Spearheaded by Ilana Devillers, F4A.icu enables supermarkets with tackling the food waste issue. As a holistic solution, F4A.icu helps consumers get access to healthy food items via local supermarkets, and provides delicious recipes with those food items all on their nifty mobile app.

We caught up with Ilana Devillers, CEO, and Founder at F4A.icu, to understand what inspired her to start this revolutionary business, how it works, and where it’s going. She also sheds light on how new businesses and startups can navigate during these rather tumultuous times. Read on! 

1. What inspired you to start F4A.icu? Tell us the story.

During my law studies in Strasbourg, I made the sad realization that many people often struggle to make ends meet and eat well on a limited budget. After enjoying a dinner made of food products from a dumpster diving, it became evident that simple actions can increase food access and reduce food waste. The idea of enhancing the visibility of close to expiry products emerged and gave birth to F4A standing for Food4All. 

Ilana Devillers, CEO, and Founder of Food4All, is pictured at the inaugural Start-up Stories final on 18th December, 2019.

2. What is F4A.icu? How does it work?

F4A standing for Food4All, is a service company aiming to reduce food waste on a supermarket level and ease access to affordable food by promoting close to expiry products and optimizing the food supply chain.

F4A has developed a free of charge application, allowing food distributors to showcase their discounted, close to expiry products to provide consumers with better access to affordable food. The process is straightforward for consumers; they need to download the F4A app from Google Play or the Apple Store, geolocate themselves, and discover nearby partner stores that offer discounts on these products.

They can then select the desired products, add them to their shopping list, and go to the store to finalize their purchases. By downloading the F4A application, consumers can contribute to the fight against food waste while reducing their expenses.

After each download, we plant a tree thanks to the partnership between F4A and Eden Reforestation Project. This is a deeply appreciated initiative by the F4A community. 

F4A App

3. What are the best ways for households, restaurants, and supermarkets to handle food waste?

The most important point I would like to highlight here is awareness and education. Let us not forget that the largest proportion of food waste occurs on a household level. No matter how much effort restaurants and supermarkets put in place to avoid food waste, if there is no change on a consumer-level – habits and mentality -, the problem will not be solved.

Being conscious of the amount of food that is wasted and being aware of how this could be prevented are certainly the first steps that ought to be undertaken. This is why F4A has put a great deal of emphasis on launching a weekly newsletter to share with its followers’. The newsletter offers readers simple tips and tricks on how to avoid food waste in our kitchen and at home in general.  

Restaurants and supermarkets need to apply measures to predict and better coordinate supply and demand to avoid over-buying and over-stocking. The Ecobox is a great initiative that allows consumers to bring home their leftovers without the need for any single-use packaging. 

4. F4A recently won Startup of the year 2019 by Paperjam and you were featured on the Nasdaq billboard in NYC. How has the journey been so far and what are your future plans?

COVID-19 has certainly not slowed down our fight against food waste. On the contrary, F4A is more confident than ever that this health crisis represents a real opportunity to create the change needed for a healthier and more sustainable future. 

It was a great honor for F4A to be showcased on the Nasdaq billboard in NYC one month before its second anniversary. There could not have been a better way to congratulate the team behind F4A that has been working hard to make the business move forward despite the challenges and constraints.

Food4All displays in Times Square. Picture courtesy: Paperjam.lu

Today, F4A is proud to claim that it has developed its activities within several supermarket stores in Luxembourg in only two years of existence and expand its team, which grew from 3 to 12 people in only a couple of months.

F4A is now putting a great deal of emphasis on research and development, ensuring a smooth transformation of its legal structure, accelerating its imminent international expansion, continuing its fundraising rounds, and expanding its team.   

5. What advice would you like to share with fellow business owners trying to make their business work during this pandemic?

This period of time is indeed extremely challenging for business owners and entrepreneurs, but it is also an opportunity to observe changes and adapt to new needs. One piece of advice I would like to share today is, believe in your business ideas, persevere, and, most importantly, question yourself and your business ideas regularly.

This will force you to sit back and reflect on the areas of improvement. This is necessary to move on and succeed.  

