Meet Kevin Duffy, creator of the world's first AI bin
Entrepreneur Kevin Duffy explains how he used artificial intelligence to turn kitchen waste into a multi-million-pound business.
Kevin Duffy in his London Shoreditch office. Photo: Winnow Solutions
In Kevin Duffy’s office, the rubbish bin is the most valuable item in the room. Usually home to useless packaging and spoiled leftovers, it’s allowed 40-year-old Duffy to “find the alignment of purpose and real viable business”.
Sitting in his Shoreditch tech city office – a factory of machinery bits and paperwork wedged between cluttered desks – Duffy is making money off the world’s annual trillion-tonne food waste problem.
The entrepreneur sees this growing issue as “one of the biggest business opportunities globally”. Baffled as to why nobody was solving it, he was one of the first to turn to artificial intelligence to do so. His Winnow Waste Monitor is a smart bin that trains itself to recognise the monetary value and environmental impact of leftovers in kitchens.
Inside his quirky office, Duffy leads us up a winding stairway reaching the shared kitchen space. Between the lounge’s countertops and refrigerator, a little awkward steel construction catches Duffy’s attention.
It’s his prized possession: the first Winnow prototype – before it won the business $20 million (around £15 million) in investment, a place in over 1,000 kitchen sites, and offices in six global cities. The Financial Times gave it their Transformative Business award in 2017.
Though he harbours encyclopaedic knowledge on the issue, Duffy was never an activist. He admits his war on food waste didn’t come from personal interest. “The idea actually started with work my co-founder was doing,” he says.
Before Winnow, the U.S native studied at the French INSEAD business school, where he met his best friend and co-founder Marc Zones. The American duo moved to London, frequenting restaurants and bonding over their joint desire to quit their consultancy jobs. Working in two different worlds for over a decade, Zones researched food sustainability at the McKinsey company while Duffy worked as an investment banking associate.
What led to their light bulb moment?
“It’s not the big inspirational answer,” he admits. Zones happened to be researching the global food waste problem at the time, and Duffy jumped on the bandwagon. But he was very clear with his financial intentions: it wouldn’t make sense to sell just another “nice to have” thing.
So, the duo put in long hours building a business around tracking kitchen leftovers in decadent commercial hospitality culture. Duffy buried himself in Zones’ McKinsey research. They started pitching much more than another new product to investors – they sold the indisputable social responsibility of combatting waste.
Investors took the bait.
In 2013, the world saw the first Winnow bin. Deals with the likes of IKEA and Dubai’s Armani Hotel followed over the years.
Aloof and reserved, Duffy dances around questions on problems he’s faced with Winnow, balancing a business relationship with his best friend while leading a group of around 200 employees.
The Winnow Solutions waste monitor in commercial kitchen. Photo: Winnow Solutions
"I'm challenged, frustrated and motivated we haven't gotten further than we have."
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"We want this to be something you really need to have."
Food waste is thrown away and the photo and weight are captured by the artificially intelligent bin. Photo: Winnow Solutions
He hesitates, then puts up a front: “I think it’s obviously a risk of your friendship starting a business together, but having that friendship really helped us. We know each other’s strengths and weaknesses and we trust each other.”
He's an ambitious guy who believes in his goals. According to him, “Winnow Solutions has had no meaningful impact on food waste yet.”
“I’m challenged, frustrated and motivated that we haven’t gotten further than we have,” he says.
But his work ethic is reflected in the business’ numbers. By 2015, they’d raised a whopping £600,000 to bolster Winnow’s achievement of reducing around £1 million in annual costs for their earliest clients. The duo spent most of their time visiting restaurant owners to learn about their struggles in the kitchen.
“We focused on the commercial kitchen and tried to conceptualise a better way to help them address food waste,” he explains.
And yet, the Winnow solutions company in its humble Shoreditch abode isn’t exactly the 11-storey Google campus. Though with Duffy’s unwavering dedication to his vision for Winnow, he believes his start-up is well on its way. He’s locked in millions of dollars in funding so far, and boasts the latest software programme for beating human accuracy in measuring food.
His end goal?
“We want this to be something you really need to have, so someone will just say: ‘Where’s my Winnow’, as the standard,” he says. “We heard a chef showed up to a new kitchen and said that and I absolutely loved it. That’s the kind of message we want to hear globally.”
