Sow—Connecting a neighborhood direct with its local farmers
2018 – 19
Co-founder
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Raising initial funding
Fund trader
Fund trader
Brand visual language
Brand visual language
Conceptual app designs
Conceptual app designs
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Research: How to make it easier to buy local food?
Over our first month, we:
Over our first month, we:
- Interviewed farmers, chefs, food policy experts, food journalists, farmers market co-ordinators and everyday consumers. Trying to understand their motivations and the challenges they face.
- Shadowed shoppers as they bought groceries
- Read the leading voices on local farming, including Michael Pollen, Joan Gussow, and J M Fortier.
Findings
Findings
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First prototype at City Roots Farm
Testing prototypes with farm workers
Testing prototypes with farm workers
Findings
Findings
The app was quick to build. We had City Roots set up with it in a week or so. There were teething problems galore to sort out, but they quickly started getting value from it.
Previously, if a chef or wholesaler called with an order, front office would have to call them back after physically going to the store room and counting how much stock they had. Now, they could see their availability onscreen, as they took the call, and could close the sale there and then.
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Prototype 2: Focusing on consumers
Could a farmer deliver direct to a neighborhood?
Could a farmer deliver direct to a neighborhood?
The farmers market in a box
The farmers market in a box
This led to the idea of a _farmers market in a box_, a self-service farmstand stocked with locally sourced food, delivered by farmers, for the neighborhood.
Over the next two weeks, and many trips to Home Depot, we built our first prototype. It was basic: a fridge and freezer from Craigslist, a tablet and card reader to accept payments, and a wooden frame to hold it all together. A kind friend let us host it on her porch.
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Open for business
Could a farmer deliver direct to a neighborhood?
Could a farmer deliver direct to a neighborhood?
What followed was a rapid education in the challenges of running a small business. Supplies ran out, chickens stopped laying, things needed fixing, the fridge frosted up, and customers needed updating. We quickly had to figure out systems for checking stock levels and ordering ahead of time. We built in redundancy for popular products such as eggs. We set up a mailing list to update neighbors with stock levels and new arrivals.
Weeks passed as we worked to iron out the kinks and gather feedback from our first customers. We learned a lot from these initial users, and quickly accumulated a long backlog of improvements to make to the product.
How do I know what’s in stock?
How do I know what’s in stock?
Customers' biggest complaint was that they couldn't know with any certainty what would be in stock in the box, so they couldn’t rely on it for their normal shopping. In an effort to address this, we built a Progressive Web App listing stock levels for everything in the box. Pulling live stock data from the the box and presenting it through a mobile-friendly UI.
When we launched it for the neighborhood, we saw a good response in revenues. Regulars appreciated being able to check if their favorites were in stock. People new to the concept had something they could check out from their phone, without the commitment of walking the few blocks to see the box themselves.
Pre-ordering & subscriptions
Pre-ordering & subscriptions
The box worked great as a first experiment, but it was far from financially viable for us or the farmers supplying it. This micro-retail model would’ve needed 10x the weekly sales volume to be viable, which didn't seem likely without a major rethink. The outlook looked much rosier though if we could take regular subscription payments from a small group of committed neighbors. 30 neighbors with a weekly recurring grocery order would make an enticing proposition for a farmer, and it would be well worth their while to deliver.
With this we set about sketching ideas for how we could take and deliver subscription orders for a neighborhood. We sketched concepts for bigger and better communal refrigerators, to live in parks and other public spaces. We began talks with city officials, getting approval to build a prototype in the neighborhood park.
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