Startup Europe Awards

LMSC, winner of SEUA Italy in Social category


Country:
Italy

Category: Social

Name: LMSC (Last Minute Sotto Casa)

Project aim: to fight against wasted food and improves socialization in the districts  of the cities.


What is LSMC?

LMSC  is an innovative digital megaphone that fights against wasted food and looks for improving socialization in city districts. It offers a new live-marketing formula that allows shops with a surplus  food products to inform instantly and easily people nearby through their smartphones.

We offer an original, effective tool to avoid waste of unsold fresh food and, at the same time, we offer a powerful paradigm able to create economic and social value by the development of a true social relationship between retailers and consumers in city’s districts.

How did it start?

The idea was born from the daily examination of shops that throw away food when they close at night, along with the high quantity of smart-phones waiting for offers to today in citizens’ pockets, ready to receive these alerts. LMSC represents a new economic, ethical and social opportunity!

How does it work? 

Through Last Minute Sotto Casa the shop owner which has a surplus of food that might be thrown in the bin in an hour, two hours’ time, or in a couple of days, sends a simple text message through our system, telling which products are offered at a highly discounted price. The message is delivered to citizens living close to that shop. They can select, when resgistered, which fiood categories they want to track and, for each of them, at which distance from home. These users will probably decide, on the fly, to move to the shop to buy that discounted, fresh product that – most likely – 5 minutes before they were surely not even planning to buy!

The shop owner wins, as he/she gets more money at the end of the day and sees new clients stepping into his shop; clients win, as they save money in their pockets and our planet wins, since tons of food will not be thrown in the recycle bin! After a year from project’s start date, more than 65.000 users did register and, just in our hometown, every single month we are saving from bins more than 3 Ton of food.

To whom is it addressed? 

We are addressing a wide market as everyday and all around the world people are buying meat, bread, fruit, vegetables, cheese and so on. Everywhere small retailers are dealing with leftovers that at the end of the day cannot be sold and are, in general, thrown away. Thanks to a huge media exposure here in Italy and to some communication campaigns, mainly social, we are reaching great number of users, who everyday, join the project.