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Long gone are the days when running a household and kitchen were perceived to be a ‘women’s work’. In households up and down the land, the chores are increasingly split to reflect the time each partner has available and their individual strengths! We see a great amount of togetherness and collaboration when it comes to running and provisioning the kitchen.
Yet we still do not see this trend prevail in the solutions designed for operating the modern kitchen. It is mostly design, created with the woman in mind and for her sole use only, not taking into account how couples are in fact currently interacting. But CozZo is a brand that is determined to close the current gap in collaborative design.
“A household unit is a team, that operates together towards achieving common tasks,” says Ivo Dimitrov, Chief Developer and Founder of CozZo, a next-gen mobile solution, designed to accurately anticipate actual consumer behaviour and food waste drivers, and tweak household food management habits to decrease food waste at home.
More and more, we see household members taking the time to sit down and discuss new goals. They then look for the best strategies to achieve them.
Ivo explains that what we are in fact witnessing is a major behavioural shift. Families are realising that they need to change their habits as consumers in order to contribute to a more sustainable planet. Often it is the teenage kids that are the militant drivers of such change in the home, a trend evident in the current global teen movements, such as Friday For Future, Youth for Climate and Youth Strike 4 Climate.
But even as the generation before them, the millennials, start settling in and running their own households, they naturally prioritise environmental concerns much higher than all the previous generations. “Whether it is reducing the amount of plastic used in the house, switching to a meat-free diet, buying only environmentally friendly products or decreasing food waste, all of these goals require the collaboration of all members,” says Ivo.
The downside of the non-collaborative design is that it undermines the efforts of the household in achieving specific goals. When a household has resolved to decrease the amount of food they throw away, it is highly likely they will look for available digital solutions to make the process easier.
Many of the solutions they will stumble upon will be designed for single use and for the principal kitchen manager, which by default is assumed to be the woman. “But this is not the way households operate any longer,” explains Ivo.
Reducing household food waste, by definition, cannot be the responsibility of a single member. It’s a joint effort. Every member should be aware of what household tasks have or have not completed by the others.
“Without collaboration, the food-waste reduction is just too much effort for one person, to expect substantial or sustainable results. “Initially, it may be one person who starts the food waste battle at home. Yet, if the other members don’t quickly join in, the lonely warrior will soon give up,” shares Ivo his many observations on how people struggle to achieve lasting reduction results.
With these insights in mind, the team behind CozZo is releasing a household edition of the app that is specifically designed for people living in homes with more than one user of IOS device. CozZo joins all members to collaborate in running a waste-free kitchen together.
“To reduce your food at home you need to adopt not one, but a set of new behaviours throughout your food management journey,” says Ivo. “What this really means is that 3 or 4 household members, each need to relearn 5-6 new ways of doing things. Adopting 15-25 new habits per household is no easy feat.” Ivo is positive that this is a necessary change. Without it, no sustainable results will be achieved.
That is why his team have designed the app to specifically facilitate households in their transition to a waste-free kitchen. CozZo helps household acquire and form new and sustainable food management habits.
The main purpose of CozZo is to relieve and assist households through all the pain points at the various stages of food management, (from planning, provisioning, storage, to preparation and consumption), even helping to ensure food is used before it expires.
The design of the CozZo app is based on the breakthrough research in the field of consumer food waste in 2016 “Causes & Determinants of Consumers Food Waste A theoretical framework,” conducted by the Wageningen University.
“Therefore, we are confident about the accuracy of CozZo’s user experience which is delivered through smart, self-learning and intuitive technology and an excellent UI/UX,” says Ivo. Currently, the CozZo free edition for single use is the most trusted food waste reduction app on the UK App Store and is being consistently ranked as the #1 food management app by multiple user groups.
CozZo combines smart shopping assistance, complete household food inventory and a precise expiry date tracking system. The app is designed to make the life of the modern household easier and more manageable. Its many original features eliminate the need for guessing and remembering, spare valuable time and avoid wasting food and money.
CozZo’s 6 Key Benefits
1. Provides Remote Monitoring of Home Inventory
If you are at the office you can use the CozZo app to quickly check the food at home and make dinner plans according to what food is approaching its expiry date, for which notifications are sent. No further meal planning is required.
2. Facilitates the Shopping Experience
CozZo checks the home inventory several times a day and sends reminders for products that need attention to the phone home screen. You can decide what meal to prepare to best utilise the items approaching expiry and just add the missing ingredients, you don’t have at home, to your shopping list. That way, grocery shopping becomes a focused activity without random purchases, above what is necessary. It is fast, it is efficient and it is light on the wallet. Members can take pictures of their preferred grocery items and attach them to the respective item in the shopping list. This is yet another collaborative feature, that assists the designated member doing the shopping on a particular trip, eliminating guessing and wrong purchases.
3. Eliminates Extensive Meal Planning
CozZo allows you to make ad hoc, day by day decisions on food provision for the home. Most food management solutions are based on the assumption that households are able and eager to maintain a steady, week-by-week meal planning schedule. For most families, however, this is a difficult task.
4. Shortens the Food Inventory Process
Setting up the initial kitchen catalogue takes only about 2 minutes and flipping through 60 flashcards with the most common food one is likely to have at home. Later, the catalogue can be refined either through barcode scanning or through looking up products in the built-in catalogue of 1500 food items. You can custom add foods you use such as exotic spices etc that main not be in the initial catalogue CozZo will remember the names for future use.
5. Assists Inventory Management through Easy Barcode Scanning
CozZo’s barcode scanner recognizes over 300 million product names and detects the specific package sizes and enters them automatically as part of the product description. Grocery items can be scanned quickly and accurately, regardless of the package surface and material, the position or direction of the barcode label on the item, or the angle of your camera.
6. Eliminates Expiry Date Confusion
But above all, through its AI technology, CozZo helps avoid throwing away food prematurely. Research indicates that 90% of people throw away food which is still good for eating. This is a result of several factors. People are uncertain when reading expiration dates. They get confused about the different types of labelling. Finally, there is also the misconception that the ‘best by’ is a safety warning and not a freshness standard. Through its precise expiry tracking solution, CozZo helps avoid food labels as a whole, hence avoid any possible confusions.
Following NRDC prescriptions, CozZo is strict on perishable food and lenient on items that just lose their taste, flavour and presentation. If the food is highly perishable, CozZo sends a strict reminder and the product is red-flagged in the app. A gentle reminder is sent for the foods that are starting to lose their flavour but are still safe to eat. A green flag will appear on the display.
CozZo app provides a realistic shelf life for nearly 1500 common foods, which you are most likely to stock at home. It also advises you as to where best store a product – the fridge, the pantry or the freezer.
“Don’t try to fight food waste alone” advises Ivo. “Join your household through CozZo, so you can do it in collaboration.”
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