“My wife was an entrepreneur in the food industry. Over time, with more than 15 years of experience in logistics myself, I had also started to think about how to disrupt the food industry in one way or another”, says Richard Lindroos, the founder of Fiksuruoka–Foodello.
Back in 2016, Fiksuruoka–Foodello’s story started from values. The food industry interested Richard – especially one thing. He wanted to look for solutions to reduce food waste. Food waste is a huge global challenge, but he would love to overcome it even one tiny bit.
“During my 15-year career in logistics, I had noticed that some surplus batches are all the time lying in warehouses and they are at risk of ending up being thrown away. In total, that makes a huge amount of good products that go to waste. I started to think about what could be an easy solution for significantly reducing food waste”, Richard thinks back.
“The idea was running around in my head, until during one holiday from my day job, I decided to take action”, Richard says.
Richard put his own garage in order, bought some shelves from Bauhaus, painted the walls, and brought the idea to reality. There was a lot of brainstorming about what it takes to start a business.
"I knew there was a possibility to make an impact with this business, but I never expected we would be able to save millions of kilograms of food from becoming waste"
“I agreed with a supplier that I would buy their surplus food products and they delivered them to my home address. This is how I took my first steps with the business”, Richard smiles.
This garage solution started to become very successful very quickly.
“I set out to start an online store, and to learn advertising. I handled all the bills. Creating a brand was also on the agenda. I had some helping hands in creating the brand. But everything from purchasing to packing the products had to be learned and done by myself. I did it in the evenings and nights. And I still had a day job and three small children”, Richard remembers.
Richard was running the start-up business that had a goal to significantly reduce food waste. The model was proven to be successful, but you can’t scale it alone. Soon it turned out to be a lot of work.
“Richard thought that joining his start-up could be a really interesting way for Juhani as a promising expert to step up his career from the start.”
“Then I ran into Juhani, who was a student and did a university project for Fiskars, my former employer. I listened to his final presentation and immediately saw potential in him. I immediately recognized he had very good leadership skills, he supported others, he was diplomatic and could rationalize things in a really nice and smart way. That impressed me”, Richard says.
Richard thought that joining his start-up could be a really interesting way for Juhani as a promising expert to step up his career from the start. He decided to ask Juhani to join his mission! It required a bit of courage to trust in a young professional with little track record, but in fact, this is something that became part of Fiksuruoka’s DNA – believing in people and their potential!
“Soon Juhani brought up that he would love to be a CEO at our small company. I thought that he would do pretty well in that position! So I trusted him in that. But we definitely didn’t know that this would become a business that saves millions of kilograms of food waste and indirectly employs over 100 people”, Richard smiles.
What’s remarkable is that there has been little to no problems or huge bumps in the road for Fiksuruoka–Foodello’s growth. In fall 2022 Fiksuruoka has started to expand internationally as Foodello. The Dutch office has been opened. The team has scaled from these 2 men into 54 enthusiastic professionals. Foodello has reduced more than 7 million kilos of food waste.
“If we ran out of business, that would mean our mission would be completed.”
A lot has changed. But two facts remain the same:
“If we ran out of business, that would mean our mission would be completed. The food waste challenge would have been overcome – and that’s our goal”, Richard says.