Have you seen a rise in the number of people using the app recently? Neighbours then receive customised alerts and can request anything that takes their fancy. No one ever said we don’t dream big or move quickly ☺. This week’s guest on Pioneers with John Amaechi is Tessa Clark, the co-founder of OLIO, a food sharing app that connects neighbours and local businesses to one another. Tessa Clarke, the co-founder and CEO of Olio, on how she launched her game-changing food-sharing app. Once the trial was over we met face to face with everybody who took part and asked for feedback. TESSA CLARKE. Clarke was a farmer’s daughter, while Saasha Celestial-One is the daughter of Iowa hippies and an avid freecycler. Co-Founder & CEO of OLIO & Former Exec at Dyson. Tessa Clarke: OLIO is a free app that connects users with their neighbours to give away spare food, and other household items. This is because we have 28 million households in the UK throwing away approximately a quarter of the weekly shop, which collectively adds up to £14 billion every year whereas there are just tens of thousands of retail stores throwing away less than 1%. We were understandably reluctant to invest our life savings building an app that people wouldn’t use, and so we needed a quick and low cost way to test our food sharing idea. So, Tessa, what inspired you to start OLIO? One of them has certainly been the shift towards more sustainable lifestyles. “It is her real name,” Clarke told me when we met last week. Tessa Clarke, CEO and Co-founder of Olio, on what is next for the food sharing app. To date, 2.5 million people have downloaded the app and shared over 7 million portions of food, the carbon equivalent of taking more than 20 million car miles off the road. OLIO is a free app that connects users who have food they don’t want or need, with neighbours living nearby who would like it. We have to translate that into action.” While the realities of climate change once felt distant, the urgency of the crisis has been well and truly catapulted into our daily lives in the past year. This is in contrast to retail stores that generate only 2% of all food waste. That’s 1 in 9 people on the planet who are starving or malnourished. this food is delicious. Unfortunately, the lady who I had hoped to give it to wasn’t in her usual spot outside the supermarket and I got quite upset. Tessa Clarke is Co-Founder and CEO of OLIO, a free app tackling the problem of food waste by connecting neighbours with each other, and volunteers with local businesses, so that surplus food can be shared, not thrown away. After a 15 year corporate career, Tessa Co-Founded OLIO, the world's only neighbour-to-neighbour food sharing app, which is solving the problem of household food waste at scale. [Maddyness] What is the biggest professional challenge for you today? Episode 8 – The Food Sharing Revolution – Tessa Clarke, Olio. OLIO is a hybrid of a marketplace and a community app, that alerts neighbours of unwanted food in their area, connecting like-minded individuals wanting to fight food waste, and in turn the climate crisis. Your 40 Minute Mentor today is Tessa Clarke Co-Founder and CEO of the food-sharing app Olio. We caught up with Tessa Clarke, co-founder of the popular food-sharing app OLIO, to discuss food waste, kitchen essentials and sticky toffee pudding. Areas served. I thought about knocking on my neighbours’ doors to see if they wanted it, but the problem was I didn’t know if they would be in; and even if they were in, I didn’t really know them and it might be a bit awkward if they didn’t want what I was offering. I was packing up our apartment in Switzerland, getting ready to move back to the UK. I grew up on my parents’ dairy farm in North Yorkshire, England. https://londonclimatechangefestival.com/horizon-talk-tessa-clarke Read writing from Tessa Clarke on Medium. The Festival of Marketing is a unique virtual experience where ambitious marketers can discover, learn, celebrate and shape the future together. We waited with bated breath for what seemed like an eternity and then eventually someone added an item – half a bag of shallots! I’m a total dessert person so I immediately went there – probably a sticky toffee pudding with ice cream or an Eton mess. The removal men told me that all the food had to be thrown away, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do this. “But waking up is not enough. “It is her real name,” Clarke told me when we met last week. But just because it’s a big problem on paper doesn’t mean to say that people care about it. I’m the daughter of Iowa hippy entrepreneurs (hence the origin of my last name, Celestial-One – which my parents made up!) As a kid, I launched over a dozen scrappy micro-businesses, and I always dreamed of starting my own business one day specifically in the area of food, which is a passion