Purpose of the Project: 

Team Food Savr has decided to identify, analyze, and propose a solution for a wicked social problem for the Challenge Project, as part of Pioneering Business for the Public Good. For this challenge project, we decided to work on the huge problem of food waste.

Methods:

For this project, our team, Food Savr, chose to tackle the problem of sustainability and in particular food waste.  This project involved many different methodologies and phases.  

The first action our team needed to take to address food waste was to fully understand the problem.  We gathered data and performed numerous analyses to find where the gap was and where we could make the greatest impact with a solution. The analyses we performed were “The Gap” analysis, a systems map , a stakeholder analysis, and a PESTL and environmental scan.  

A key aspect of developing this understanding was identifying and meeting with stakeholders. This discussion with our stakeholders was approached with a lot of empathy and listening.  We also asked our stakeholders for feedback on our solution ideas. These interactions with our stakeholders were the most important and our favorite part of our quest to help the food waste issue. 

Once we had a full understanding of the problem, our team began developing our solution. This was done through ideation and prototyping. With the help of stakeholder feedback, we finalized our solution and crafted our business plan. Our final project was then presented to a panel of judges which was followed by questions.

Findings:

Through this process, Team Food Savr has been able to learn a lot about this process and the problem of food waste as a whole. The most significant finding was that in order to attack this issue and make an impact, we need to address the issue at the origin.  We originally thought that the issue stemmed from the way that society was disposing of food.  Disposal of food is still an issue, but through research we discovered that the best way to have an impact is to address the fact that society is consistently buying food in excess. 

Through our initial research, we found that the main party causing the most food waste is consumers.  We initially thought that the main producer of food waste was companies like restaurants and grocery stores and were surprised to find out that the leading producer of food waste was consumers.  We decided it was important to address food waste from consumers. 

Through the stakeholder interviews, the team was able to not only learn more about the issue of food waste, but also receive feedback for our ideas.  Within these interviews our team learned that food banks were performing incredibly well in the Denver area.  They have an incredible system in place that is incredibly high functioning.  The food banks were also vital in developing our solution and were very constructive in the prototyping process. 

Lastly,  when talking to grocery stores, they also have an incredible system in place and waste much less food than consumers.  Their feedback allowed us to rely on the grocery stores and make an app where it would reduce the amount of food they sell.  Our grocery store  stakeholders shared with us that they would consumers buy what they need than buy in excess and not dispose of it properly.  This was a huge motivation for us to implement a system that would allow consumers to do this. With the support of the grocery stores we were propelled further into the project and inspired to create a solution that will make a difference. 

Proposal and Solution Design:

Our team proposes the implementation of the Food Savr feature in grocery store’s applications. Food Savr is an intrapreneurship venture as we would like to work with grocery stores to implement the feature. The Food Savr feature is a feature that tracks what food a customer buys and the amount of food utilized. Food Savr enables customers to visualize the amount of food and money wasted from their past purchases which will make customers aware of the waste and potential savings. From there, customers will be able to precisely reorder their groceries online resulting in numerous environmental and consumer savings. In addition to this, consumer food waste data will be collected which is valuable in the aid to this wicked social problem.

Our team has decided to focus on the city of Denver as a test market for Food Savr. We have worked with several stakeholders in this market and we will be able to closely monitor our feature and ensure its effectiveness.

Our team has developed an extensive financial outline on how Food Savr will operate. The primary source of income will come from corporate contributions and revenue generated from in-app advertising which will compound over time. We estimate startup costs for Food Savr at around $162,000 with salaries  included. From there, our Food Savr team will monitor and continuously optimize the application resulting in minimal work for the corporations. Further, this plan creates opportunities for grocery stores, environmental research, and the Food Savr team. 

By tackling this aspect of food waste, we can make a big impact on this wicked problem and aid in future research and development in regards to solving consumer waste.