The partnership between Secret Recipe and The Lost Food Project is one of its biggest ongoing CSR programs to date. This program was made in an effort to reduce food waste generated at the brand and support those less fortunate by providing them with food that would have otherwise gone to waste.
Secret Recipe discovered The Lost Food Project through one of its outlets located at 1 Utama Shopping Centre in 2020 when the shopping centre was implementing a food rescue program. The program connected Secret Recipe with The Lost Food Project, and they began overseeing various operations in production to identify potential contributions towards the food rescue program. It also enabled them to identify areas of improvement within their own operation and reduce the amount of waste they may generate at their factory.
After looking over the various hot meals and cakes produced for outlet branches, Secret Recipe identified a surplus amount of cake sponge generated in the production of their cream cakes in the form of cake trimmings. The company decided to convert the cake sponge trimmings into biscuits or cookies by baking them further in ovens, and exploring different potential flavours of crunches with the different types of cake sponge used, including chocolate, red velvet, coffee, or even rainbow-colored sponge.
After meeting with The Lost Food Project and discussing with them at their warehouse, it took months of planning to determine the collection times, perfect their product, determine the crunchy expiry dates, and find the right packaging for it. Secret Recipe wanted to ensure that the product for donation was of acceptable quality, which included vacuum-sealed plastic bags for the crunches. It also took much time to perfect further SOP measures into their current operation chain, and now the NGO helps collect from Secret Recipe at least a hundred bags of cake crunchies once a week. They have also managed to implement this collection in Johor Bahru with one of their branches located there.
The Lost Food Project has donated to a number of different charities or refugee homes while also recording data for Secret Recipe such as the number of packets collected and the amount of greenhouse gas reduced from the atmosphere which could have resulted from their food waste should it have been disposed of. Examples of places they donated to for Secret Recipe include Mangtha Refugee School in Pudu as well as Rumah Hope, Assumption Soup Kitchen, and PSKK (Persatuan Kebajikan Sentul KL).
Secret Recipe continues in its partnership with The Lost Food Project today. They hope to not only reduce their own environmental footprint but also set an example in innovation for other food and beverage brands to follow in reducing environmental or social impacts on our planet and how we can make connections with others to create new potential opportunities to be explored for the future.
