Tampere saves 171,000 euros by cutting preschool meal waste
Tampere reduced unnecessary preschool meal orders by 48,500 lunches between August and December 2025, saving more than €171,000 after integrating the city’s eVaka attendance system with the Aromi meal-ordering platform.
During a five-month monitoring period from August to December 2025, Tampere cut unnecessary early childhood meal orders by 48,500 lunches, saving more than €171,000. The change followed an integration between the city's eVaka attendance system and the Aromi meal-ordering platform, which lets attendance and special-diet information flow automatically to food-service provider Pirkanmaan Voimia. That has helped Voimia better predict demand for breakfast, lunch and snacks, reduced biowaste and freed early childhood staff from manual meal-entry work.
Elli Rasimus, Director of Early Childhood Education, says inaccurate bookings remain a problem, especially during holiday periods when about one in five guardians mark a child as attending but the child does not show up. Voimia donates around 9 percent of larger leftover batches to food aid organisations and youth centres, and daycare units may purchase surplus food. Accurate attendance entries are still crucial to avoid needless waste. Several other cities using eVaka are planning similar integrations with their food-service providers.
Catch the full story over at City of Tampere
