🛒 The Check-Out: Wasted's Pasta
+ 5 cool climate events + what's in our basket - Grumpy, Local's + 1kg bags of chocolate flakes...
Happy Thursday! Welcome to The Check-Out - your weekly dose of climate x consumer goods inspiration, and your discovery box of products and events the Following the Footprints team are loving this week. It’s great to have you here.
Close your eyes. Start to dream. Wait, that’s crazy, you’re also picturing travelling the world on a pasta-made-from-leftover-bread food tour? This week FTF team member Jenny is piecing together the best thing since sliced bread, Wasted. Globally renowned (after their tour), and heading DTC (after their crowdfunding campaign), it’s a fresh take on how we design our food systems that will leave you wanting more.
After we learn about Wasted, we’ll share what the Following the Footprints team has loved and consumed this week and 5 Climate x Consumer Goods events coming up. Let’s dig in…
> Brand Spotlight
Carbs from Copenhagen: Wasted wants you to eat trash pasta (and like it).
“It’s the best thing I’ve ever had in my life,” chef (and star of The Bear) Matty Matheson says, holding a silver bucket. “It’s incredible you can make this from old bread,” three-star Michelin chef and co-owner of Noma Rene Redzepi says in the middle of digging into his meal.
The item receiving such acclaim from major culinary tastemakers? Wasted's pasta, from a team that is just now winding down a tour across the world cooking for and recruiting chefs, influencers, and critical consumers alike to their cause of not just eating - but loving - pasta made from leftover bread.
Wasted Copenhagen-based co-founders Leif Friedman (CEO) and Jorge Aguilar (Creative Director) both spent many years working in the consumer goods & culinary worlds before embarking on this mission together in 2023. Aguilar was previously overseeing creative for Empirical, a spirits company known for their sleek branding and unusual flavors (most recently: cilantro) and Friedman founded Licked Media, a company that created buzzy nontraditional snacks like a ramen chocolate bar. This same approach - bucking convention, being bold - has helped Wasted successfully build hype and intrigue for their pasta. If you’re wondering how they made it to the Noma team’s family meal, according to Aguilar, they just DM’ed Rene Redzepi and asked to come cook pasta (and got very lucky that he responded). The virality of Redzepi’s reaction “led to a staggering 15x increase in our audience, generating unprecedented demand for our product among food service like canteens, restaurants, and even consumers” (see here).
Now, the team is ready to go direct-to-consumer (and establish a production operation in Italy) after a primarily wholesale business and an intensive calendar of community events over the past year. They see a huge area of opportunity in the bread-to-pasta pipeline because, according to their team, one in three loaves of bread is thrown away; they are working mostly with local, industrial bakeries to re-use their waste. Their move towards DTC is supported by a new crowdfunding campaign on Tipster, further allowing their passionate supporters to play a key role in scaling the business. Lastly, their goal of reducing hunger by making better use of existing resources is reflected in their commitment to donate one portion of pasta to non-profit Food for Soul for every kilogram sold.
By exposing their friends and their friends’ friends to food that is both delicious and planet-friendly, the Wasted team is proud that people are actually excited to eat something made with trash. Following Wasted’s example, how can your brand increase your exposure by taking risks and make members of your community feel personally invested in your mission? During a time of heightened anxiety around climate change, how can you provide a platform for human connection and demonstrate the power of individual purchasing decisions?
Follow up with:
Article: U.S. food & ag prepares for another Trump presidency.
Podcast: Can your stomach handle a meal at Alchemist (Copenhagen)?
> In Our Basket
🔎 What we loved and consumed this week:
From Katherine in London: Whenever I’m in South Africa I have to grab one of my favourite snacks - Grumpy Snack’s chocolate-coated chickpeas. These super crunchy snacks are my vegan-malteasers equivalent and I can’t help but go through a bag or two during a sitting! 👀
From Ellie in London: Can a low calorie beer ever be delicious? Turns out yes! Local’s Light and Cloudly Pale Ale was the perfect drink for a mid week networking event. Low cal and low percentage but banging taste.
From Rosalin in Manchester: I found out that my favourite hot chocolate does 1kg bags, and it's sourced from organic farms which pay 10% more than fair trade. Did I mention it's 1kg of chocolate flakes?!
> Monthly Events Roundup!
📆 5 Consumer Goods x Climate Events:
Browse 20+ upcoming consumer x climate events, and submit yours.
19th November - The role of the food industry in the road to Net-zero
Organisers: Ecologi, My Emissions
Location: Virtual
19th-20th November - The Future Fabrics Expo
Organisers: The Sustainable Angle
Location: New York, USA
20th-23rd November - San Diego Environmental Film Festival
Organisers: San Diego Environmental Film Festival
Location: San Diego, USA
21st November - The Christmas Party by Bread & Jam
Organisers: Bread & Jam
Location: London, UK
22nd November - Baked Biscuit at The Jago, supporting City Harvest
Organisers: City Harvest
Location: London, UK
That’s it for today!
Know a brand we should spotlight next? Let Leone know!
Have links that can make the team learn or laugh? Share them with us, we might just share them in The Check-Out next week.
Hungry for more? You’ll see us on Monday! That’s when we suit up and get serious, digging into a topic that is guaranteed to make you look smart at standup.
Much love,
Team FTF
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