Development & Alumni
From Late-Night Realization to Forbes’ 30 Under 30
Three years ago, HKU alumnus Anson Wong was up late at one of his favourite Hong Kong cafés when he noticed just how much food the restaurant was discarding at the end of the day.
After he asked staff why they didn’t sell it at a discount, they offered it to him for free — but they explained that marking it down was too complicated and time-consuming.
It was a brief conversation, but it had a lasting impact on Wong, eventually inspiring him and his longtime friend Jerry Lo to start Eat100, a social enterprise that connects restaurants and businesses with surplus food to consumers across Hong Kong.
With over 10,000 users already, Eat100 is growing fast, and it earned Wong and Lo recognition from Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Asia List earlier this year.
“So many people suffer from hunger,” Wong says. “Fighting food waste is one of the easiest, most direct ways we can help make a difference.”
Take away the waste
Founded in 2023, Eat100 allows restaurants to sell surplus food in discounted “surprise bags” as closing time approaches, with prices reduced by as much as 70 percent. The model is simple for users: open the app, find nearby food that would otherwise go unsold, and collect it the reduced price.
For smaller restaurants, Mr Wong says, the problem is not usually a lack of goodwill. Many shopkeepers dislike seeing edible food thrown away, but they often lack the time, staff, or systems to manage last-minute discounts. Eat100 was designed to remove that friction.
“We thought, if there were a platform, we could help people know what was available before they visited,” he says. “Every shop may have its own discounts, but there was no place that consolidated all this information.”
The company now works with more than 20 restaurants and food vendors. It takes a 10 percent commission on each sale and, according to Mr Wong, became profitable late last year. Unlike some similar services that focus on mid- to high-end restaurants, Eat100 has targeted affordable food outlets near universities, railway stations, and residential areas — places where students and ordinary diners are already looking for convenient meals.
Anson Wong, co-founder of Eat100
Green entrepreneurship
For Wong, who graduated from HKU in 2021 with a business degree in accounting and finance before working as a securities trader, the shift to social entrepreneurship was not as abrupt as it may appear. He traces part of his preparation to his alma mater, where he says he found both practical resources and a culture that encouraged independent thinking.
“HKU had a lot of resources for thinking outside the box,” he says, citing iDendron, the University’s innovation and entrepreneurship hub, as well as professors who advised him on early business ideas. “It was a good place to meet people who were passionate about big issues.”
Certain classes also stayed with him. An information systems course helped him understand how digital platforms could organise complex flows of information. A business law course, he says, left him with a lesson that now matters every day as a founder: trust is fundamental.
“No matter how we negotiate, we must be honest,” Wong says. “You need to have a good reputation.”
Eat100 has resonated, he believes, because food waste is both visible and personal. According to the Hong Kong SAR government, food waste accounts for almost 30 percent of the city’s municipal solid waste. Unlike many environmental problems that can feel abstract, seing uneaten bread, produce, and cooked meals go in the garbage tends to produce a tangible effect.
“We know the numbers, but food waste is something we can see and touch,” Wong says. “People often think they are too small to make an impact.”
The company is now looking beyond restaurants. With the help of their CTO, current HKU student Jad Khiami, they’re expanding into new sectors, with one possible option being to include farmers in the platform, allowing them to sell produce that is edible but rejected by conventional buyers because it does not meet visual standards. The team is also exploring ways to quantify emissions saved through food rescue, including the potential use of carbon credits.
The goal, he adds, is not to make food rescue feel like a special act, but an ordinary part of urban life.
“We’re not doing anything strange or new,” he says. “It’s normal and reasonable to distribute food efficiently.”
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