UcciWhy we never talk about food waste
It was the easiest angle to sell. We dropped it in the first month, and have never regretted it.
Published 18 September 2026.
The advice we kept getting
"Position yourselves on food waste." It came up in every conversation. It is not a foolish idea: the subject is legitimate, it speaks to funders, it feels good, and there are already apps doing it well.
We tried writing it down. The sentence would not hold.
Unsold stock is not a meal
Rescuing unsold stock extends the life of a product someone failed to sell. Useful, but defensive: a loss is being limited.
Cooking for people near you is the opposite. Nobody's day went wrong. Someone decided to make six portions instead of four, because it was the same effort and it was a pleasure. The gesture is generative: something exists that did not before.
Conflating the two tells a person who spent two hours on a tagine that they are shifting surplus.
What the word does to the price
Anti-waste vocabulary carries a promise of discount. You "rescue" a basket at a knock-down price. It assumes the contents are worth less than normal.
On Ucci a dish is worth its price. A cook who bought the vegetables, spent the time and took responsibility for feeding someone has no reason to discount. Installing the vocabulary of markdown condemns a platform to never paying its people properly.
Waste falls anyway
Here is the irony: cooking in small batches, to order, with portions reserved in advance, produces less waste than almost any food supply chain. Nothing is prepared without being sold.
But that is a consequence, not a sales pitch. We would rather you came to Ucci because Leïla's tagine is better than whatever you were about to make, not to perform an ecological gesture.
What we say instead
That someone cooks very well four minutes away on foot. That the dish will be warm. That you will know who made it and in which kitchen. That you might pass them at the bakery next week.
Less virtuous to state. Truer.