Social Business Model of Empowering Community for Sustainability

Published in

Social Entrepreneurship ECS

8 min readApr 4, 2020

How to connect the supply of misfit or imperfect fresh produces with the demand of feeding the community with food insecurity.

This is the second part of the publication on developing a social enterprise that could help to link the problem of food waste or lost with the community with food insecurity. You can read the first part here.

The challenge for such an enterprise is to develop a program based on social business model that helps to address from a social and environmental aspect on channeling food waste or lost to the community with food insecurity. This initial iteration of this social business model canvas allow us to explore on various possible participants and resources needed in this supply and demand chain to create the required value propositions and benefits.

The Social Business Model Canvas;

The Value Proposition

For the Farmers:

Channeling of the imperfect food produces to recover some revenue for the farmers,
Redirecting extra produces to additional customer channels for added revenue,
Having farmers to be sustainable in generating the revenue from the produces,
Allowing farmers to invest on organic farming as there is no more misfits of the sizes and shapes of the produces,

For the Beneficiary (the needy in the community with food insecurity)

Creating skills and jobs for the community in the community kitchen
Availability of foods to feed the needy within the community,

The Environment:

Less landfill that resulted in more methane gas as green house gases,

For Customers

Enable consumers who share the same value to actively participate in the program either as a customer and/or sponsor.

Customers Segments

The Beneficiary Segment

Communities where people are short of readily available food,
Communities where people who wish to volunteer for the goods of their communities while being able to benefit from the supply of fresh produces or/and cooked food,
Farmers who can recover some cost of their imperfect food,
Farmers who can sell off extra produces.

The Customer Segment

Customer who wish to have delivery of fresh produces due to certain factors like time, inconvenience, disability, elderly, students, etc.,
Customer who wish to participate in the environmental eco system of reducing food waste by buying the fresh produces via subscription or membership,
Customer who wish to take out or food orders for lunch/dinner cooked from the community kitchen.

Customer Relationship

There are various format to maintain the relationship with the farmers, beneficiary community and the customers group. The main connector would be through the App platform to formulate and maintain these relationships;

Self service — for customers who wish to participate in the program for subscription purchase of the fresh produces
Assistance — program members providing workshops to facilitate the program initiatives and recruiting of the farmers.
Volunteering — volunteers with specific skills to train the program members (who could be also volunteers) to manage the community kitchen such as daily management of cooking, preparation, health and safety, hygiene, distribution and scheduling, etc.
Automated services — using the App for registration of the farmers to participate in the management of their fresh produces from the farms to the kitchen such as forecasting, delivery scheduling, labour resources requirements, sales, etc.
Backend services — automation of the scheduling, transportation arrangement, management of orders and delivery, forecasting of supply and demand, etc.
Co-creation — Kitchen with volunteer cooks and the community members to create products, cooking recipes, cooking classes, etc.to equip the community members to become independent or to participate in the program to generate income.

Channels

There are various point of reach or touching points in the program where channels are created to enable the customer relationship needed for the enterprise.

The Physical Channels

Website to create awareness for the beneficiaries and customers,
Community Kitchen as the central place for volunteers, community and members of the public who go for cooked food,
Community shop located within the kitchen for customers to view and purchase products produced by the kitchen.

The App Channel

App platform to showcase this program and how the community members can participate, sign-up and scheduling of the resources needed for the kitchen and shop,
App for subscribers to view, subscribe, pay, track and feedback of subscription purchase of fresh produces,
App to customers view, order, feedback of cooked food from the kitchen.

The Farmers Channel

Associations of farmers for educating and recruiting the farmers to participate in the program,
App for them to provide the supply information, requests such as labours, volunteers, pickup transports, feedbacks.

Key Partnerships

There are multiple entities or participants needed to collaborate with for this enterprise to be able to establish the supply and demand flow in order for the program to work effectively. These are;

Creating alliances with the farmer associations, local communities governing bodies, non-profit organisations linked to the needy community. Close working relationship with farmers to assist them including additional resources planning during harvesting seasons.

Partnership with potential logistics companies that could provide resources for the necessary deliveries. This could allow optimisation of the necessary logistics instead of added resources that could have further impact to the environment in terms of pollution.

Partnership with competitive subscription companies to get their supply through this program to create the economy of scale for supply of such produces to the market.

Involving people who are left out of the workforce to come back to this community to help up with simple works in the community kitchen, like working as a family business to bring them into a community life. Retired chefs or house mothers who are willing to teach, guide or even cook nutritional food for the communities. This enables labour resources needed and reducing of risk of hiring.

Kitchen — acquisition or co-partnership with company that could provide the technology for chill blasting of cooked food for longer storage needed for delivery to needed communities.

