Innovation: The S.T.A.N. Platform

Share My Meals fights both food insecurity and the environmental impact of food waste by recovering and delivering healthy meals in local communities. It makes intuitive sense to connect these two societal challenges, yet the day to day logistics of bringing surplus food to families in need are complex.

Our team embraces this complexity through technology. Every day the number of meals we recover varies as does how many meal donors donate; as a consequence we must dynamically match what we receive with our recipient families and organizations. 

To do so, we have developed our STAN platform (Safety, Allocation, Tracking, Navigation)which supports the safe collection, allocation and distribution of the recovered meals as well as measures our impact as an organization.

stan platform share my meals food donation
STAN Share My Meals
STAN App

The key functions of STAN include:

The STAN mobile app: seamlessly coordinates the distribution of recovered meals, balancing real-time meal donations with the needs of recipient families, ensuring safety, efficiency, and impact tracking in the fight against food insecurity and waste.

Integrated meal donation notification: QR-code linked donor forms that triggers entries in our logistics system, donor database and impact dashboard every time a donor completes the form.

Prioritization-based meal allocation: A database driven allocation system that allows us to prioritize recipients based on their needs, location and last date served.

Route optimization: Pick-up and delivery routes optimization and communication system for our staff and volunteer drivers to get meals efficiently.

Food safety & inventory tracking: Real- time tracking of every container using barcodes that are scanned at the different points along a meal’s journey.

Impact dashboards and reporting: Real- time monitoring of the number of meals delivered, the dollar amount of the food, pounds of food saved and pounds of CO2 saved.