City Harvest London Combats Food Insecurity with Smart Applications

In London, England, City Harvest rescues surplus food from restaurants, grocers, and retailers and then distributes it to its network of 350 charities and organizations. When the global pandemic struck, many organizations that had been providing surplus food closed, while others remained open with uncertain demand. To complicate matters, shelter-in-place orders imposed barriers to safe access to hot meals. City Harvest knew it needed a better way to navigate this disruption and launched a smart application using TIBCO solutions. In just two weeks, City Harvest deployed an agile, cloud-based solution that allowed it to communicate with its full range of food sourcing and distribution partners and keep track of ever-changing details like operating hours and the needs of various organizations that were feeding the hungry. To date, City Harvest has redistributed food valued at more than £33 million and in doing so, offset 32,000 tons of greenhouse gases from otherwise wasted food.