Wollongong startup tackles food waste while feeding cash-strapped locals
App turns surplus food into affordable meals
Every night, across Wollongong’s cafes and restaurants, the same scenario plays out. Good food gets wrapped up and thrown away. Meanwhile, a few streets over, university students are mking dinner decisions based on what’s cheapest, not what’s good.
Nam Doan has lived on both sides of that divide. As a part-time restaurant worker and fulltime UOW student, he watched waste accumulate in the kitchen while feeling the pinch of rising food costs in his own wallet. “I feel sorry for the waste,” he says. “I saw students like me struggling with the rising cost of food. So I thought: why don’t we connect the two?”
FreshLoop is his answer.
The startup, which launches its mobile app today, March 23, connects local eateries with nearby customers looking for a deal. When a restaurant reaches the end of its trading day with surplus it can’t sell, it lists those items on FreshLoop at a reduced price. Students, for instance, can get a quality meal for a fraction of the usual cost, the restaurant recovers some revenue, and the food gets eaten. Nobody loses.
Australia’s food sector discards an estimated $36.6 billion worth of product every year. FreshLoop gives restaurant partners a subscription-based tool to convert that loss into sales, taking a modest commission per transaction.
“We turn surplus food that would have gone to the bin into actual revenue,” says Doan, who is studying a Bachelor of Business with a double major in supply chain management and business analytics. “It’s a solution for both.”
Five Wollongong restaurants have already signalled they’re ready to come on board, and any surplus that remains unsold through the platform won’t go to waste either. FreshLoop is in the throes of building partnerships with local charities to get food to those who need it most, including Wollongong’s homeless community.
“We are more than a marketplace,” says Doan. “The charity organisations we’re partnering with … have always been part of the plan.”
That ambition is what positions FreshLoop as a genuine social enterprise rather than simply a discount food app. Backed by the UOW iAccelerate program, where the 20-year-old Doan is the building’s youngest entrepreneur, his team has built the platform while juggling university commitments without financial reward.
“These young people have very good discipline, and the vision to contribute to society — that’s what keeps us going,” said team member Anthony Tran, a recent graduate who joined after following the project on social media. “There are milestones here that are very impressive — not what you’d expect from a team this new to it.”
It’s a local problem, addressed locally, with the potential to scale into something far greater. Wollongong could be just the start: the scalable model can be replicated in any city struggling with food waste and hunger.
FreshLoop launches today, March 23, 2026, or visit your preferred app store.
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