RFLAD
RFLAD is the name of the food-waste solutions program that Yosuke Adachi is developing within his sole proprietorship, which is registered in Japan under the trade name "Yosuke Adachi, PhD." RFLAD has a for-profit arm (the Reflad series) and a research-/philanthropy-oriented arm (Refladdin).
To put into physical form a long-held passion to play a role in mitigating climate change, I've been developing since 2021 a solution to reduce food loss and waste primarily in retail stores selling foods with relatively short shelf lives.
The first portion of this project (*1) was developed in Japanese. An English translation can be accessed here, or via the button at the top of the page that will be displayed when you click on "Reflad/てまえとりやすこ" in the navigation bar. A description of the second portion can be accessed here, or from "Refladdin/てまえとりやすこ+" in the navigation bar.
Notes:
(*1) Documentation in English of certain aspects of the project can be found in the README section of the project's designated GitHub repository.
We will be using the section below to announce recent developments.
Wednesday, May 22, 2024.
I posted a note in the intro section of this homepage describing the relative configuration of Reflad and Refladdin within RFLAD:
“ RFLAD has so far been characterized as a composite of two components: Reflad and Refladdin.
Reflad is based on a proposal I created and submitted to a business-idea competition in Japan. Refladdin was developed on the basis of feedback received from others and my own thoughts that arose during the months following the business-idea competition.
While the foregoing describes the causal and chronological relationships of the two components, the current morphological and functional characterizations of the components are as follows:
Reflad: the revenue-generating arm of RFLAD;
Refladdin: the second arm of RFLAD and is geared more toward research and philanthropy."
Tuesday, April 16 – Wednesday, May 8, 2024.
I participated in a three-day business-model-development workshop (over a three-week period) hosted by the Tokyo Metropolitan SME Support Center. One of the most important effects of participating was that Reflad's focus shifted from reducing food waste per se to managing labor shortages while minimizing food waste. This shift was made in light of the fact that many food retailers in Japan already have rigorous food-waste reduction efforts in place. From a customer-centric point of view, I felt that the focus should be less about further reducing food waste than about increasing operational efficiency for those food retailers by freeing up some of the labor currently being used to manually place discount stickers on close-to-expiration food items, by leveraging existing technologies to automate the markdown process.
Friday, July 21, 2023.
As part of my efforts to share my ideas with others and obtain their feedback to drive this project forward, I submitted an assignment for a module in an online course entitled “Entrepreneurship Strategy: From Ideation to Exit*.” The assignment, which was based on the Refladdin portion of RFLAD, has been adapted and published here.
* This course was created by HEC Paris and is available on Coursera.
Wednesday, May 17 – Friday, May 19, 2023 (Japan time) / Tuesday, May 16 – Thursday, May 18, 2023 (local time).
I attended ReFED’s 2023 Food Waste Solutions Summit in St. Louis, Missouri, remotely (with a virtual ticket) as a solution provider in food-waste prevention.
Wednesday, December 7 – Friday, December 9, 2022.
I had insightful discussions with visitors who stopped by our booth at the Smart Restaurant EXPO during Food Tech Week organized by RX Japan.
On the wall at the back of our stand facing visitors was a poster presentation (in English and in Japanese) outlining our work.
The following links to the official trade-show pages for our project will be valid through mid-2023:
Friday, June 24, 2022. We reserved a spot for a booth at a food-tech trade show to be held at the Makuhari Messe convention center in Chiba Prefecture, Japan, in December this year. We will be presenting a description of the project and showcasing any case studies in which our product idea is implemented by other businesses.
Thursday, June 23, 2022. We were approved for a low-interest multi-million-yen loan from the Japan Finance Corporation. About one half of this loan will be used to pay for the expenses associated with exhibiting at the trade show described above. The other half will be used to finance some of our day-to-day operations over the next 2–3 years.