of mine. Tessa Clarke. Tessa Clarke is a returning guest! and I grew up in a large, relatively poor family. As a society, we are becoming more and more eco-conscious. in Podcast. Feeling thoroughly defeated I thought to myself – “This is absolutely crazy…. OLIO has been founded in January 2016 and as of now has more than 600,000 users worldwide. We got to find out more about their approach to reducing food waste and how we as individuals can tackle the issue. Starting out as a hyper-local experiment in north London, OLIO has now flourished into a global sharing movement. Tell us about OLIO. Interviewed at Disruption Summit Europe after being placed 3rd in the Disruption50 Index 2019. The first thing we did was desk research in order to understand how big the problem of food waste was and what we discovered truly shocked and terrified us. Co-Founder & CEO of OLIO, the food sharing app. OLIO. Also, learn to love your freezer – it’s amazing how many things can be frozen and then used later on. 17 (2018) Website: olioex.com: Olio (rendered as OLIO) is a mobile app for food-sharing, aiming to reduce food waste. Despite our best efforts to eat everything we had, we were still left with 6 sweet potatoes, a whole white cabbage and some pots of yogurt. This has had the environmental impact of taking nine million car miles off the road and has saved 450 million litres of water. And so the idea of OLIO, a mobile app that connects neighbours to share food, was born. After a 15 year corporate career, Tessa Clarke co-founded OLIO along with Saasha Celestial-One, the world’s only neighbour-to-neighbour food sharing app, which is solving the problem of household food waste at scale. Tessa Clarke is the Co-Founder & CEO of OLIO. OLIO has been founded in January 2016 and as of now has more than 600,000 users worldwide. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. Olio Co-founder, Tessa Clarke said: “Our partnership with Tesco means that more people than ever before will be able to benefit from access to surplus food. As told to Frances Hedges. • Allergens • Careers • Terms • Contact •, © 2020 OLIO. For starters, I’d probably go for soup. How very Crouch End ☺. Tessa Clarke, co-founder of OLIO (OLIO - Share More, Waste Less) shares 5 lessons they've learned so far on tackling COVID-19 as a small business https://bddy.me/37uNfYy Every business owner in the world was entered into the world’s toughest race — sometime in early Spring 2020. Her and co-founder, Saasha started the business as a side project when both on maternity leave from their full-time jobs. Tessa Clarke Co-Founder of OLIO - The food sharing app United Kingdom Food & Beverages 18 people have recommended Tessa. So what can you do to help tackle this issue and ensure food does not go to waste? A NutriBullet which I use every day to transform half-eaten or sad-looking fruit and veg into delicious smoothies! Why isn’t there an app where I can share it with someone nearby who wants it?” And so the idea for OLIO was born…. Sadly, it’s not an exaggeration to say that food waste is one of the largest problems facing humanity today. It does this by connecting people who have food & other household items that they don’t want or … [Tessa] I’d say it’s having to juggle so many things at once, under enormous pressure, whilst maintaining my sanity! It has even been dubbed the ‘Tinder for food sharing’. It does this by connecting those with surplus food to those who need or wish to consume such food. I failed miserably. Your 40 Minute Mentor today is Tessa Clarke Co-Founder and CEO of the food-sharing app Olio.. We throw away around one third of the food we buy, while 800 million people go to bed hungry every night. Tessa Clarke is the cofounder and CEO of game changing food sharing app OLIO. Read our interview with Tessa Clarke to understand how OLIO has grown to over 1 million users in just 3 years. What changes have had the biggest impact on OLIO business? An obvious beneficiary is the government. To date 2 million people have joined OLIO and together they’ve shared over 6 million portions of food, with half of all food listings requested in under 1 hour! Ooooh, that’s a really tough one! The conclusions were unanimous…… “it’s amazing”, “ you have to build it” and, perhaps most importantly…….. “it just needs to be a bit better than a Whatsapp group”! In salvaging and reselling these items, I not only earned my pocket money, but I literally learned that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. She told us about how OLIO aims at resolving one of the biggest issues our world is faced with today: food waste. That’s because a landmass larger than China is used to grow food that’s never eaten, and so it’s not only the food that’s wasted but also all the resources that go into producing that food are also wasted. All of our podcasts, across