A new collaboration

The opportunity arose for F4A to showcase their new marketplace concept at Cannes Film Festival.

Reviscience, a full-service nutrition service and supplement company would advertise their wellness program at Maslina Resort, an award-winning, fully sustainable 5-star luxury resort in Hvar, Croatia. The concept would be to use F4A’s new marketplace for sourcing sustainable ingredients in-line with the clients’ nutrition program during their wellness retreat. 

For this project, I was to design a platform for sustainable sourcing and menu optimisation, as well as managing the meal plans of retreat guests.

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The Problem

Farmers and food suppliers are primarily still not digitalised, leading to food waste and lost profits. 

Our team conducted interviews with farmers and food suppliers in Luxembourg to determine how they were currently operating and discovered the following insights:

• Buyers only want the best, category A produce, leading to wastage of perfectly imperfect products.
• They are busy and don’t have a lot of time for managing stock and orders on a computer.
• They sell to large resellers because it is easy for them.

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Catering companies need consistent supply to keep up with demands.

We spoke with several kitchens and food and beverage managers in Luxembourg to see how they were sourcing their products, and identify gaps in the market.

• Kitchens are busy, they have deliveries coming daily and need a consistent supply of high quality goods.
• They only use large suppliers because it makes their lives easier.
• They care about sustainability but it’s hard to manage using small suppliers.

Research: Contextual inquiry

I shadowed the head chef at Maslina resort to learn his process for creating menus and sourcing ingredients.

Much like a designer, his menu creation often started in a sketchbook or notebook. He even made drawings of his dishes as he was dreaming them up. Once he started building the recipe, it moved into an excel spreadsheet which was perfect for integrating into an application.

At F4A we already had recipe and ingredient data sets in our database, so much of the backend foundations were already set.

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Creating a value loop

How might we close the gap between consistency, quality, and sustainability?

Maslina had awards being a 100% sustainable resort, so they had a need to promote using sustainable ingredients in their food.

However, being a five-star resort there is an expectation of exquisite quality to uphold. The sourcing staff needed fresh and quality ingredients.

When speaking with food and beverage hotel managers in Luxembourg, they had a concern about consistency when talking about small farms. While they like supporting sustainable practises, their breakfast buffet needed a consistent stream of products everyday.

Myself and the CEO brainstormed possible solutions.

Identifying Opportunities

Replace ingredients based on season, availability, and ecological impact.

We had already begun making relations between ingredients in our database, it just needed a few tweaks for this particular use case. We could acquire data about the seasonality of ingredients in our serviced locations. Using this, as well as the availability from suppliers, and the eco-score we already had, we could suggest recipe ingredient replacements four out of season ingredients or more ecological choices.

For example, a fish that is out of season, or apples instead of red fruits. This is something chefs often did manually but didn’t have a system helping them with the supply.

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Introduce proprietary F4A Eco-scoring to increase sustainability clout

We found the eco-score didn’t go deep enough. Using the eco-score in combination with distance and localised seasonality, we could make our own calculation as to the sustainability of an ingredient. As you replaced ingredients, you would increase the overall eco-score of your recipe.

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Optimise logistics and facilitate purchasing

Allowing local producers to directly manage their products and catering professionals to ensure their availability, all the flow is simplified to provide fast and quality service. Offer products in a few clicks and follow the entire logistics cycle at a glance. From stock management to order monitoring, everything is optimised so that flows have the least possible ecological impact.

Rapid Prototyping

Working closely with Reviscience, I combined their meal planning and our provisioning system.

Since Reviscience didn’t already have an application, I copied their spreadsheets and internal processes to make a hypothetical meal plan management platform. This would basically integrate Maslina’s recipes into their healthy meal program, all powered by F4A’s sustainable sourcing.

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Within two weeks, I delivered six high-fidelity prototype 4k videos.

While on set I took photos and notes of each scene which would require a prototype and in which device format. To add life to the screens, I prototyped each one with a simple interaction and some sort of motion design that would catch the eye, such as rolling number counts. I then screen recorded each prototype in 4k and the video editor for the project inserted them into the commercial.

Outcome

The concept successfully raised seed investment.

As part of a sustainability summit at Cannes Film Festival, the concept was presented by F4A’s CEO, and afterward received investment, validating and beginning development of the sustainable sourcing platform.

Maslina were prepared to onboard its team to the new marketplace platform and Reviscience were interested in a meal plan solution integrating F4A.

Overall, this project generated new investments and market interest.