Find Fresh Food

In developing countries such as the Caribbean region, it is very common that the agriculture sector is one of the most underutilized and mismanaged sectors within these economies. Unfortunately, the farmers are usually the individuals burdened with the majority of the ramifications majorly the loss of revenue incurred from unsold crops.

This digital social commerce marketplace will mitigate the loss experienced by the disposal of agricultural surplus, offer a fair price to consumers, while giving farmers higher margins and greater access to new and emerging markets. 

The solution which connects farmers directly to customers will drive job creation while simultaneously encouraging greater digital literacy and participation in this very traditional sector.  We will also increase consumer awareness of where their fresh foods originate.

1. Farmers experience a high level (at times over 70% of loss by the disposal of agricultural surplus when products brought to market remain. A lack of awareness of national agricultural demand and production trends means that farmers unwittingly contribute to a glut and shortage cycle which diminishes their profits and leads to a greater need for imported produce. 

2. Consumers and small wholesale buyers (primarily restaurants, caterers) pay extremely high markups for produce while farmers receive a disproportionately small piece of the pie, in Trinidad, this is known to be as little as 10% of the ultimate retail price.

3. Caribbean territories face extremely high food import bills.

4.  There are a number of underutilized food handling facilities suffering from the fallout in external catering and dining out. 

5.  The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of food security and has stimulated developed countries to seek self-sufficiency, the Caribbean needs to do the same.

The application will be used by farmers (via a simple digital interface) to directly trade with potential buyers, manage an electronic inventory and receive reports/ data analytics about their own sales as well as about current and upcoming demand trends.

Both retail and wholesale customers will be able to view available products along with pricing options from different vendors on the platform. Bulk buyers will be offered bidding options

Users will be inspired with recipe ideas for the produce they buy as well as for items which are in oversupply from time to time. 

Minimum Viable Product: 

The target MVP customers will be small wholesale buyers such as restaurants, school caterers in Trinidad and Tobago.  Primary research has revealed that the handful of these customers who buy direct from farms are saving up to 60% 

Sorting and packing will be handled by existing food handling facilities which have confirmed their eagerness to participate. 

Distribution will be handled by a couple of farmers that have chilled  transportation and who currently consolidate their and other farmer’s  produce for a small number of caterers  

Sustainability:

A fairer distribution of  margins will ensure long term commitment from farmers, distributors and customers

This will result in:
Farmers will directly be able to access the true demand for their products
Farmers being better able to plan their production, hopefully reducing glut conditions and improving their profitability.
Small wholesale buyers make significant savings (up to 60%) on produce.
Consumers making similar savings and getting farm-fresh produce.
Creation of new job functions within the supply chain and the rescuing of existing jobs by re-purposing them for the new business model. 
It will encourage greater digital literacy within the agricultural community
The recipe inspiration will encourage customers to buy items that are in oversupply thereby reducing wastage. 

The marketplace will reduce the significant wastage and low priced selling faced by farmers thereby increasing their profitability and business resilience. This will empower small farmers who are typically relegated to the bottom of the value chain and create new jobs in the sector.  

The simple interface and better pricing will encourage them to deeply engage in the digital economy.  

The solution will represent a radical shift for the agro-produce value chain in Trinidad & Tobago by giving farmers a more prominent role and greater visibility of end user transactions. 

The inclusion of cooking recipes at the moment of need and as a tool to influence consumer buying in relation to oversupplied produce is a new concept. 

Grocery related e-commerce is in its infancy in the Caribbean and unaware of any direct competitors in Trinidad at present. 

The core technology will consist of an e-commerce application with cloud based inventory management, multiple payment options and image repository. It will be platform agnostic and integrate API connections to recipe databases. 

The back end will provide trend analysis data to farmers for planning processes.

This technology is used in most e-commerce applications worldwide and will simply be repurposed for a Caribbean context. 

Activity: Farmers make their inventory nationally available                 Change: Customers become sensitized to the availability and order more produce due to pricing and freshness, this leads to greater demand and better margins for farmers. This also leads to greater market transparency and reduces the likelihood of price manipulation.                                       Evidence: Sellers on ebay have to be minful of competitor pricing or risk losing sales. 

Activity: farmers experience the demand and profitability                     Change: some farmers begin to move up the value chain into distribution and consolidation for smaller farmers.                                                       Evidence: We experienced this with one of the farmers interviewed. He has been doing just this since experiencing the benefits of direct trade with a school caterer generating much better pricing for him, his customer and his fellow farmers. 

Current customers: 0

Expected year 1: 5,000 customers

Expected year 5:  700,000 customers

Goals for year one: 

1) to get the business model fully operational and optimized for wholesale customers and 

2) to begin adding and optimizing for residential customers.

Goals for year five: 

1) To help no less than 1,000 farm operation to achieve minimum grow sale and achieve minimum 10% net margin increase 

2) to positively impact the lives of 1 million people in farming communities and throughout the supply chain and their dependents. 

Potential Barriers

1) Digitally illiterate farmers will struggle to use the app

2) Poor quality produce could turn customers off

3) Large retailers may play price wars 

1) The app will have an extremely simple interface with big buttons for the key one touch functions. Additionally, onboarding will include video and in person training. 

2) User rating will discourage the delivery of poor quality produce.

3) Most large grocery retailers operate on very narrow margins. It is unlikely that they could maintain a loss making position on produce for very long. 

