On the morning of 10 March 2025, a small team in Stellenbosch watched their phones. They'd spent months building, testing, and onboarding a handful of local stores to a new app. They'd written the food safety guidelines, built the store dashboard, figured out the payout logic, and spent more time than they'd like to admit debugging the order confirmation flow.

That morning, the first Surprise Bag was sold on the Refreshi app. It was a bakery bag. It cost R49. Someone in Stellenbosch had their lunch sorted — and a small business had recovered revenue from food they would otherwise have discarded.

It wasn't dramatic. But it was the beginning.

The problem they couldn't ignore

South Africa wastes an estimated 10 million tonnes of food every year — roughly 45% of everything produced. That food represents R60 billion in economic value, the water of millions of litres, and the land of thousands of square kilometres. And it ends up in landfill, where it decomposes into methane and accelerates the climate crisis.

At the same time, approximately 20 million South Africans go to bed hungry every night. The food exists. It's simply not reaching people.

The Refreshi founders — Jakob Holbak (CEO) and Bradley Ford (COO) — had seen this model work in Europe. Too Good To Go had demonstrated that connecting surplus food with price-conscious consumers was not just viable, it was genuinely scalable. But South Africa had no equivalent. And South Africa — with its particular combination of high food insecurity, rising food costs, and a food service industry generating enormous daily surplus — needed one.

Building for the South African context

The South African food system has its own characteristics. A fragmented food service market, infrastructure challenges in some regions, a diverse mix of store formats from informal township convenience stores to premium Waterfront restaurants, and a consumer base under increasing financial pressure.

The Refreshi model was built to work across all of it. A single platform, a single Surprise Bag format, applicable to a Kwikspar in Constantia, a premium deli in Morningside, a hotel buffet in Bantry Bay, and an artisan bakery in Stellenbosch.

Fourteen months of growth

The numbers from the first fourteen months are documented:

From one launch market, Refreshi has expanded to five regions: Western Cape, the Garden Route, the Eastern Cape, Gauteng, and KwaZulu-Natal. Partner formats include national coffee chains, supermarket groups, independent bakeries, premium restaurants, fuel-station forecourts, hotel groups, and meal kit operators.

The FoodForward SA partnership

One dimension of Refreshi that matters deeply to the founders is the relationship with FoodForward SA — South Africa's largest food bank. When surplus food can't be absorbed through consumer purchases on the app, FoodForward SA ensures it still reaches communities that need it.

One SPAR partner — Kwikspar Alphen Constantia — channels 100% of its Refreshi revenue directly to FoodForwardSA, turning surplus into community food security support. Over R107,000 donated to date from a single store.

What comes next

The SA FLWI's national target is to halve food loss and waste by 2030. Refreshi's goal is to be a meaningful part of how South Africa achieves that. The next phase: deeper geographic reach in KZN and the Eastern Cape, more hotel and hospitality partnerships, and continued growth across the national food value chain.

If you want to follow the journey, the best place to start is the Refreshi app — or the team on social media.