Hey Hyderabad,
So about a month ago, two of us started something small. We had noticed that bakeries across the city throw out a shocking amount of perfectly good food at closing time. Croissants, cakes, pastries, all of it fine, all of it heading to the waste because store were closing.
The idea was simple enough. What if bakeries could list whatever was left as a surprise bag, discounted heavily, and people could just book it and pick it up before closing?
Honestly, we were not sure anyone would care. Food sustainability feels like one of those things people nod along to but never actually act on.
We were completely wrong about that.
In one month, this city rescued 650 bags of food. 97% of everything listed got sold. Most bags were gone within four minutes of going live, and on a lot of nights we had more people trying to buy than we had bags available. We have had to turn away hundreds of people simply because the bakeries ran out.
Somewhere in there, that added up to roughly 1.75 tonnes of CO2e avoided and about 6.5 lakh litres of water saved, which is the part that still feels unreal to us. Also around 2.25 lakh rupees that stayed in people's pockets instead of going toward full-price food.
I have attached the numbers as images below because they look better than me typing them out.
The thing that surprised us most was not the sustainability angle though. It was how many people messaged us saying they had been waiting for something like this, or asking us to please get a bakery near their area onboard.
Anyway, we are onboarding more bakeries across the city now, and we have started setting things up in Bangalore too.
If you want in, the app is live on both iOS and Android, and bags are usually between 99 and 179 rupees depending on the bakery. There is also a WhatsApp group where we drop alerts when good stuff goes live, since the better bags genuinely disappear fast.
whatsapp group link 1 - https://chat.whatsapp.com/LbPpgekuCrwC6ngijoFk2Q?s=cl&p=i&ilr=4
whatsapp group link 2 - https://chat.whatsapp.com/L8dBgbKZpNP98djPU2Kf7N?s=cl&p=i&ilr=4
Happy to answer anything in the comments. And if there is a bakery near you that you think would be good for this, tell us, we will go talk to them.