Save the Food

Alexa App

We introduced a new way to fight food without having to even look at a screen. Introducing the Save the Food app for Alexa.

The Ask

When we met with the NRDC and AdCouncil they wanted to raise awareness around food waste. We knew in order to have a substantial impact that could last we’d have to build a tool that was easy for anyone to use, not just a campaign. So we came up with the Save the Food app for Alexa.

Discovery

With a market that is already over saturated with seemingly useless apps, we wanted to give people a tool that they would barely even have to think about when using it. From our research we were able to determine that food waste comes from a few main factors: Over buying, ingredient or flavor fatigue, and uncertainty of when food is past it’s prime and how to use that food if it has passed. We found that there were a lot of unanswered questions that come up in the kitchen.

How do I store half an onion?

What can I do with browned bananas?

How can I tell when broccoli is bad?

When it comes to the kitchen, no one has an extra hand free or wants to spend the time looking things up on their devices. We saw that most people use Alexa enabled devices in three places: the living room, the bedroom, and the kitchen. Our team decided that an Alexa app would be the best way to equip users with the knowledge needed to help them prevent food waste every time they open their fridge.

To start, we had to understand how Alexa skills worked and what went into building them

Building the Skill

Now that we understood the structure of how the basic request / response system with Alexa skills worked, we had to actually build it. We first partnered with the NRDC to make sure that all of the information that we were getting was certifiable and we weren’t providing users with any incorrect information. This involved creating a verified matrix of content around as many different food items as we could.