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Human superiority? For the first time ever, an autonomous drone beat the reigning human champions in a major drone racing event — check it out. Blinding speeds and tight corners, the AI even had its sensors limited so it wouldn’t have an unfair advantage, and it still won. Personal pilot, anyone?

In this Open Letter:

This Tuesday deep dive, we examine the economics that lead to R61bn in food waste every year, and meet the local startup that’s working to put it all back in our grocery baskets...

Selling fresh produce or baked goods is already a constant balancing act: Stock too little and you lose customer trust; price too high or too low and you could play yourself out of the game.

Now, imagine the complexity of handling leftovers: Discounting at the end of the day may seem smart, but over time, customers learn to wait for deals, which erodes full-price sales.

Ultimately, waste isn’t a sign of poor planning. It’s the unavoidable cost of staying in the game.

These unavoidable costs mean South African retailers waste more than R61 billion (enough to feed 6–13.5 million SA families for a month) in perfectly edible food, with a significant chunk of fresh stock ending up in the bin.

Back in 1995, the typical SA middle-income grocery basket consisting of 15 staple items, including rice, white bread (700g), 2l milk, 6 eggs, apples (1.5kg), potatoes (1kg), instant coffee (750g), and 4 rolls of toilet paper, etc. cost just R82.68.

Thirty years later, the same basket will set you back a cool R 644.85. This is a 680% increase in grocery costs, nearly double the general inflation rate of 384% over the same time. Eina.

To say that middle-income shoppers are feeling the crunch of rising grocery bills is an understatement. So, is there an opportunity in helping ease pressurised grocery budgets with still-good fresh food?

This local startup says yes…

still good is a Cape Town-based startup building a web platform that connects retailers and consumers through daily discounted “Surprise Bags” of food that’s about to reach its sell-by date at about 50% off.

Great for the retailer, who gets to earn income for goods they normally throw away, and great for cash-tight consumers. But here’s a conundrum you probably never thought of: How do you brand it? This game is all about trust, and you've got multiple retailers who want to protect their own image.

Well, that’s where still good is smart. 

Bags are still good-branded, meaning you bought from them and never Spar, Pick-n-Pay or Food Lover’s Market. Plus, you get a surprise bag. Meaning you can specify you want a bakery bag, but you can’t choose what they put in it; they select items for you. As long as the retail price of the items you get exceeds the promise, the retailer is good. 

Although it’s early days, still good is already moving more than 250 bags a day, with bags selling out in under 10 minutes. Unsurprising given they already have 50’000 users. 

They’re reaching the budget-savvy, family-focused, grocery shopper, while helping retailers cut down on food waste and make something extra on the side. All the while offering something rare in food retail: a win-win-win. We’re watching this space…

🤖 Lady-Led AI Goodness. Applications for the EY SDG Accelerator for Women Entrepreneurs, to support women-led AI ventures that align with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), are now open. The accelerator will support 5 AI-driven lady-led startups from Africa, Latin America and South/Southeast Asia. Let’s go ladies…

🎟️ TicketBot. Local low-cost airline FlySafair has just launched Lindi, their AI chatbot that lets flyers book tickets, change seats and get travel information, all via WhatsApp. With the airline promising even more options coming soon, it’s like a free private travel assistant, even in the cheap seats. Very fancy.

📦 Delivering Township Jobs. Takelot is looking for hundreds of unemployed youth in Gauteng as part of its franchisee development programme. The programme aims to empower township-based SMEs and entrepreneurs through franchise opportunities that act as collection and delivery hubs for items ordered from the platform. We love to see it.

🎮 Xbox Handheld? Microsoft’s long-rumoured handheld has finally landed. After more than a decade of rumours, Xbox has dropped its answer to the Switch and Steam Deck: the ROG Xbox Ally. Built in partnership with ASUS, the ROG Xbox Ally is set to ship at the end of 2025. Very interesting.

🛒 Booming Bash. Retail giant TFG just dropped record results: R6.2bn in operating profit (+4.4%) and a 15% dividend hike. And its Bash platform is booming, with it reaching profitability 2 years earlier than predicted, and the group’s online sales reaching 12% of group revenue.

✅ The Stack. Founders need tools and suppliers they can trust. Check out our Founder’s Stack with all your VC and startup legal sorted by Dommisse Attorneys, your own CFO for a fraction of the cost with OCFO and loads more vital startup tools & services.

13 June 12:00 — The Art of Strategy Masterclass: How high-growth founders think & win: Cut through complexity and create a scalable strategy for profitable growth with Jason Goldberg, Art of Scale author and co-founder of Edge Growth.

20 June 12:00 — Operationalising AI Masterclass: Learn how to deploy AI to power productivity across multiple layers of your business, with OfferZen’s VP of Product, Stephen van der Heijden.

27 June 12:00 — Business Value Masterclass: Come get the inside track on strategies to increase your business’s value, straight from the experts with Graham Stephen from bizval.

Thinking about joining The Founder Collab?

SA’s only dedicated tech startup and scale-up founder network.

Last Friday, we riddled you about a local green youth-empowering last-mile delivery startup, and most people recognised Cape Town setup, Green Riders…

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🚲 CycleDrop (11%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💨 MotoLoop (8%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🚪 Green2Door (0)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🌿 Green Riders (58%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📦 eKasiHustle (23%)

Your 2 cents…

Glad you like it, Michael. We hope it helps and inspires your team, too. 🔥