all providers. And of course, we wanted to … “But waking up is not enough. To date 2 million people have joined OLIO and together they’ve shared over 6 million portions of food, with half of all food listings requested in under 1 hour! I’m a farmer’s daughter, and so have always hated throwing away good food. Tessa is Co-Founder & CEO of OLIO, the world’s only neighbour-to-neighbour food sharing app, with over 1.5 million users worldwide. We use cookies on our website. “We will look back on 2019 as the year that the world woke up,” OLIO co-founder Tessa Clarke tells me. And so, with the support of our first investor, Simpleweb, a development agency, we built the MVP (minimal viable product) version of the app. First launched in early 2015 by Tessa Clarke and Saasha Celestial-One, by October 2017 the company had raised $2.2 million in funding. It was an amazing childhood in so many ways, but one that had a constant theme running throughout it – work needed to be done. CEO and Co-Founder, OLIO . Who do you think could benefit from this concept? All rights reserved | Food being shared. Tessa Clarke: OLIO is a free app that connects users with their neighbours to give away spare food, and other household items. We got to find out more about their approach to reducing food waste and how we as individuals can tackle the issue. OLIO was founded by business women, Tessa Clarke and Saasha Celestial-One, in 2016. What is the most planet-friendly source of protein? This can be considered food sharing at its best! We caught up with Tessa Clarke, Co-Founder of OLIO, to talk all about the app that connects neighbours with one another and with local businesses ensuring that surplus food can be shared and not thrown away. She told us about how OLIO aims at resolving one of the biggest issues our world is faced with today: food waste. Olio's Series A funding was led by Octopus Ventures, with investors such as Accel, Quadia and Quentin Griffiths contributing towards the $6 million that was raised. But, on a positive note, it also means we can be half the solution! The single most important thing you can do to reduce food waste is to plan for your meals each week, and then to shop to that plan. View Tessa Clarke’s profile on LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional community. We throw away around one third of the food we buy, while 800 million people go to bed hungry every night. How crazy is that?! Find out more below! Your 40 Minute Mentor today is Tessa Clarke Co-Founder and CEO of the food-sharing app Olio.. We throw away around one third of the food we buy, while 800 million people go to bed hungry every night. To date, 2.5 million people have downloaded the app and shared over 7 million portions of food, the carbon equivalent of taking more than 20 million car miles off the road. It does this by connecting people who have food & other household items that they don’t want or need, with their neighbours living nearby who would like them. Jan 8, 2020 Courtesy of Tessa Clarke. That’s a lot of people, who almost every day, are having to throw away food because there’s no alternative… there’s been no innovation since the rubbish bin! Olio is the brainchild of Tessa Clarke and Saasha Celestial-One. Maddyness spoke with Tessa Clarke, Co-Founder and CEO of Olio to understand how their company is coping during the COVID-19 pandemic and what the future holds. We caught up with Tessa Clarke, co-founder of the popular food-sharing app OLIO, to discuss food waste, kitchen essentials and sticky toffee pudding . Co-Founder & CEO of OLIO & Former Exec at Dyson. Then Join us for Episode 3 of our Sustainable Tech Series, in which we are joined by the co-founder of OLIO, Tessa Clarke. Your 40 Minute Mentor today is Tessa Clarke Co-Founder and CEO of the food-sharing app Olio. The world has a food waste problem: up to half of the food produced globally is never eaten, equivalent to over $1 trillion dollars worth. So, Tessa, what inspired you to start OLIO? That’s 1 in 9 people on the planet who are starving or malnourished. Something happened in 2019 and it seems like we’ve had a collective awakening to the climate, biodiversity and resource depletion crises and people are wanting to take action. The idea for OLIO came when I was moving to a different country and on moving day, I found myself with some good food that I hadn’t managed to eat and I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away so I set off on a bit of a wild goose chase to try and find someone to give it to. OLIO also has a non-food section for other household items such as toiletries, kitchen equipment, books, toys and clothes. https://techround.co.uk/interviews/interview-with-tessa-clarke-co-founder-of-olio As a result of this, I learned pretty much as soon as I could walk just how much hard work goes into producing the