Competencies:
DULDAM
The waste shows up in the bin. The cost was already on the books.
With my team at the Korea University startup club, I co-developed a B2B model for institutional caterers that treats food waste as an operating cost they can control, rather than only as an environmental problem.
Instead of asking a client to bet on an untested idea, we designed a four-week pilot at about KRW 300,000 per site, small enough to say yes to and built to make any saving measurable.
- 7
- Institutional catering companies approached
- 3
- Companies implementing the model now, pilots still running
- KRW 300,000
- Approximate pilot budget per site
- 4 weeks
- From baseline to a before-and-after comparison
- 3 Active Implementations
- Team Project
A cost hiding in plain sight
By the time a plate of food is thrown away, the caterer has already paid for it: the ingredients, the labour to cook them and the energy to keep them hot. Throwing it away adds a second bill, for collection and disposal. Neither shows up on the books as "waste". Both sit quietly inside food cost and overheads, where they are easy to accept as normal.
Our business overview puts a size on it. A 1,000-diner cafeteria leaving 120g per diner produces about 30 tonnes of food waste a year, and KRW 5.4–7.8 million in disposal costs alone, before counting the food itself. Industry research cited in the same document, covering 86 catering sites, found that sites which reduced food waste cut their food cost by more than 5% on average.
Making the first decision easier
Seeing a cost is not the same as being willing to fix it. A caterer runs a cafeteria every day under contract, and any change to the serving line puts service, staff and the client relationship at risk. The real question was what would make a cautious operator agree to try something at all.
So the pilot was designed around that hesitation. It costs about KRW 300,000 per site, needs no new equipment, runs inside the existing operation for four weeks, and ends with a before-and-after comparison taken from the client's own cafeteria. If it works, the evidence is theirs. If it doesn't, they have spent very little finding out.
Four weeks, from baseline to evidence
Each pilot starts by measuring the cafeteria exactly as it is, so that any later change has something honest to be compared with.
- Week 1BaselineMeasure current plate waste
- Week 2InterveneRedesign the serving flow and add the nudge
- Week 3MonitorTrack waste and diner response
- Week 4EvaluateCompare with the baseline and estimate the impact
The comparison at the end is designed to give the caterer three things to act on: how much waste fell, what that means for food and disposal cost, and how diners responded.
Small operational changes, measurable commercial implications
Neither change needs new equipment. The first moves rice later in the serving line, so diners see the whole meal before deciding how much staple food to take. The second rewrites a single sign: instead of "Please don't leave food", it says "You can always come back for more", which is meant to make a smaller first serving feel safe.
Both changes cost so little that most of the pilot's budget goes into measuring them. Whether they reduce waste at a particular site is exactly what the four weeks are there to find out.
- 1Side dishes
- 2Main
- 3RiceNow third
- 4Soup
You can always come back for more
Source: DULDAM business overview, p.5, service-line redesign and positive refill nudge.
Where it stands
- Researched food waste in institutional catering, starting in the ESG Management Team of the Korea University Law & Policy Society
- Built the pilot model: service-line redesign, a positive refill nudge, and a four-week baseline-to-evaluation cycle
- Presented the model to 7 institutional catering companies
- 3 companies are implementing the model
- Before-and-after measurement at the implementing sites
- Test an open-source AI camera and scales for logging waste, keeping manual checks where accuracy falls short
- Final operator-facing business proposal by 26 December 2026
ImplementingProposed
Ingredient utilisation, as reported in the business overview
and 73% fewer discarded ingredients
Source: DULDAM business overview, p.7, traction and ingredient utilisation.
The strongest business case is rarely the one with the biggest number on its last slide. It is the one that makes finding out cheap enough for a cautious client to say yes.
My role
I co-developed the business model with my team: where the caterer's cost really sits, what holds a cautious client back, and how a short, low-cost pilot could lead to an ongoing service.
Skills used
Cost analysis, Commercial judgment, Pilot design, B2B proposition