6. What are your thoughts on the .icu domain extension? How is it helping you build a strong and unique online presence?

The .icu domain extension is very interesting for F4A as it is a generic and an independent domain, which is greatly appreciated. The .icu domain complemented by F4A’s unique branding enables the company to benefit from a strong and fun image that differentiates itself on the market. 

Building your new business with a .icu domain name!

Visit www.now.icu to search for and register your .icu domain name!

We spoke with Pia Jensen, the founder of Italian Tours, a specialist tourism company that offers personalized travel plans and promises its clients a great time, to share her experience of starting a tourism brand.

Pia also shared valuable insights for newbie tourism entrepreneurs along with some of her most memorable experiences as well as her thoughts on why she chose the .cyou domain for her new tourism brand. Read on!

1. What inspired you to start Italian Tours? Tell us your story.

Pia Jensen, the Founder of Italian Tours

I have been in the tourism business for many years, having worked for several different tour operators. From 2006 until 2015, I was a partner at another company, but finally, in 2015 I decided to start Italian Tours on my own.

I must admit, I love my job and I love Italy. Italy is such an amazing place! There are so many fantastic experiences to be had here – good food and wine, history, geography, art, and sport.

My clients inspired me to start my own tourism business because when I would tell them about Italy, they would always say to me “you have so much enthusiasm and passion for Italy and for what you do, it’s amazing!”.

As a Danish person I always tell the Italian people to love Italy as much as I do. Italy is such a beautiful and fantastic place and not everyone is lucky enough to live in such a wonderful and scenic country.

As we have worked with so many sports groups from all over the world, we decided to start a new brand called Italian Sports Tours (www.ist.cyou).

The idea behind this is to focus completely on sport-related tours and activities because there are so many groups of people coming from America, South Africa, and other countries to Italy for indulging in sports.

2. Could you highlight any three facets that make Italian Tours unique from other tourism businesses?

We are an international team of veterans who’ve all been in the tourism business for many years. As numerous tourists come from America, Canada, or South Africa, there is a need for tourism experts who speak perfect English.

We also make sure that once international tourists arrive in Italy, they are in good hands and have people with them that can not only speak English but also those who will go that extra mile to ensure every client has a great time.

We ensure that every tourist or every group can reach us at any time of the day or night and we personally make sure that the client enjoys every minute of their visit to Italy.

3. If you could give three key pieces of advice to younger tourism and travel entrepreneurs, what would they be?

To work in the travel businesses is lovely and we are very lucky we get to know people from all over the world.

My first tip would be to be passionate. You need to love what you do (I think that is relevant for most of the jobs) because then you do it a lot better and the clients can feel that.

Secondly, it’s essential to directly get in contact with your clients and to visit the tourist hotspots personally. I started as a tour manager which was good because that meant I was in direct contact with clients. Also, I got to visit all the tourist places and that helped me understand those places a lot better.

Thirdly, always remember to maintain a healthy relationship with your suppliers because they also contribute towards making your clients happy.

4. You’ve just redesigned your website (and it looks great!). What prompted you to take that decision?

Thank you! The future is on the Internet and since we are expanding our business, having a strong online presence will help us reach more people and onboard more clients from the US and other countries. Having a great website is a good way to be seen.

5. What has been the most memorable experience of running your own business?

Oh, I have so many! The most memorable ones are when our clients come back to us with “We had such a great trip!” or “This was the most amazing tour we’ve been on!” or “We are definitely coming back next year!”.

Last year we did a sporting event with nearly 1000 people and that was a very memorable experience. I have also been working with Tottenham Hotspur where we organized a summer camp last year. Tottenham sent their professional coaches and the fact that they were in the finals of Champions League made the event even more exciting.

6. What are your future plans for Italian Tours?

Just like our expansion to sport-related tours, our plan is to grow and spread our presence into other facets of Italian Tourism. In fact, we are already in the planning stage of introducing another brand, Italian Music Tours.

7. Why did you choose a .cyou domain for your new website? What are your thoughts on the .cyou domain?

I think the .cyou domain is great since it’s easy to remember and very appealing. But moreover, it’s a fresh new domain and I think it’s very chic. I really do like it. This is why I think it will be a big success and in fact, I will actually ask ShortDot to register www.imt.cyou for our Italian Music Tours brand.