Key Resources

With the partnership established, the enterprise would be able to bring the necessary resources, including facility, tools and equipment plus human resource;

Central kitchen — is the main physical space run by this program to be the focal point between the farmers and the beneficiaries and customers,
Kitchen equipments — for the necessary cooking needs,
Cold storage — for necessary storage of the fresh produces,
Dry warehouse — for necessary storage of the ingredients, dried goods and products,
Famers connection — the main supply of the fresh produces that are of excess or cannot be sold at retail channels due to various factors including imperfection,
Vehicles — for pickup from farmers, delivery of cooked food the needy communities, subscription boxes and products to the customers,
Volunteers — for the management and running of the kitchen/shop, delivery and coordination with the farmers,
Staff — main operation team of the program,
Intellectual — the database of the farmers, the type of produces, schedules, etc. database of the customers, volunteers, schedules, etc. database for the kitchen for preparation and delivery of the cooked meals,
Financial — the cost of buying of the produces, the costs of running the kitchen, volunteers, delivery, etc.

Key Activities

With the resources in place, the enterprise would then develop and run the key activities to get the program running and focus on create the value propositions to the community and potential customers to participate and subscribe to the program;

Bridging and direct connecting the raw food producers/farmers to a central community of skills who will then turn the raw food produces to ready meals and products for the community of needs as well as customers who wish to support the program.

Promoting to producers/farmers to gain from imperfect or excess produces.

Empowering community to turn the raw imperfect produce into good food or meals by creating skills, volunteering works that would bring up the social spirit of helping each other.

Empowering food availability to communities of needs by identifying, evaluating and forming of the central kitchen with the assistance from the community governing bodies plus collaboration with community business as possible sponsors.

Recruiting and training volunteers as program coordinating members including cooks, kitchen and delivery management, etc.

Engaging with sponsors and customers for subscription as well as donating or sponsoring of meals to the needy.

Collecting from farmers, delivery to central kitchen and subsequently delivery of meals and products to the community and customers

Preparation, cooking and serving of the cooked meals for the needy community members as well as packed meals for the customers who placed the orders for delivery.

The key App platform — continuous development of the App platform as the main brain that co-ordinate and manage all the necessary logistics, supply and demand planning, kitchen, farmers, customers and beneficiaries.

Potential Costs

The initial cost model is based on the enterprise setup with the assumption of assets acquisition while another possible model would be a open business model to have partnership and alliance with key partners that already have those assets to participate in the program;

Kitchen — cost of management and maintaining with the assumption the kitchen facility is available and provided as a tool to enable the cooking for the needy,
Delivery — cost of transportation vehicle, petrol and possibly volunteers,
Storage — cost of running a cold storage and warehouse for housing the fresh produces,
Technology — investment in resources and tools to maintain the platform.

Potential Revenue

The enterprise targets multi-sided markets as there are two independent segments - the beneficiary market and the customer market. The customer market segment is needed for the cashflow to support the beneficiary side. Recurring revenue includes;

Subscription with fresh produces in a box deliver to subscribers weekly,
Orders of cooked food delivery,
Products created by the kitchen that longer used date,
Recurring revenue from additional delivery charges,
Recurring revenue from customers who wish to sponsor the kitchen or donate the meals to the needy.

Summary on Social and Environment Impact

The impact of this social enterprise created to bridge the supply of the misfit or imperfect fresh food produces to the demand of the community of food insecurity can be potentially as follows;

Reduction of waste at the source where farmers and producers can be benefited plus not having to overproducing that could cause more waste or pollution,
Reduction of green house gases emission through dumping of fresh produce in big quantity,
Creating socially active community to participate in a circular economy of bringing fresh produces to be prepared for the community either in needs or with wishes to participate for the better of the environment as well a healthy and active community,
The bigger impact would be the possibility of replicating this social enterprise model with the extension of establishing the kitchen working model and App platform to multiple locations where there is a need on their social and environment fronts, i.e. community that could be suffering from food insecurity.

Communicating the message through a poster picture

A separate poster is being created to spread the message for channeling the potential food waste or lost to the community with food insecurity. In a separate article, it will try to explain the thinking behind the design of the poster for the message to be communicated. Click here for the article.

Poster to communicate the message for the needs to channel any potential food waste or lost to the community that is in need of food security.

Follow-up

The article is intended for an evaluation of possible social business model that could be adopted and implement in possible communities of needs where multiple participants within a community could come together to form this program to make it a reality.

You are welcome to email ecs.biz@icloud.com for furthering this interest into a viable social enterprise as our team are both business and App development professionals who wish to explore further with the right community participants.