Afterlife, many restaurants and producers do not have this level of access to fresh food, and are challenged with keeping food fresh until it’s ready to serve. Another ReFED Catalytic Grant recipient, Prism, is creating a storage system for restaurants that uses a controlled atmosphere to extend the lifespan of fresh produce. 

“Controlled atmosphere technology is pretty well known—it’s how we get apples from Washington year-round,” explains Prism founder, Hunter Lindsay. “It's simply a modification of different atmospheric conditions, but it's used much more often on the large industrial scale.”

For Lindsay and Prism, the ability to create a large-scale solution for the restaurant industry lies in making the technology smaller so it can fit within small restaurant footprints.

“We sort of liken it to the laptop—laptops or computers used to take up the size of a room, similar to these machines, they are huge. Then there was the invention of the personal computer, which brought it down to the bookstore-size level,” says Lindsay. “So that's what we're doing, we’re innovating to bring that technology down into a cost-effective method that restaurant consumers can use.”

Currently in a developmental state, Prism has been running continuous tests on their devices, finding that they can increase produce’s life by two to three times inside their containers, even eight times in some cases. Grant funding will allow them to finalize research and development and bring prototypes into restaurants across the country for their innovative technology.

ReFED: Focused on Funding the Future

“Our own research shows how extensively the global issue of food waste can be attributed to restaurants, and how existing solutions can also be cost-prohibitive and challenging to adopt for a number of reasons,” said Angel Veza, Senior Manager of Capital, Innovation & Engagement at ReFED. “Working with Toast provides a unique opportunity to fund exciting innovations while also tapping into their network and expertise to develop solutions that work in real-life situations for restaurants.”

As grantee pilots begin in the second half of 2024, Toast plans to share learnings and solutions with the Toast community so they also have the chance to take advantage of potential waste reduction and cost-saving solutions and the chance to be at the forefront of finding the future of sustainable solutions for the industry.

To stay updated on the ReFED Catalytic Grant Fund, click here.

To learn about all six grantees and the impactful work they’re doing, visit the Grantee Directory.