Delta
An intelligent food distribution system to reduce food waste and fight hunger
The Delta team developed an intelligent food distribution system and a food identification and categorization system to address food waste and food insecurity. After incubating for three years at The Moonshot Factory, parts of the technology evolved into Project Chorus, while other components and team members moved to Google to scale up their work. Today, some of Delta’s technology is freely available through Open Product Recovery, which helps organizations reduce food waste and deliver food to those who need it most.
Emily Ma, Project Delta Lead
Food’s Data Disconnect
Enormous amounts of water, fertilizer, and labor go into producing food that is never eaten, leaving millions of people around the world hungry and creating excess waste and pollution worldwide.
Delta aimed to create a smarter food system — one that knows where food is, what condition it’s in, and where it should go to prevent waste and reach those in need.
The team began by learning from farmers, grocers, food banks, and other industry experts. They learned that one of the biggest drivers for these distribution failures is a lack of shared data: there’s no easy way for food distributors to share reliable information about their available supply, while food banks lack a way to register their needs.
Just as food sits in silos across the country, so does information. A food bank in Texas might source oranges from a grower in Florida, even though a nearby grocery store had a surplus of oranges it could have donated.
An “Air Traffic Control System” for Food
To better match surplus food with organizations in need, the team developed an intelligent food distribution system—essentially an “air traffic control system for food.” Delta’s software captured, shared and connected grocers, food-service providers, logistics companies, and food banks, so that they could match food supply with food demand, and prevent food ending up in landfills.
Delta also built a food identification and categorization system for commercial kitchens. Using computer vision and machine learning, the system automatically identified food waste and provided insights into ordering and cooking trends, helping kitchen staff reduce excess waste.
The Delta project team sorts through trash.
Delta Today
After testing prototypes with national grocers, local food banks, and in Alphabet’s own kitchens, Project Delta graduated to Google in 2020. Some team members and technologies moved to Google to address food waste and insecurity on a larger scale, while other innovations evolved into Project Chorus, which focuses on optimizing global supply chains using advanced sensors and orchestration software.
At Google, the Delta team collaborated with a range of industry partners to launch Open Product Recovery—a set of data and communication standards that makes it quick and easy for organizations with surplus food or organizations in need of food to communicate with each other and get food to where it’s needed.
