Business Plan for the Mobile Application “Food Hero”

Team SEA

Skylar Gilfeather, Ella Williams, Annie Xu

Dana Hall School

Table of Content

1. Executive Summary…………………………………….………………………….2

2. Company Description.……………………………...…………………..………….3

3. Product and Service Description…………………………………………………...4

4. Market and Competitor Analysis…………………………………………………..6

5. Branding and Marketing………………………………………………………….11

6. Financial Plan and Projections……………………………………………………12

7. Appendix………………………………………………………………………….13

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1. Executive Summary A. The Problem

Food waste has long been a serious problem facing our local and the international community.

Current estimates put global food loss and waste between one-third and a half of all food

produced, about 1.3 billion tons of food. This is equal to about 1 trillion dollars. With just one

forth of the wasted food we could feed 795 million people suffering from hunger. In the US

alone 30 to 40 percent of the food produced is wasted, even when it is still safe to consume.

Among them, according to the USDA Economic Research Service, consumer and foodservice

food waste is the largest source of food loss in the marketing chain. Additionally, a lot of the

food waste are caused by people’s confusion over the idea of In fact, many of the expiration

dates on foods are set far earlier than necessary, which causes consumers to throw out food, even

when it’s still edible.

Food waste not only poses potential threat to our environment but also stands especially alarming

considering the large rates of starvation and food insecurity present as well. Additionally, saving

food usually lets people to consume a wider variety of foods which would promote their own

health. Action is needed to raise awareness and reduce this significant waste of our resources.

As high school students in a boarding school, we realize through our own life experiences, the

severity of food waste in our community. We wish to educates people about the problem, and to

provide a convenient method of saving food for people in daily lives.

B. Business Overview

Team Sea is a non-profit organization based in Boston, MA. Food Hero is a mobile app

developed by Team SEA and it aims to reduce personal food waste and educates people about

the importance of food waste. Through three functions: pantry, donate, and recipe, users are

offered the opportunity to consume their food creatively. We also aim to build a community of

users to encourage people further engage in the actions for reducing food waste.

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2. Company Description Mission

Team Sea is a non-profit organization made up of three young female entrepreneurs from Dana

Hall School. It is established in the year of 2016 in Wellesley, MA. We endeavor to make

technology based products to help preserve the environment spread awareness about the

importance of sustainability.

The Team

Our Team consists of Skylar Gilfeather, Ella Williams, and Annie Xu, each focusing on a

specific aspect of the business while working closely together to create Food Hero, the

first of many of our products.

● Skylar Gilfeather is the primary application developer. She is the main coder of

the application and also oversees the future development of the app. She also

perfected the paper prototype and designed the logo for Food Hero.

● Ella Williams is the market researcher. She has collected background information

and statistics necessary for us to understand the problem. She also compiled the

results we got back from the survey we sent out to the whole Dana Hall School.

● Annie Xu focuses on the business and financial aspect of Food Hero. She drafted

the business plan and the paper prototype for the app. She also helped create the

pitch presentation.

In addition to the members described above, our team is also supported by our mentor,

Neeraj Wadhera who is a senior technology executive with over 30 years of experience in

the financial services sector. She has helped us form the idea and given valuable advice in

generating a mission statement and a business plan. Ms. Lavakumar, who is a math,

engineering and computer science teacher at Dana Hall School introduced our team to the

technovation challenge. She organized regular club meetings at our school and has

provided great help on coding the app and improving our pitch.

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3. Product and Service Description

Current Product

Food Hero is a mobile phone app developed on the MIT App Inventor by Skylar

Gilfeather, Ella Williams and Annie Xu. The application focuses on providing help and

advice for people to reduce food waste primarily in three ways: keeping track of the users’

pantry, giving the users access to donate their excess food to charities nearby, finding

recipes to encourage consuming food near expiration. Moreover, allowing the users to

connect with their friends and family, Food Hero aims to implant the idea of food waste

into people’s daily lives.

In the pantry function of Food Hero, the user can add the list of their food to the pantry

either manually or by taking a picture of the products. The users can edit the number,

name or expiration dates of each single item as they consume the food. They can also

easily delete the items by swiping to the side. When the food is near the expiration dates,

the application can send out notifications to remind the user to either consume or donate

the food. The user can personalize when to receive the notifications in settings.

