Meet Lucho Escobar— a University of Notre Dame alumni who is upcycling wasted fruits into ice cream through his startup Takay.
Escobar is a resident of Ecuador—a country which is one of the largest exporters of fruit in the world. In the video on the company’s homepage, however, it’s explained that 25% of this fruit is wasted before it hits global supermarket shelves because buyers demand very particular standards – throwing the fruit away not based on nutritional value, but on how it looks.
According to the company, this waste amount to 1.5 Million tons per year—that’s 150 Eiffel towers of fruit waste.
Escobar saw this as an opportunity to prevent food waste and turned it into a brilliant business idea. The company offers blendable cups consisting of fruits in combination with superfoods which can either be blended to form a drink or as an ice cream using a food processor.
The end result is exciting combinations such as Guava Trip, Minty Cacao Nib, Tropical Coffee, Coco Cloud, and many others.
With such a forward-thinking approach, we think Takay is all set to revolutionize the food industry. We’ll be keeping an eye out for more updates on their product line.