How does it feel pitching to Richard Branson? One Irish outfit is about to find out

IRISH COMPANY FOODCLOUD will pitch to Richard Branson in the hope of securing a share of a €1.2 million prize fund.

FoodCloud is a social enterprise that redistributes leftover food from supermarkets and businesses to charities.

Speaking ahead of Tuesday’s challenge, CEO Iseult Ward said she was looking forward to the challenge – although she was in no doubt she would be nervous on the day.

FoodCloud joins five other businesses that have made it to the finals of Voom 2016 - a London-based competition that attracted over 3,000 UK and Irish entries when it started in May.

Model and businesswoman Tyra Banks, Spanx founder Sara Blakely and youtuber Marcus Butler will be joining Branson, the Virgin Group founder, on the judging panel.

The pitch is two minutes long and then the judges have four minutes to ask questions. There are no PowerPoint slides or fancy videos to wow Branson and the other critics – it’s all down to entrepreneurs’ ideas.

The finals on Tuesday will take place in front of an audience and will be live-streamed.

The road to London

To get to the last hurdle, FoodCloud had to make its mark from a pack of 160 semi-finalists – including 14 other Irish companies – during the competition’s London leg.

Ward said she thinks what set her organisation apart was its use of technology to address the global problem of food waste.

Food from Tesco being prepared by Cope Galway volunteers

FoodCloud started in 2012 and now has 450 stores donating surplus food across Ireland and the UK to over 1,000 charities.

Ward said her organisation decided to enter the competition because it had “really perfected” its business model.

“We’ve begun to scale across the UK. We are in the position to bring FoodCloud to the competition and hopefully get the support we need.”

She said she would use the prize money to bring the company into a position to build internationally.

The winners of each category will also receive marketing and mentoring support from members of the Voom and Virgin Media teams.

“A lot of the award is focused on developing a marketing campaign. This would be really important for us to publicise the issue of food waste and get more businesses on board,” Ward said.

She added that Foodcloud has “a few leads” about which country it will expand to next, but she wanted to focus on where it will make the biggest impact.

Foodcloud is competing in the Grow category – which is for businesses that are already creating revenue.

Ward joked that “unfortunately the competition is great” in the three-strong category. One rival, Bio-Bean, recycles coffee grounds into a log which can be burned in BBQs or stoves.

The other, Sibberi Tree Water, produces water by extracting a small amount of sap from trees. The finalist projects are all social enterprises, a concept that Ward said is becoming more popular and mainstream.

Who is to blame for food waste?

According to UN figures, more than one billion tonnes of food is wasted globally every year, while one in every seven people experience food poverty. FoodCloud is tackling this problem by taking the excess food and giving it to those who need it.

In Ireland, households spend around €700 on food that ends up being wasted every year, according to Safefood figures.

While supermarkets can often be accused for being the source of food waste, Ward believes it is a “broad problem and it’s difficult to point the finger at just one place”.

“A lot of food waste happens in the home but pointing the blame at any one area is ineffective if we are going to really address the issue.”

Written by Roisin Nestor and posted on TheJournal.ie