Furthermore, recognizing that the food expiration dates marked by the manufacturers can

be misleading, Food Hero also allows users to personalize the expiration date that fit

themselves.

Food Hero also provides users with the opportunity to donate their excess food to food

charities or food banks in their community. When the user type in their zip code or

address, Food Hero will show options of the different food charities nearby with the help

of Google Map. Thus, users can be connected to their local food charities.

Another way to help people reduce food waste is to encourage the users to consume the

food by finding innovative and interesting way to cook the food. When people type in the

food they want to use or select certain food from their pantry, the application will

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recommend recipes using these raw materials with the help of data retrieved from

Yummly.com.

In addition to the three main functions mentioned above, the user feature helps encourage

people more actively engage in reducing food waste in their daily lives. A user profile will

be set up in the app. Daily and weekly challenges will be prompted by the application.

Upon completing the challenges, users earn points and streaks in the app. In the future, we

aim to further develop the community to allow users connect with other users and share

their achievements on social media accounts.

Future Developments

Due to the many limitations, some of the features can only be planned in future updates on the

application. Some of the functions to be upgraded include:

● Users will be able to add food to pantry with image recognition technology or simply by

scanning the barcode of the product or the receipt.

● The database for recipes and food charities will be improved once we have the cost

covered to implement more advanced APIs

● A community among users will be built so that users can connect with each other and

share their achievements on social media accounts.

● We will expand to other parts of the world by launching versions of the application in

different languages and in the app stores in different parts of the world.

● We will launch an iOS version for Apple users.

● We will broaden our market by expanding to the computer and ipad systems.

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4. Market and Competitor Analysis

Market Research

While our app is usable by all ages groups, we target parents and boarding school

students. From our market research we got positive feedback from ages ranging 14-60.

Due to the large target customer, Food Hero would have a greater impact than with a

select age group.

From the results of the survey we sent out, 77.8% of the people are willing to use the recipe

service on an app. 61.9% of the people believe that they will use the pantry service to keep track

of the expiration dates and send reminders. 52.4% of the people will use the donate feature to

donate food to local charities.

Competitor Analysis

We realize that a variety of similar apps already exist, such as Fridgely or USDA Food Keeper.

They tend to only have one to two functions. However, Food Hero combines 3 different

approaches and allows more flexibility in reducing food waste. It also encourages sustainability

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through daily or weekly challenges and educates users through facts and statistics. Furthermore,

its free of cost and therefore will encourage more people to participate in the action in reducing

food waste.

The chart below organizes the functions, cost and strength and weakness of many competitor

apps currently available.

Name Cost Main purpose and

functions

Advantages and functions Disadvantages

Pantry

Manager

$3.99 ● Add pantry

food directly to

shopping list

● Tracks

expiration dates

● Barcode scanning

function

● Cloud syncing

● Email shopping list

or pantry

● Custom stores

● Freedom to move

items

● Only 1 feature

● No “reward”

logging food

Prep &

Pantry

In-app

purchase

($7.99)

● List maker

● Food tracker

● Different locations

(basement, kitchen,

fridge, etc)

● Scans barcode

● Works offline

● Attach own photos

● Only stores 10

items before

upgrading

● Crashes often

● Trouble syncing

● Bad customer

support

Expiration $0.99 ● Tracks

expiration dates

● Includes medicine

and vouchers

● Simple functions

● No “reward” of

logging food

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Shopi In-app

purchase

● Budget

manager

(budget for

shopping lists)

● Focused on in

store shopping

● High customer

ratings

● Helps budget- saves

money

● Share with

followers, friends

and family

● Remember item

location once set

● Unattractive logo

● 2 function

● Does not mention

expiration dates

● No ‘reward’ of

logging food

Pantry

check

free ● tracks

expectation

dates and prices

● Makes lists

● tracks price

● Categorizing: by

expiration date and

food type

● Can add own food

● Scans barcode

● Can plan grocery

lists

● nothing about

donate or recipe

● No ‘reward’ of

logging food

Fridgely free ● food tracker ● recipes

● Favorites section

● Barcode scanner

● Separates by storage

location

● no suggested date

of expiration

● 1 function

Expiry

Alert Biz

In-app

purchase

● Keeps track of

everything with

an expiration

(food,

medicine,

● Large storage

● Notification without

internet

● Barcode scanner

● Share lists

● 1 function

● No incentive to

track dates

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license, etc.)

