A dual-audience research study exploring the viability of a food waste reduction app in Dublin — combining quantitative surveys, focus groups, literature review, and market analysis to define product opportunities and user needs.
Nearly one-third of all food produced globally is wasted each year. This research project set out to explore whether a food-rescue app — connecting restaurants with surplus end-of-day food to local consumers at a discount — was both desirable and viable in the Dublin market. The research intentionally addressed two separate stakeholder groups: customers and business owners, recognising that both needed to be convinced for the product to succeed.
Food waste is a major environmental and social issue. Restaurants discard substantial quantities of quality food at the end of each day, while a significant portion of the population cannot regularly afford takeaway food.
A marketplace app connecting restaurants with surplus food to cost-conscious and environmentally motivated consumers — reducing waste, expanding access to quality food, and building a sustainable business model.
Would both restaurant owners and customers be willing to participate in such a platform? What features, pricing structures, and trust mechanisms would be essential for adoption?
The research combined quantitative and qualitative methods, chosen deliberately to complement each other. Surveys captured breadth and statistical confidence; the focus group provided depth, nuance, and unexpected insights that numbers alone could not reveal.
An anonymous Google Forms survey distributed to restaurant and takeaway customers across Dublin, capturing attitudes toward food waste, app adoption intent, pricing expectations, and desired features.
84 responsesA parallel survey targeting restaurant and takeaway owners, exploring willingness to join a discount food network, acceptable discount thresholds, and concerns about brand and quality perception.
28 responsesA structured online focus group (Zoom) with 9 participants exploring the concept in depth — product feasibility, potential challenges, marketing approaches, and fundraising strategies.
9 participants · ZoomResearch design note
The decision to run two separate surveys — rather than a single combined instrument — was deliberate. Restaurant owners and customers have fundamentally different relationships with the product, different risk perceptions, and different success criteria. Conflating them into one survey would have obscured the distinct patterns that emerged from each group. This dual-audience design is a core strength of the research.
Raw survey data
Both surveys produced strong, consistent signals. The data below represents the most strategically significant findings from each stakeholder group.
The project was welcomed with general enthusiasm. Stakeholders were happy to reduce the environmental impact of their food production and consumption, as well as benefiting from exposure to a broader audience.
Focus Group Summary · 9 Participants
The vast majority of customers expressed willingness to use the app, with environmental motivation outweighing price sensitivity as the primary driver.
Restaurant owners showed overwhelming openness to joining the network — critically, zero respondents said no. This removes the most significant supply-side risk for the product.
Both customers and owners independently converged on the 20–30% discount range as acceptable — an unusual and valuable alignment that de-risks the core business model.
Environmental motivation is the strongest driver — 70.2% said reducing food waste would increase their ordering frequency, above price (52.4%).
Location-based search (66.7%) and cuisine filtering (56%) are the highest-priority features, suggesting discovery and relevance matter more than loyalty mechanics.
90.4% would bring their own container for an additional discount — confirming strong sustainability intent beyond the core transaction.
91.7% would donate €1 per order to enable charities to access the service free — an unusual finding that opens an additional social impact layer.
Dietary needs are a significant consideration — 21.4% are vegetarian/vegan, and dietary filtering ranked as the top desired feature.
Zero business owners said no to joining the network — even the 10.7% "maybe" responses represent an opportunity for further engagement rather than active resistance.
67.9% of owners prefer the 20–30% discount range, matching customer expectations exactly and creating a natural pricing equilibrium.
64.3% would offer extra discounts for customers bringing their own containers — showing genuine alignment with sustainability values beyond commercial interest.
78.6% would contribute to a charity access model — mirroring customer willingness and suggesting a platform-level social impact feature could succeed.
53.6% have 2–5 years of industry experience, suggesting an engaged, established operator base rather than newer, more risk-averse entrants.
The research was designed with a two-sided marketplace in mind — both groups must find value for the product to work. The data confirmed this alignment exists, which is a strong validation signal for the product concept.
The most significant finding of this research was not any single data point but rather the alignment between the two stakeholder groups. Customers and business owners independently arrived at the same acceptable discount range (20–30%), both expressed willingness to support a charity access model, and both showed genuine sustainability motivation beyond transactional self-interest. This convergence is rare and represents a strong product-market signal.
The decision to survey both sides of the marketplace separately — rather than relying on one group to represent the other — was the most important methodological choice. It revealed that the product was not simply desirable to customers but actively welcomed by the businesses that would need to supply it. Without this dual-audience design, that critical insight would have been invisible.
The focus group added qualitative texture that the surveys could not capture: enthusiasm, spontaneous feature suggestions (loyalty cards, rating systems), and realistic challenges around logistics and food quality standards. Together, the methods produced a layered picture of both the opportunity and the conditions needed for success.
If this research were extended, the natural next step would be competitive analysis against existing solutions (Too Good To Go entered the Irish market subsequently), followed by persona development and user journey mapping to translate research findings into design decisions.