Northern Ireland food waste app, Gander, has picked up the Mobile Innovation of the Year award at the 2021 Retail System Awards, held at the Waldorf Hilton in London.
The judging panel praised Gander’s technology, which is aimed at saving consumers' money on their weekly shops and saving the planet in the process.
Launched in 2019, the Gander app was developed to help food stores clear significantly more of its reduced to clear, often yellow labelled food produce.
As items are stickered in store, they are displayed on the app and once that item is sold it is automatically removed, providing an instant feed of all reductions in-store at any time.
Data is returned to the retailer through Gander's analytics platform, "Ganderlytics" on which they can act in real time.
Ganderlytics include waste amounts, the number of live reductions, best times for reducing, reduction compliance in each store (measuring if items are actually being reduced as they should) and data on how users are interacting with reductions in each of the stores.
RELATED: Belfast app agency to grow by 43%
To date, Gander has successfully saved 1.7m food items from going to waste, equivalent to 1,800 tonnes of CO2 since its launch.
One of the app's founders, Ashley Osborne said: "What once started out as a concept, is now a game changing reality, helping address the growing food waste issue and push towards more sustainable shopping around the world.
“As we continue to expand, this recognition solidifies our goals to be recognised on the world stage as a leading innovator in the fight against food waste. Feedback has been unanimously positive from customers who have now incorporated the app into their daily lives as they search for high quality reduced food in their area.
“Gander has also been an opportunity to provide our retailers with means to increase revenue otherwise lost to waste and increase footfall."
RELATED: SustainIQ and Thrive.App help support local McCue's sustainability strategy
The Retail System Awards, now in their 16th year, honour businesses pioneering modernisation and development in the industry.
The 2021 awards shone a light on various technology vendors and retailers who have had to adapt and come up with innovative solutions due to the unprecedented nature of the global pandemic.
Gander has experienced a significant soar in downloads during the past year with the app surpassing the 100k download mark back in February 2021.
Its team said it has regularly placed in the top 10% of app downloads and continues to attract huge interest from major UK and Irish retailers, many of whom will be rolling out with Gander (which can be downloaded via Apple or Android app stores) in the coming months.
