Fengmin Gong is the co-founder and CEO of Metafoodx, an AI-powered platform helping commercial kitchens eliminate food waste before it starts. With a background in cybersecurity and a deep belief in data-driven systems, Gong launched Metafoodx to solve one of the food industry’s most persistent and costly challenges: overproduction. In this Q&A, Gong shares how Metafoodx gives kitchens real-time visibility into consumption, why 3D vision is a game-changer for food operations and what it truly takes to fix the system, not just track the symptoms.

Why does the world waste so much food?

The U.S. wastes $382 billion worth of food annually, much of it due to poor planning. This problem is especially prevalent in commercial kitchens, which are forced to make large-scale production decisions without good data on what actually gets eaten.

That gap leads to kitchens routinely overproducing by up to 30%. Mismatched menus, inaccurate forecasts and last-minute guesswork all contribute to trays of untouched food that shouldn’t have been made in the first place.

At the root of it is a visibility problem. Kitchens can’t improve forecasting without a clear handle on demand — and until now, they haven’t had a reliable way to predict needs.

What’s broken about how commercial kitchens plan, prep and serve food?

For decades, commercial kitchen leaders have wanted to improve how they plan and produce food, but the tools just haven’t been there. Most kitchens still rely on static spreadsheets, gut instinct or historical averages to make complex decisions, often under pressure and at scale. Even with the best intentions, they’re left prepping in bulk, adjusting on the fly and hoping they’ve made the right call.

What’s missing is a continuous feedback loop. There’s no real-time visibility into what was served, eaten or left behind. At Metafoodx, we built that loop by capturing everything from production and temperature to leftovers and donation, and tied it all back to actual demand. That’s how we move from reactive waste tracking to proactive planning. Without that kind of operational intelligence, even the best-run kitchens will continue guessing and overproducing.

Where did the idea for Metafoodx come from?

I come from the cybersecurity world, where everything runs on signal, feedback and real-time decision-making. When my co-founder Jun Du and I started looking at food systems, we were struck by the disconnect: kitchens were producing millions of meals with almost no infrastructure for learning what actually happened during service. A great example is that kitchens might rely on point of sale (POS) data, which tells them how much they sold and charged, but not how much was prepared, served or eaten. Relying on sales data isn’t an accurate way to manage an efficient operation.

We were driven by the fact that every day, more than 25,000 people die from hunger while a third of the U.S. food supply is thrown away. That’s not just a supply chain problem — it’s a visibility problem. We realized that if you could track food like you track data, from prep to plate to leftovers, you could change the economics of food production and cut waste at the source. Metafoodx was built to do exactly that.

Why does 3D vision matter in a kitchen, and what does it let you see that others miss?

Most commercial kitchens aren’t scanning barcodes — they’re working with trays of lasagna, pans of chicken thighs and pots of soup. Traditional 2D cameras can only capture a flat, top-down view, which often isn’t enough to tell what a dish actually is or how much of it is there. That’s why 3D vision is so important.

Our patented 3D scanner captures the depth and volume of a food item and correlates it with weight and temperature, all in under two seconds. That allows Metafoodx to understand the physical structure of a dish, even when there’s no exact match in the system. You can think of it like scanning a tray of lasagna: 2D vision might just see a golden crust; 3D vision understands the layers, density and serving size. That precision means we can classify food more accurately and determine how much was prepared, served and left over, even when the food is served in all kinds of pan and tray combinations.

This level of detail makes a big difference. The tracking nuance is necessary yet too tedious for human operators to persist. It powers more reliable forecasting, ensures food safety compliance and helps kitchens reduce waste in real time — all without disrupting their workflow.

You’ve said before that “tracking trash is not enough.” What does it actually mean to fix the whole system?

If you’re only looking at what ends up in the bin, you’re already too late. It’s like managing your budget by checking what’s left in your wallet at the end of the month.

Fixing the whole system means embedding intelligence during planning and continually iterating to meet the real-time demands of production and service. We enable kitchens to scan food as it enters the service line, track how much is actually consumed, monitor temperature issues in real time and understand exactly what’s left over and why.

We built Metafoodx to connect the entire system — from production analytics to menu performance and AI-powered reuse suggestions. When kitchens can see across the full lifecycle and are armed with accurate forecasts, they have the potential to reduce food waste by up to 90%.

What kind of results are you seeing?

The numbers speak for themselves. Kitchens using Metafoodx routinely cut overproduction by 50% within the first month of deployment — and by up to 90% over time. Customers have seen a return on investment of 200% to 500% by more accurately matching production to demand and reducing over-ordering of ingredients, which is especially important as food costs fluctuate.

Beyond the savings, what we hear most from chefs and managers is that the system just works. It’s fast, accurate and intuitive. You drop a tray on the scale, and within seconds, you get a complete view of food safety and compliance and recommendations for strategic planning.

You just raised a major round and won a Kitchen Innovation Award — where does Metafoodx go from here?

We’re incredibly proud of the momentum. The Kitchen Innovation Award was judged by leaders from the Air Force, Aramark and Disney, who validated the power of our technology. And our $9.4 million funding is helping us scale rapidly across university dining, corporate foodservice, healthcare and hospitality.

Next, we’re advancing the capabilities of our AI co-pilot for reuse recommendations and continuing to expand our custom dashboards that empower every kitchen operator to act on real data in real time.

Our vision is simple: to create a world where kitchens waste less, serve more and operate with intelligence and integrity. We are confident that we can help the food service business shed its reputation for being back-breaking work with very low margins.

The post Q&A with Fengmin Gong, CEO of Metafoodx: Fixing Food Waste Before It Starts appeared first on citybiz.

This contant was orignally distributed by citybiz. Blockchain Registration, Verification & Enhancement provided by NewsRamp™. The source URL for this press release is Q&A with Fengmin Gong, CEO of Metafoodx: Fixing Food Waste Before It Starts.