Cover Through Graze Market and Graze Eatery, Clara Wan is promoting food sustainability. She wants to ensure that nutritious meals reach those in need while reducing the environmental impact of food waste (Photo: Saving Graze)
Through Graze Market and Graze Eatery, Clara Wan is promoting food sustainability. She wants to ensure that nutritious meals reach those in need while reducing the environmental impact of food waste (Photo: Saving Graze)
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With a background in nonprofit work and a passion for reducing waste, social enterprise founder and CEO Clara Wan is not just feeding the hungry, she’s also demonstrating how surplus food can still be delicious
After seven years of nonprofit work in low-income communities, Clara Wan was moved to address the significant amounts of edible food discarded daily. Inspired by her mother’s advice against wasting food and her firsthand experiences in her husband’s vegetable distribution business, Wan and co-founder Shirley Chan launched Graze Market and Graze Eatery. These enterprises aim to address food waste, hunger and sustainability by rescuing surplus food and providing it to those in need.
Wan explains that ‘Graze’ comes from the term ‘saving grace’ and is about giving unused food a second chance. The company rescues imperfect yet fresh produce, frozen items and canned goods among other things. They purchase this surplus food at discounted rates from various sources, thereby reducing waste.
Read more: How zero-waste store Live Zero is redefining sustainability amidst economic challenges
Above The rescued surplus food is turned into products like sauces that are sold at Graze Market (Photo: Saving Graze)
The rescued surplus food is turned into products like sauces that are sold at Graze Market (Photo: Saving Graze)
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Graze Market then sells these goods to the public at affordable prices and also donates items to marginalised communities. This two-pronged approach bridges the nutrition gap faced by many underserved groups and generates revenue to sustain their operations. In March 2023, Wan opened Graze Eatery, a surplus food café in Petaling Jaya. The menu offers a variety of items, including pastas and fried rice, all of which are made from excess and imperfect-looking goods. The goal? To show that surplus produce can still be transformed into delicious food.
“The initial idea was to create an affordable eatery offering a seasonal or an omakase-style menu. However, we faced operational challenges and also realised that it would take time to change customers’ attitudes towards accepting a non-static menu,” she shares.
Wan is eager to expand her social enterprise. She plans to open another kitchen near her two existing outlets to increase the production of off-shelf products, such as jams. Additionally, she is considering the addition of catering services to her business. Here, Wan shares more about her journey in providing sustainable food solutions.
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The interior of Graze Eatery, designed to evoke the warmth of home-cooked meals, aims to remind customers of the comforts of home (Photo: Saving Graze)
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My mindset is not focused on profiteering. Instead, I am inclined towards making a social impact. I realised that my idea needed to be sustainable if I wanted to start something charitably. That’s when I discovered social entrepreneurship, which combines business and social work in a way that appealed to me.
We primarily work with farmers, distributors and importers to get our produce supply. We established a partnership where they supplied us with imperfect produce, which we would buy at a discounted price.
Dealing with perishables is a challenge for most companies. However, we decided to rise to the challenge because we wanted to provide more nutritious food to people. When it comes to fresh produce, there will always be a very short lead time, usually between three to five days, for the items to be sold or processed.
We can extend its shelf life by cooking the produce into sauces, marinades or jams. Additionally, we use dehydration and make ice creams from the produce. This way, we transform the produce into different products, helping to prolong its usability. Finally, any produce that we are unable to use is composted.
We have further diversified our product range beyond vegetables and fruits. Now, we offer frozen items such as frozen berries and pastries. Additionally, we deal with canned products, biscuits and chocolates, particularly those nearing their best-before dates.
Read more: From MasterChef Junior to chocolatier: How Louise Mabulo is making cacao farming cool
Wan says her team is focusing on growing their catering services through building a dedicated central kitchen, enabling them to upscale their rescue efforts (Photo: Saving Graze)
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Our goal is to bridge the gap between food waste and hunger. I’m proud that we helped supply fresh food to people in need at the height of the global pandemic. Though there was a lack of supply of vegetables and fruit in the market, we were able to solve the logistics and redistribute these crops to the public and the poor.
There has been a gradual rise in demand for sustainable catering, whether personal or corporate requests. One of the success stories we have had is the multiple corporate clients who are catering from us on a consistent basis. We did not plan to enter into external catering so quickly. However, the opportunity arose when companies were required to use food vendors with sustainable practices. We then pivoted to include these catering services in our menu in October and have served 25 corporate and individual clients since then.
In 2024, we are focusing on growing our catering services through building a dedicated central kitchen. Apart from enabling us to upscale our rescue efforts by increasing our ability to accept bigger catering jobs, it will also serve as our production kitchen for our sauces and jams. It will still carry the brand name Graze Eatery as we see it as an extension of what we are currently doing.
In the future, we will consolidate Graze Market and Graze Eatery. This is to create a seamless experience for our clients, where they will see how the fresh produce from the market is used in the food and drinks that are being served. We are looking forward to building a community that is on a mission to fight food waste together.
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