Summary

Re:dish is tackling the 1 trillion single use food service packaging items used in the US every year by replacing single use with reusables, and the service to collect and wash them daily. The company has created software that allows its clients to track their landfill waste diversion, carbon emissions savings, and water reduction. The company services corporate cafeterias and pantries, arenas, K-12 schools, universities, hospitals, production sets, and other types of food service providers. As part of providing the infrastructure and logistics around reusables, the company has built the first industrial washing facility to support reusability at scale. (Source) The company is fundamentally a back-end solution filled with custom machinery, proprietary software and significant automation that allows the washing and sanitizing of up to 75,000 units per day, and allows customers to track a bunch of metrics related to sustainability and reuse. As of 2022, the company had eight container SKUs, from cups to clamshells, designed to cover the vast majority of meals and provide a better dining experience than disposable solutions. Every piece is coated to prevent scratches, and also includes a unique QR code where end users can scan and learn sustainability metrics for the entire Re:Dish system. (Source)

Story

Founder Caroline Vanderlip first started investigating the waste created by delivery and food service back in 2019, where she found that packaging waste is a massive problem that the industry did not have the means to tackle. She wanted to offer a solution that would enable operators to outsource cleaning and sanitizing of reusable containers to an off-site facility that returns them on a regular, dependable schedule, and thus Re:dish was formed. (Source)

Pic Credit: Food on demand