It is estimated that one third of the world’s food is lost or thrown away each year. Stores are already pricing down expiring products. These products, however, are often poorly marked and go unnoticed, leaving tons of food waste.

Dato is a real-time digital marketplace for promoting expiring goods at reduced prices. Dato allows customers to browse discounted products, attracting them to a store, ensuring that these products are found and sold rather than thrown away.

The Dato solution can be integrated into the point of sale (POS)-system, allowing for real-time stock in the app.

Dato help stores when miscalculating stock or when facing unexpected situations such as power loss. Through Dato, they can immediately contact relevant businesses or customers, and sell their stock at a discounted price.

Dato could help stores to reduce waste drastically, which would not only improve profitability, but also reduce emissions, as it is estimated that food waste accounts for as much as 8 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Moreover, Dato could help customers to save money and experience a wider selection in stores. Using Dato, store owners would get a full overview of ideal markdown prices, timing and customer statistics.

The target market for Dato is private consumers, businesses and charities. The app also includes a B2B solution for products of bigger quantities, for businesses like canteens and hotels.

Selling expiring products at half price gives a market potential of 1-2.5 per cent of overall market revenue. In Norway alone, this equals EUR 175-450 million annually.

As stores today already price down products that are expiring, Dato is building upon existing behaviour and the solution is easy to implement. The solution is yet to be commercially implemented. Dato AS was founded in 2016.