The Kitchen in Italy That Started Everything

Between 2017 and 2019, while living in Italy, I was a partner in a small hamburger restaurant, working the kitchen and managing day-to-day operations, all while transitioning into global tech roles. It was exhausting, but it taught me something I couldn’t have learned any other way.

We ran a simple operation: dine-in and our own delivery service. No apps. No third-party platforms. Just us, the kitchen, and our customers.

Every evening, after service ended, I’d stand in that kitchen and face the same reality: fresh food, carefully prepared, sitting unsold. Not spoiled. Not unsafe. Just mistimed.

We planned inventory. We forecasted demand. We did everything restaurants are supposed to do. And still, food remained.

The waste wasn’t a failure of effort. It was a failure of coordination.

The Question That Wouldn’t Leave Me

I kept thinking: someone out there would buy this food right now if they knew it existed.

Students finishing late classes. Workers wrapping up shifts. Families managing tight budgets. People who wanted affordable meals and would happily pay for them.

But there was no bridge. No system to connect what we had with who needed it. No way to sell in real time without disrupting operations or seeming desperate.

So we threw it away. Because that’s what restaurants do.

That moment, standing in a kitchen, watching value disappear, stayed with me long after I left the restaurant business.

What I Learned Before and After

I completed my Masters at Politecnico di Milano and worked at Milano Software (2014–2016), building data solutions using Python. The restaurant experience came later, while I was transitioning into roles at HERE Maps and eventually Concentrix supporting Facebook’s user base.

These were great jobs. I learned a lot, worked with talented people, and solved meaningful problems. But something was missing.

The restaurant experience in Italy showed me the food waste problem firsthand. Working globally in tech showed me how different systems handle coordination problems. That combination made everything clearer.

The problem wasn’t moral. It was mechanical.

Why I Left My Job

I’m grateful for every role I’ve had. They taught me how systems work, how data flows, how to build tools that solve real coordination problems.

But let’s be honest: there’s no such thing as stability anymore. Companies restructure. Markets shift. Roles disappear. The only real stability comes from building something you control.

I was never fully comfortable working for someone else, not because the work was bad, but because I kept thinking about problems I wanted to own, not just contribute to.

That feeling builds slowly. You rationalize it. You tell yourself it’s normal. Until one day, you realize the supposed “risk” of building your own thing is actually less risky than betting your entire future on someone else’s decisions.

I didn’t leave stability. I left the illusion of it.

What SastaKhana Actually Is

About five months ago, I started building SastaKhana.

SastaKhana is a marketplace for discounted fresh food.

It’s a marketplace that connects restaurants, bakeries, and home chefs with people who want discounted, fresh food before it becomes waste.

People use SastaKhana to discover fresh food deals nearby before they sell out.

• Restaurants recover revenue from surplus
• Customers get quality meals at lower prices
• We facilitate these transactions

The goal is simple: help people discover fresh food deals nearby while restaurants recover revenue from surplus.