Happy Hours Market

In Belgium, like in many other countries, too much food goes to waste. Supermarkets have to get rid of food that is about to reach its expiration day. This happens because there is an imbalance between food offer and demand.

Every day, before closing, supermarkets have to withdraw from their shelves food that will be expired the day after since these products cannot be sold once their use-by date has expired. Nevertheless, the majority of these goods are still good to eat on the same day or could also be frozen to be consumed weeks later.

Due to the increased supermarkets concern of about their “Corporate Social Responsibility”, many of them give a maximum of their surplus to non-for-profit organizations. Yet, food not distributed is simply thrown away. At the same time, charities are not able to collect all the remainders usually due to a lack of resources. Consequently, in Belgium, an average of 10.400 tons per day are thrown away.

To fight food waste, we want to strike the right balance between food offer and demand by turning this challenge into an opportunity where people can buy fresh food at a reasonable price.
To this aim, Happy Hours Market proposes another way of reducing food waste by using the benefit of technology to gather food waste and inform the customers.

In this sense, every evening our truck collects food that will be expired that day or the day after from different supermarkets. Immediately, all products gathered are uploaded to our App where anyone can purchase them from 7.30pm to 9pm and pick them up the same evening in our collecting points. Afterwards, we deliver unsold items to charities in our neighborhoods free of charge.

Happy Hours Market has an environmental, economic and social impact:
1. Environmental impact: we limit food waste helping stores to become food zero waste.
2. Economic impact: we allow shopping at good prices selling fresh products at half-price.
3. Social impact: we give value to unsold items suppling many charities daily and free of charge.