CHALLENGE
How might we promote accountability and incentivize consumers to reduce food waste?
SCOPE
Business Design
Innovation Process
Product Design
CONTEXT
Over 80 billion pounds of food ends up in landfills annually, translating to roughly $408 billion worth of food waste each year. US households are accountable for about half of this waste, due to food spoilage, over-preparing, expiration label confusion, overbuying, and poor planning. This leads to about 238 pounds of waste per person per year and approximately $1,800 per year down the drain for the average consumer.
Not only is this a pain point at a massive scale, but food waste is also the 3rd largest contributor to greenhouse gases, bearing significant environmental consequences. However, without significant repercussions or incentives to change their behavior, most consumers treat this problem as a second thought.
SOLUTION
Kitchen Management App
Sous digitally assists the management of your kitchen by tracking behaviors and introducing personalized recommendations conveniently into your routine to save food, money, health and the earth.
INITIAL RESEARCH (DESIRABILITY)
Going into research, our goal was to understand consumer emotions, behaviors, and pain points when it comes to food and explore why households are responsible for the largest portion of all food waste.
Key Insights
Desirability (need)Participants indicated that household food waste was a valuable problem to solve for. There was an overwhelming response to perishable foods in particular, like produce, protein, and dairy to expressed the desire for them to last longer. 63% of responses mentioned produce specifically.
Negative reactions to waste70% of our participants admitted that they felt negative emotional and financial repercussions when wasting food. Many disclosed that they felt bad or guilty, displayed an awareness of privilege, and felt frustration around wasting money.
Receptivity to changeParticipants conveyed that they would be receptive to changing their consumer behaviors and mentioned that they had already adopted habits to mitigate waste.
Interest in impactMany participants displayed an inclination towards products and brands that were eco-friendly, sustainable, and had a social impact.
Further, our research helped us zero in on two main consumer personas . . .
. . . and identify their journeys to further understand their wants and needs.
MARKET RESEARCH (VIABILITY)
After validating that there was a need, the question became: can this be a viable business?
Competitive Analysis
Our initial research led us to identify that convenience and accomplishment are important for us to frame as key differentiators in this space and gives us an opportunity to create new solutions or innovate already existing solutions to align with this insight. Looking at the existing market, our competition in this space includes a wide range and large amount of products and services. However, we found that very few of these solutions were able to accomplish both fitting into a user’s life with ease and producing a sense of accomplishment to counteract the negative emotions associated with food waste.
Market Sizing
We identified our total addressable market to be working adults age 20 to 44 which represents 86 million people and brings our TAM to about $1.6 trillion dollars. Further, our research indicates that around 45% of the population is aware about the problem of food waste, which led us to a serviceable addressable market of 39 million people and around $720 billion dollars. Finally, our serviceable obtainable market of about 1.2 million people shows that we have the ability to capture a market share worth $21 billion dollars.
Design Roadmap
Feature Prioritization
Based on the needs we uncovered in our research, we developed a phased approach to rolling out our product MVP.
GO-TO-MARKET STRATEGY
BEYOND MVP
Portfolio Plan
Beyond the development of our minimum viable product (MVP) we recommend building out a robust portfolio of B2C products that combat food waste at other points along the consumer journey. These include Zero Waste solutions, Community Food Sharing & a Home Growing tool. Further, we suggest expanding into new B2B markets to provide solutions designed for grocers & the energy industry, such as a composting platform & supplier logistics.
PROTOTYPING + TESTING
First Pass Prototype
Our riskiest assumption was that users would interact with our app consistently to manage their kitchen, save money, and reduce food waste. In hopes of validating our assumptions, we designed a Riskiest Assumption Test (RAT) and walked interview participants through our first pass prototype.
In the end, our test failed and did not validate our riskiest assumption.
However, it did help us identify potential barriers to consistent usage and prevented us from pursuing a risky venture.