Mobile application Feedie turns participating restaurants and their patrons into philanthropists (albeit, lazy ones) by turning photos of ordered meals into actual meals for the hungry.
Users download the Feedie app (available for Android and iOS), connect it to their social networks and then use the app to capture and share pictures of their meals at participating restaurants. These restaurants, in turn, commit to paying for a meal for a child in need for each picture shared. Users of the app can follow other users or restaurants and can share info on the restaurants they visit with other users.
The Lunchbox Fund, a non-profit organisation that provides daily meals to South African school children, supplies the actual meals at a cost of R2,50 per meal. Restaurants that register with Feedie thus pay R2,500 per year in exchange for up to 1,000 photos shared via the service. For the first year they get unlimited photos, and in subsequent years can top up their photo allowance if necessary.
“You cannot teach a hungry child,” says Sue Wildish, MD of The Lunchbox Fund. “They literally cannot even focus. Providing a hot meal helps with focus, but it also provides behavioural incentive to get them to school and keep them in school.” The Lunchbox Fund has been serving meals to needy children since 2005 and Feedie is its effort to make the initiative self-sustaining.
Both the Tasha’s and Knead restaurant chains are already using the service. Feedie’s also managed to secure a number of celebrity chef ambassadors, including Jamie Oliver, Mario Batali and Peter Tempelhoff, and enjoys the patronage of Desmond Tutu. Restaurants that want to sign up for Feedie can do so here.
“Every cent raised through Feedie goes straight into food,” Wildish explains. “All of our core costs, the running costs of our organisation, are covered by a fundraiser we hold in New York every year. So you can know there’s no bits and pieces coming off the backend. You are literally paying for a meal for a child with each picture.”