● Import from

email

● Customizeable

Food saver $0.99 ● expiration

tracker

● Interacts with

reminder app

● Sync with other

devices

● Color coded based

on freshness

● Some bugs when

adding items

● Limited food

options

Bread ‘N

Butter

Free ● list maker

● Food tracker

● share lists

● Recipes

● limited categories

● 1 function

fresh

pantry

$0.99 ● expiration date

tracker

● can work for

anything

● Can back up in

Cloud but

something

malfunctions

● Labeled by photos

provided by users

● doesn't give

suggested date

● Single function

● No given database

● Generic logo

Most of the current competitor apps emphasize more on saving the cost for the food while Food

Hero focuses mainly on environmental sustainability and allowing the user to reduce food waste.

Function wise, most of the competitor apps have developed a good system of keeping track of

the users’ food and all sorts of items. However, services regarding listing and tracking food are

often the only function in the app. While Food Hero combines three innovative ways to

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encourage users to consume the food: tracking and notifying on expiration dates, donate and

recipe. Therefore, Food Hero provides the users with more approaches to reduce food waste.

Also, most of the competitor apps cost money and often offer only services regarding listing and

tracking the food. Food Hero is completely free and is developed by a non-profit organization.

As the competitor apps do not usually receive high ratings on application stores, it is clear that

they are also not used extensively. The reviews by the users also suggest that they are not usually

considered to be user-friendly. Food Hero, on the other hand, features flexibility for the user and

incorporates fun challenges to further engage the user. In the future, we will also develop a much

connected user community and link the app to various social media.

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5. Branding and Marketing

Branding

The name of our app, Food Hero originates from our mission to help people engage in

reducing food waste in their everyday lives. Every small effort counts and in doing so, and

every one is a hero in saving the environment. Team SEA is an acronym for the three

team members (Skylar, Ella and Annie).

Our brand logo is a carrot wearing a red cape, a commonly recognized symbol for

superheroes. We designed this logo because we believe in the power that accumulates

even just by a single person saving a single carrot. The message we wish to express is that

every effort counts in this common goal of saving the environment.

Marketing

Food Hero starts as a mobile app that helps solve problems in the local community.

However, through proper marketing and promoting, we believe that it can make a bigger

impact on more communities.

In the future, our team will launch an iOS version of Food Hero for Apple device users.

We also wish to expand our app to the computer and ipad system.

In our app, we have retrieved data from multiple websites, such as Yummly.com and

StillTasty.com. In the future, we plan to establish partnerships with the website to achieve

mutual benefits.

To promote the app, we plan to work with different boarding schools across the world.

The students are more likely to find out about the app if the app is introducing by the

schools.

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6. Financial Plan and Projections

Our business model is non-profit. Therefore, Food Hero would be a free app to encourage a

wider use to achieve our goal of educating people about food waste.

Currently, as a business started by three high school students, we do not have cost for work

force, space, device or any operating expenses. On the other hand, we also do not gain any

revenue. While we are not aiming for any financial profit, we will however in the future require

a much higher income to maintain our services and to support future developments.

The future costs will include promotion costs, operating, maintaining, and developing expanses,

pay for the work force, costs for devices to test the application and others. Because our app is

free, we will not gain any income from users downloading the app. So, the costs to maintain and

develop the app will be covered through income from these advertisements and partnerships with

other websites.

Also, advertisements and partnerships can only be integrated once our app has gained enough

user base, and so our main focus at the current stage is through marketing and branding to further

promote our app.

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Appendix A

Below is the market research survey that we send out to the whole school community. We

have carefully collected and analyzed the data to improve the service of our app. More

information about the analysis of these results is included in the Market Research section

of the business plan.

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