As part of World Food Day celebrations, the first crowd-funded ‘Food and Beverage ATM’ (refrigerator) was launched in the city today.

The initiative was launched by students of Bannari Amman Institute of Technology through crowd funding, in front of a popular cloth store near the Town Hall, under the auspices of No Food Waste, an NGO.

How does it work? Anybody can deposit food in the ATM. Those who are hungry can access the ATM using a coupon. A security man there will hand them the food from the ATM, said No Food Waste founder G Padmanabhan.

The student have plans to install five more fridges across the city, he said, adding that his organisation already has such an ATM here.