OLIO: Sharing Food to Reduce Waste
Food-sharing app that enables communities to unlock the value of food that would be wasted
About 1.4 billion tons of food are wasted globally every year, with the United States squandering the most of any other country at nearly 40 million tons annually. Not only does food waste impact countries with insufficient food supplies, but it also has significant environmental repercussions. According to the World Wildlife Federation, the production of wasted food in the United States is equivalent to the greenhouse emissions of more than 32 million cars.
Alumni Ventures portfolio company OLIO offers a food-sharing mobile application that seeks to reduce waste in homes and local communities. The app allows neighbors to connect and share food and rallies volunteers (branded as Food Waste Heroes) to collect and list surplus food from local businesses for pickup. Common listings include food nearing sell-by dates, spare homegrown vegetables, unused groceries, and nonfood household items.
The Waste-Conscious App
Upon downloading the OLIO app, users are greeted with enthusiastic messaging about joining the community. The homepage is where users can source free or homemade sold goods within the closest available radius. Upon finding the desired item, users request and organize a pickup through an in-app messaging feature.
There is also a climate goals section, where users accumulate points for completing climate-positive tasks such as reading short stories, buying bamboo toothbrushes, and more.
OLIO has three sources of revenue:
- Redistribution fee for retailers offloading surplus food,
- Freemium subscription model targeting users,
- Commission-based sales fee for certain goods.
The company is also working on a borrowing fee as a fourth stream, which is expected to be released next year.
Significant Company Traction
According to a consumer survey conducted by the One Earth organization, 95% of consumers want to live more sustainably. OLIO is directly tapping into that desire.
OLIO has attracted 64% of its users through word of mouth and has 77,000 total brand ambassadors. Some other significant milestones for the company in its first year of launch include:
- 5 million signed up users
- 700,000 monthly active users and 280,000 weekly active users
- 80% “sell-through rate” (items requested from listings), in under two hours on average for all requests
5 Million
Signed Up Users
700,000
Monthly Active Users
80%
Sell-through Rate
Other Reasons We Like OLIO
Strong Syndicate of Investors: OLIO is backed by an established syndicate of investors, including Accel, Octopus Ventures, VNV Capital, and Luxor. Sonali De Rycker, a well-regarded partner at Accel, was OLIO’s first investor.
Driven Founding Team and Advisors: Co-Founders Tessa Clarke (CEO) and Saasha Celestial-One (COO) bring significant experience to OLIO. Tessa previously worked in international expansion for products, e-commerce, strategy, and digital marketing. Saasha has experience as a founder and has worked within finance, strategy, business development roles, international partnership development, and consulting. Their combined skill sets position them for success in continuing OLIO’s global expansion.
How We Are Involved
Towerview Ventures (for the Duke community) and Congress Avenue Ventures (for the UTexas community) participated in OLIO’s $43 million Series B led by Swedish investment firm VNV Global.
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