Our Story

Epic food waste — amidst epic food insecurity. You’ve seen the news: food waste is a US $2.6 trillion dollar problem annually. What most people don’t know is that the majority of that waste occurs during transport.At the same time, 42 million Americans will be food-insecure in 2021.This level of waste, in the face of this level of need, is unsustainable and completely unnecessary. Supply chain visibility — being able to see into food supply chains and intervene when things go wrong — will help reduce this issue. Companies are losing money in the supply chain every single dayIn addition to wasted food and resources, we’re wasting money: billions of dollars worth of labor and investment.Much of this issue is because 69% of the supply chain for perishables is analog, or the data resides in silos (Gartner, 2020). Without the ability to see what’s happening in real time, producers are faced with shipments rotting in customs. Malfunctioning refrigeration equipment. Seafood sitting at room temperature for days. And rejections by retailers.In the US alone, more than $31B in food is rejected annually (Walmart, 2020). And every time a load is rejected, shippers must employ a full time employee for weeks, reconciling paper data with driver logs and temp recorders. And the shipments go directly into landfills.Due to the extreme growth of both complexity and increased regulation, and because it operates on thin margins, the food supply chain is far behind other sectors when it comes to data frameworks, standards, and visibility. In 2020, businesses spent millions trying to manage their operations and supply chains using fax machines, phone calls, and emails.The COVID-19 economy exposed the fragility in the food supply caused by this lack of transparent data.Why has no one solved this problem? Razor-thin margins A market full of disconnected point solutionsDistrust among partners, who use opacity to their own advantage. For example, when food issues like contamination or damage arise, larger players often try to use their leverage to push their costs to smaller partners, regardless of fault, because there’s no single record of truthImports/exports are dominated by manual-input, paper-based systems that include faxes. Often 50-300 paper documents can accompany one food import shipment. These paper records stop tracebacks in their tracks. (IBM, 2018)You can’t manage what you can’t see. This is the Transparent Path opportunity.