Running An Experiment During COVID-19
Quick Recap: Empire State of Food is a two-sided marketplace that connects local farmers with institutional buyers like schools and hospitals. It is a way to streamline orders from multiple farms, create new opportunities for farmers and reduce carbon emissions in our food system.
It’s week 8 or 9 of quarantine in New York City. I hope you’re safe and well. Here is the latest information from New York City if you need it.
We ran a modified pilot of Empire State of Food last month. We were going to rent a van, get an order from Donna at Stony Point Center, pick up deliveries from our partner farms, and then deliver them. Like most things, COVID-19 introduced new constraints for us.
- We are not doing the delivery ourselves
- We are not leaving NYC
- Stony Point Center is closed
- So are most institutions and wholesale buyers
We realized we could still complete our product narrative loop if we use a delivery service and make a donation to an organization doing food security work. Even if we don’t get paying customers immediately, we can still learn from non-profits placing orders.
We partnered with the Jeremiah Program in Brooklyn. They work to break the cycle of poverty for single moms and their families. Right now they’re fundraising for groceries and cleaning supplies to help their families during COVID-19. Check out their campaign here.
The delivery service we chose has its own app and in some ways looks similar to what Empire State of Food does. One of the biggest differences between what our delivery service does and what we do is set standards.
For the delivery service, farmers upload their own products, name them however they want, set their own units and their own prices. For example, daikon radishes are listed 5 different ways from four different farmers. With Empire State of Food we are setting the units, prices and product standards to make it easier for buyers to get a consistent product across multiple producers.
On Empire State of Food, there is only one listing for daikon radishes and the price and units are the same for every farm. Buyers are choosing a product and then the algorithm matches them with the closest producer that is able to fulfill that order.
Because we need to make purchases on the delivery service app in order for them to be delivered to the Jeremiah Program. The products we offer in our prototype need to match the listings on their app. We tried to get in contact with farmers the week before our pilot to have them list products exclusively for us on the app with standard units and prices so that we could run the matching algorithm and pick the optimal farm for every product. However, it was not possible to get farmers to list products exclusively for us on the app within that week.
This means we just paid the prices listed on the delivery app. Which is just as well. We knew we weren’t testing prices because we donated the produce to our partner, the Jeremiah Program. And, when we tried to set our own prices based on current prices out of Hunt’s Point terminal, 12 out of the 14 products were missing because food supply chains are being disrupted in big ways. This bears repeating — it means that there have been days when almost no one is selling basic items like carrots in all of New York City. We’ve been working with the market terminal data for over a year and I have never seen this before.
This is the timeline of events for the week of our pilot run.
- Sunday April 19th, 2020 — Finalize product offerings in our prototype
- Monday April 20th, 2020 — Shanice from the Jeremiah Program places her order with Empire State of Food. Leanna places the order with the delivery service.
- Wednesday April 22nd, 2020 — Order is delivered to the Jeremiah Program.
- Thursday April 23rd, 2020 — Follow-up interview with Shanice. Jeremiah Program staff pack bags of produce for 20 families and distribute them.
Our first order was five products from five different farms for a total of $250.80. Our front-end prototype was sufficient for getting an order placed and the complete order was delivered. That’s a win.
This pilot run also makes it clear what the next experiments need to be. We need further testing with a front-end for farmers so that we can standardize product listings, run our matching algorithm and set prices. Pricing cannot be tested until we can get paying customers. Our pricing heuristic might have to change if Hunt’s Point data continues to be inconsistent.
Our pilot also highlighted the fragilities in our current food supply. Most institutions are shut down and restaurants are closed except for take out until further notice. We do not know what wholesale food purchasing will look like in a post-COVID world, but we do know that it will be different from the current status quo.