food that we all eat. Tessa Clarke. As told to Frances Hedges. We had a little chat with incredible Tessa Clarke, who started a food sharing revolution in the form of an app called OLIO. Olio is the brainchild of Tessa Clarke and Saasha Celestial-One. Interviewed at Disruption Summit Europe after being placed 3rd in the Disruption50 Index 2019. • Press Pack • Volunteer Hub • The beauty of food in eco-friendly skincare. Users simply snap a picture of their items and add them to OLIO. Within an hour we had settled on a name and made our plan! Tessa Clarke: Back in May 2017, an amazing Jersey resident called Elis Joudalova joined OLIO as a regular user. After a 15 year corporate career, Tessa Co-Founded OLIO, the world's only neighbour-to-neighbour food sharing app, which is solving the problem of household food waste at scale. Within just a couple of … Tessa Clarke, OLIO. Then Join us for Episode 3 of our Sustainable Tech Series, in which we are joined by the Co-Founder of OLIO, Tessa Clarke. Our vision for the future is an unashamedly bold one – we want a billion OLIOers within the next 10 years! Getting my head around the climate crisis. I told some friends & family about my idea of a food sharing app, and they all The very first version of the app was extremely basic, and could only be used in 5 postcodes in North London. Our friends at Smith & Williamson met with Tessa Clarke, Founder of Olio the food sharing app with a mission to stop food waste. Also, beeswax wraps as a replacement for clingfilm, and lots and lots of Tupperware for storage. So this means that we’re half the problem. Passionate about sustainability, startups & diversity. Tessa Clarke, co-founder of OLIO (OLIO - Share More, Waste Less) shares 5 lessons they've learned so far on tackling COVID-19 as a small business https://bddy.me/37uNfYy Every business owner in the world was entered into the world’s toughest race — sometime in early Spring 2020. What are your goals for OLIO in the future? Neighbours then receive customised alerts and can request anything that takes their fancy. Since launching in 2016, over one million people have joined OLIO and together shared almost two million portions of food. We spoke to Tessa Clarke, co-founder of OLIO- the food sharing revolution. Founder Focus: Tessa Clarke of Olio "1/3 of all food produced each year gets thrown away" January 6, 2020 | LIBBY WILLIAMS. Tessa Clarke has always had an issue with throwing away food, Start typing to see results or hit ESC to close, Yellow sticker shopping tips with The Reduction Raider, 9 ways to save money on your weekly food shop. Tessa Clarke is co-founder & CEO of OLIO, an app tackling the problem of food waste by connecting neighbours with each other, and volunteers with local businesses, so … We often look to shift the blame to producers and supermarkets but actually, we may be more to blame than you think. Tessa Clarke, Saasha Celestial-One: Headquarters: London, United Kingdom. I was packing up our apartment in Switzerland, getting ready to move back to the UK. OLIO first appeared on Tech Talks a number of years ago and now have millions of users. In this episode, I speak with Tessa Cook who co-founded the company Olio back in 2015. What we settled on was a slightly bizarre ‘proof of concept’ involving Whatsapp! It makes absolutely no sense to be puzzling over how to stay within a 1.5 degree warmed world and feed a population of 10 billion, whilst continuing to throw away a third of all the food we produce. Passionate about sustainability, startups & diversity. OLIO is a free app that connects users with their neighbours to give away spare food, and other household items. Read writing from Tessa Clarke on Medium. thought I was crazy. What are your top tips for people who want to reduce their food waste but aren’t sure where to begin? And if it were to be a country, food waste would be the third-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions after the USA and China. Mar 2. All the food on OLIO is available for free and half of all listings are requested in less than one hour! We had a little chat with incredible Tessa Clarke, who started a food sharing revolution in the form of an app called OLIO. Tessa is one of the co-founders of OLIO, an app making a dent in the global food waste problem. ), we launched the app in the App Store on 9th July 2015, quickly followed by Google Play 3 weeks later. But that didn’t matter, we were live and ready to bring food sharing to the world! And working like crazy, exactly 5 months after we’d incorporated the company (we were Mums on a mission with no time to spare! Read our interview with Tessa Clarke to understand how OLIO has grown to over 1 million users in just 3 years. The ‘lightbulb’ moment came on 17th December 2014 – I remember it well. 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