Five Hackathon team members

The team is comprised of two IT and computer science teachers, a business man with over 10 years in the agricultural sector, a financial manger with masters level qualifications and an innovation and tech strategist. 

This is a strong multidisciplinary team which is practical, problem-centred and solution-focused

The solution proposed is derived from primary and secondary research and from a truly experiential perspective

We don not have any formal partnerships as yet but have received willing assistance with our research for this project from local agricultural and trade development agencies. 

Key Resources 

Finance for cloud hosting, full stack developers, digital marketing and content creation team.

Partners + Key Stakeholders 

Farmers, National Agricultural Marketing  Development Company, Delivery Service Company. Package Preparation, exporTT, Jampro and Caribbean Export.

Key Activities

Developing & testing the app, screening farmers, training farmers, developing logistics for distribution, promotion of service to consumers, managing risk.

Cost Structure 

Financing of cloud hosting services expected to increase as application users increase

Increase finance for additional staff.

 Channels

Via National Agricultural Marketing  Development Company, Outreach to rural communities through farmer cooperatives, Customers – through consumer  groups

Beneficiaries   

Young entrepreneurs in rural communities, families of the farmers,  Customers- who can get their fresh produce at a cheaper price

Revenue

80% Service Charge |  20% Ad space 

Type of Intervention  

Provision of an app to link farmers and customers

Channels 

National Agricultural Marketing  Development Company, Outreach to rural communities through farmer cooperatives, Customers – through consumer  groups

Value Proposition 

1. Beneficiary Value Proposition 

– Ability of the farmer to generate additional income from use of technology

2. Social impact 

– Number of farmers finding new sales channel, increased access to fresh produce at lower prices for consumers, creation of jobs in the distribution chain

- Promotion of greater digital literacy within the farming community

3. Customer Value Proposition  

- Promote use of technology to help farmers find new sales channels

Initially, the app will charge a small transactional fee. Once it has built momentum and a solid supplier base of 30+  farmers have been on-boarded, we will drive additional revenues by:

1) selling promotional opportunities (in a measured way ) to businesses seeking to win the attention of farmers such as farm supply operations

 2) Selling trend data to these entities which want to better understand their farm customer’s needs

3) Acting as an affiliate seller to farmers and consumers for a small selection of carefully selected complementary products

One of the main challenges small island states in the Caribbean face is an ever present and very costly lack of food security. 

Agriculture in the region is facing existential challenges driven by a combination of outdated techniques (in both production and sales), cheap imports and farmer marginalization by the rest of the value chain. The average age of our farmers is increasing as young people are quite rightly turned off by what they see; the sector is losing its vibrancy and spirit.

We applied to Solve for help in reviving the buzz and pride that farming once generated, to attract more young entrepreneurs to the sector and to reverse the unfortunate standard of living faced by those who work to feed their nations. 

Business Model:  Given that we are incorporating elements from a variety of existing business models, it will be helpful to talk to experts who understand them in greater detail than we do, who can pick our plan apart and force us to ensure it is robust.

Funding and Revenue Model:  startups rarely go according to plan and this has cash flow implications. It will be helpful to get mentoring in relation to flexible financial planning, available funding methods with a focus on customer funded models and strategy.

Marketing, media, and exposure: a critical success factor for this venture will be customer acquisition through highly effective earned media. Designing a winning strategy will require deep experience which we do not have on the team.    

Partnerships will be one of the crucial keys to the success of this venture. As such we would like to explore the possibility with the following,

·      MIT faculty or Initiatives – The support for the development of the mobile application and the policies and legal issues that will have to be considered. Especially as the wider Caribbean is considered the 5 year goal.

·      Ministry of Agriculture – Trinidad & Tobago initially. Through their planning and marketing department (NAMDEVCO - National Agricultural marketing & Development Company) – can assist by guiding on current policies and plans. Marketing department has a farmer certification programme.

·      The University of the West Indies (UWI) Departments of Agriculture – For research and development of production of indigenous fruits and vegetables.  R&D can be done in specific rural areas for this.

·      The UWI Department of Computer Science – General assistance ( via their network) for IT related issues.

·      The Trinidad & Tobago Hospitality Institute – Their linkages with the hospitality will create awareness and provide crucial feedback.

·      There are localised farmers associations in Trinidad & Tobago – we will have to seek these groups via NAMDEVCO and field visits.

·      The Ministry of Education of Trinidad & Tobago – The school feeding kitchen programme provides 90,000 meals a day to children in Trinidad & Tobago. The kitchens have a need for a consistent supply of low cost fresh produce and they have a distribution network.

1) Our solution will improve the margin share taken by farmers and their employees by extension, as well as creating new kinds of jobs in the agricultural supply chain. 

2) Farmers in the Caribbean are generally from lower economic classes with lower literacy rates and less access to modern tech and techniques. Their lack of digital engagement compounds their isolation from basic information and services that could vastly improve their lives. Our solution will provide strong incentive for digital discovery within these communities by providing clear, easily digestible value propositions. Digital engagement will help them to build new skills and open up new a new world of possibility and empowerment to thee communities.

3) GM expertise could help in a number of ways a) Improvement of  distribution fleet utilization and management with modern methods. b) Introduce creative ways of reducing poor chilling during distribution thereby improving quality to the customer. c) Introduce creative vehicle acquisition and financing models to help to modernize the supply chain.