BanaBooms - unveiling the story of Food Solutions students - Where brilliant ideas land on supermarket shelves! Reducing Food Waste: Breakfast cereal made from bananas.
BanaBooms creators Ines Kutzli and Inna Zhuravlova took part in our Food Solutions 2018, where they developed a breakfast cereal made from surplus bananas to reduce food waste.
They are an excellent example of how great ideas are being guided and accelerated.
Find out more about their journey from students to successful entrepreneurs.
Our planet needs more young talent like BanaBooms!
"Hi I'm in Inna Zhuravlova and I'm a cofounder of BanaBooms.
BanaBooms is a breakfast cereal made from saved bananas. Our breakfast cereal is crunchy, tasty, vegan, gluten free and contains no added sugar.
One third of all food that is produced is never, ever eaten and we decided that we cannot stand by anymore and we decided to do something about it. We figured out that the most abundant fruit in retail are bananas.
So we came up with an idea of creating a new food product from it. And that is our BanaBooms breakfast cereal from bananas, which are saved. The moment bananas are turning slightly yellow, or get this brown spots, they are not optically and visually attractive for consumers and retailers are throwing them away.
What do we do? We take these bananas from supermarkets and turn them into crunchy, tasty breakfast cereal for your great start in a day.
Our product is not just sustainable, but also crunchy, vegan, gluten-free and contains no added sugar at all. All sugar that is in our product is naturally sourced sugar from bananas.
Our mission is to reduce unnecessary food waste and we want to help consumers to actively fight food waste, just enjoying their breakfast."
Leave the lecture halls and go to talk to people from the industry
Inna continues: "For the first time when I've heard about this project, I was in the second year of my bio-economy Masters and I realised that this great opportunity to leave the lecture halls and the slides, just theoretical slides and go to talk with people from industry and solve the real life problem.
This project was a great opportunity to put together the academics and people who are really making business and we students could help them to make a change to solve their problems. This was a great experience, not just for CV, but to go out there, meet amazing specialists and do something that you won't ever do just sitting at the university.
After winning the first place in the competition, a lot of things happened.
It hasn't been even a year, but feels like much, much longer. I think, first of all, I need to mention that that was a huge personal evolvement. After that, of course, we were participating in many, many, many pitches and presentations, participating in many competitions, and also made contacts with retailers so that when our product is final, we can put it on the shelves and get the feedback from consumers.
The University gives you a lot of time to develop a new product but in business, you need to be fast.
I strongly encourage other students to participate in such projects that EIT Food launches, because that takes you out from a lecture halls, from theoretical books to go and help industry make an impact to help them solve problems. You're a student, you are not a specialist yet you're full of energetic new ideas and you go and you make your contribution and the impact.
EIT Food and partners helped us to take our idea from the university project to the real life by, first of all, helping us financially. We got the seed money for our Start-Up, which is entrepreneurialism, innovation, prise, and also along the hallway there were consulting hours answering all our questions and providing the data to make our product work.
I joined EIT Food community because I believe this is a great opportunity to solve real life problems. Saving the world problems of our society, together, we as professionals and industry."
Source : EIT Food, The Food Fight Podcast
How EIT Food is helping young entrepreneurs to have real impact in society
Improving the food system requires innovative solutions that have real impact. However, achieving impact is challenging because the best ideas and talent often struggle to reach the open market and achieve impact at scale. At EIT Food, we are overcoming these obstacles by providing opportunities for students and entrepreneurs to learn the skills needed to transform the food system, develop scalable solutions with experts in the food industry, and ultimately have a positive impact in society.
In this video, BanaBooms Co-Founders Ines Kutzli and Inna Zhuravlova discuss their journey from students to business partners, developing a real-life solution to food waste.
Ines Kutzli explains how EIT Food has supported their journey: “I would advise young entrepreneurs and students to join EIT Food programmes, as they are a great opportunity for students and young scientists like me to create solutions to the problems in our agrifood system”.
Source : Blog EIT Food
“We’ve got some massive challenges coming ahead and we need young talent equipped with the right skills to be able to make a real positive impact in society.”
