Making Food Rescue Your Business: Case Studies in Germany

Regina Sedlmeier, Meike Rombach and Vera Bitsch
Additional contact information
Regina Sedlmeier: Chair of Economics of Horticulture and Landscaping, School of Management and School of Life Sciences Weihenstephan, Technical University of Munich, Alte Akademie 16, 85354 Freising, Germany
Meike Rombach: Department of Land Management and Systems, Lincoln University, P.O. Box 85084, Lincoln 7647, New Zealand

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 18, 1-15

Abstract: Initiatives of the European Union in the context of food waste running governmental and nonprofit campaigns strive to reach waste reduction goals. The study investigated entrepreneurial business models in the arena of food waste in Germany with a multiple case study research approach. Business entrepreneurs seek to reduce waste through its monetarization. After the initial identification of close to all current entrepreneurial businesses, ten entrepreneurs in retail, processing, and food service were interviewed to determine barriers and challenges to the models’ success and analyze their motivation to start these businesses. The most important barriers constituted logistical problems regarding supply as well as marketing; and the need for close collaboration with suppliers constituted another important challenge. Their motivations combine sustainability-oriented goals with a profit goal. To scale up, an increase in collaboration and data exchange is needed across the supply chain.

Keywords: food waste reduction; saving food; social business; research case study; sustainable entrepreneurship (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/18/5101/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/18/5101/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:18:p:5101-:d:268254

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().