Refreshi CEO Jakob Holbak reveals the sustainability surprise in the bag

Since launching in March 2025, Refreshi reports saving an estimated 228.8 tonnes of food from waste, working with 800 stores across South Africa.

The local food-rescue app pegs the cost of an average Refreshi surprise bag at R67.70, while the food it contains has an average retail value of R145.15.

ESG Global sent Refreshi CEO Jakob Holbak three clever questions on waste reduction reporting, the unique challenges of such a business model in South Africa and his personal experience with waste.

What are the unique challenges of running a surplus food app in South Africa, that similar offerings in Europe, for example, do not have to consider?
Two things have shaped how we’ve built Refreshi in South Africa. For many of our customers, a surprise bag is a way to stretch their food budget. For stores, the model needs to make financial sense and fit into the way their teams already work.

Three challenges have shaped how we operate:

• Getting to the food. Refreshi is collection-only, and collection windows are usually near closing time. That makes store density matter. A partner a short walk away is worth far more than one across town, which is why we grow city by city and suburb by suburb.
• Onboarding is store by store. Many of our partners are independently owned, including franchise supermarkets. The owner, the bakery manager and the staff at the till all have to buy in. Head-office approval alone doesn’t get a bag listed. Nothing replaces showing an owner the money coming back from stock they would otherwise write off. To date, Refreshi has paid more than R18 million back to partner stores.
• Variety drives demand. Early on we assumed a store could succeed with whatever single category it had left over. The data showed otherwise. In a study with the Consumer Goods Council of South Africa covering 50 independently owned Spar stores, stores offering bakery items alongside fresh fruit and vegetables sold 77% more bags per month than stores offering only one category. We now coach new partners on this when they set up their bags.

We also see surplus further up the supply chain, with manufacturers and distributors. That’s why we launched Refreshi Exchange in June. It connects verified sellers with verified business buyers who can use surplus stock while it still has shelf life.

Do partner supermarkets count Refreshi sales in their own waste-reduction or Scope 3 disclosures?
We give partner chains and independent stores monthly reports on their Refreshi activity. Each retailer decides how to use that data in its waste-reduction reporting and whether it fits into its Scope 3 accounting.

Stores choose what goes into each surprise bag and list it in the app. Customers pay in the app and collect in store. We track sales, collections and the revenue paid to each store.

For our impact estimates, we count one surprise bag as one meal and use South African conversion factors from Blonk Consultants (2024). The factors give us average estimates per bag of around 1kg of food, 2.5kg CO₂e, 600 litres of water and 2m² of land. These figures are modelled averages. Store-level reporting draws on the sales and collection activity we record.

What’s your first memory of food being wasted, and when did it stop being normal for you?
The moment food waste really hit home for me was when I was leading Maersk’s ocean transport business in Africa. I’d started looking into problems I could build a business around, and what stayed with me was how much good food was going to waste while so many people were struggling to afford it. I kept coming back to a simple question. How could we get that food to people while it was still good to eat?

That’s where the idea for Refreshi began. We connect supermarkets, bakeries, coffee shops, hotels and restaurants with customers who can buy their surplus food at discounted prices. Stores earn revenue from food they might otherwise write off, customers get access to more affordable food, and less good food ends up in the bin.