Innovating the future of food delivery...

About Us

Food on the Move: Innovation, Sustainability and Food Safety in the Age of Delivery

Mark McGlinn

Founding Director of IDEASPEAK and The Food Systems Network, Director of Food on the Move Today

The future of food delivery

Together, we can design, develop and implement food delivery systems that promote food safety and sustainability. We can eliminate the use of inappropriate packaging and improve our foodservice equipment. We can ensure that food labels which authenticate food items, always travel with the item. We can collaborate and create solutions that help restaurants and food retailers manage their food delivery requirements sustainably and safely.

Open Innovation and Change

Using an Open Innovation approach, Food on the Move encourages collaborative partnerships and an open exchange of ideas and information to help design and promote the introduction of highly innovative food service systems that improve product quality, provide full traceability of product, streamline and optimise operations, are designed with optimal sustainability credentials in mind and guarantee the safety of the product for consumers.

New Food Service Standards

Food on the Move invites and supports open dialogue between food service practitioners, food equipment manufacturers and food safety regulators to develop new operational and performance standards that will help us improve food safety, advance the capabilities of our food delivery systems and provide commercial benefit for businesses and consumers alike. Food Safety and Sustainability in Last Mile Delivery.

Past Conference

Food on the Move Today
Barbican Centre, London
March 27th, 2019

Intelligent Packaging - Food Service Solutions

The design and development of food delivery systems using fully compostable packaging and return to source solutions, providing hot holding technologies that maintain the integrity of packaging, eliminating the use of unsuitable plastics and single use materials.

Food Product Traceability and Sustainability Index

Working with Engineers on Systems that trace the source of Packaging and all ingredients, visualizing the resource expenditures from energy, water and materials for all products. The tools being designed and the information maintained in the index, will be provided to Consumers to assist them in making informed decisions on the products they purchase.

Food Management Systems with RFID Capability

The design and development of Food Service Solutions that dramatically reduce food waste, utilize sustainable packaging, provide food safety improvements and supply chain traceability.

Environmentally Sustainable Delivery Systems

Working with Designers and Food Systems Developers to create food delivery solutions in which waste is entirely a thing of the past and where food service equipment is efficiently designed, using minimal and clean energy for the safe delivery of product.

Food Delivery Provider Certification Scheme

The design, development and adoption of a Food Service Delivery Certification Scheme which will require all food delivery providers to be thoroughly vetted (against a Standard) in order to secure a License to Operate

Restaurant Food Delivery Certification Scheme

The design, development and adoption of a Restaurant Delivery Certification Scheme which will require all restaurants to be thoroughly vetted (against a Standard) in order to secure a License to provide delivered food product to the public.

Our story thus far..

Food on the Move Today was conceived to help innovate the future of food delivery and to promote food security and food sustainability. 

We started by looking at the changes to the food system wrought by the uptake of food delivery and the growing complexity and size of the dominant commercial delivery platforms. What we saw were increasing levels of waste, unsafe food management practices, displacement or lack of regulatory control, redundancy and reduplication across transport systems with the associated environmental degradation and some questionable labour practices, etc

We understood that by looking carefully at food delivery systems, we were seeing a microcosm of the larger food system itself, with all the challenges that urgently need addressing.

We thought however that if food delivery systems are here to stay, and we believe they are, we ought to ask ourselves, how could they be improved and what this might mean for the larger food system itself. The changes required seemed obvious: addressing the lapses around food safety, making sure food was transported at the right temperature, introducing food product traceability, ensuring products could always be recalled, ensuring the packaging was biodegradable and intervening where we could to ensure that drivers and those transporting the food, were trained to do so and paid accordingly. Providing consumers with timely and relevant information that would help them with their purchases, linked to an open delivery services platform, designed like a public service, etc, was also very much on our mind. It still is! Looking out at the vast amount of reduplication of transport on our roads, you do have to ask yourself the question: why don’t these private logistics companies, some of which are very large, speak to each other and share resource. Well, when you do that, you’re on the ‘road’ to a public service. We think something of this kind will begin to emerge soon.

In the end, we summarised our thoughts and asked what such a food delivery system would look like. The Food on the Move conference is the start of that conversation and we invite you in join us in thinking through the future of food delivery.

Food Product Tracebility - Recall Capable
Integrated Food Management Systems
Safe Packaging - Fully Recyclable, Food Safe
Quality Assurance Providers
Food Delivery Provider Vetting Systems
Restaurant Vetting Systems

Why Focus on Food Systems?

Improving our food production, distribution and service industries is one of the major challenges of our time. With security risks, pervasive hunger, malnutrition, obesity and environmental degradation escalating, our current food system requires significant change. This will involve a fundamental rethinking of structures and systems. Envisioning alternative systems of food production and food service that will nourish and support the health of a growing global population and provide economic development and security to the communities that support and depend upon it, is vitally necessary now. Work in Food Systems Innovation is as rewarding as it is urgent.

Welcome to Food on the Move Today, working with innovators and food service professionals to improve food safety and sustainability in last mile delivery!