1. FreshRemind 2525 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1W9
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Executive Summary
Canada is a country that has shifted strongly from local agriculture to an import market.
This year, only 3% of Canadians grow their own food. The market is based so heavily on
purchased goods that Canadians are not fully informed of the entire process. Canadians
have a tendency to “impulse buy”, or simply purchase too much. Often, food is left to
expire, because the opportunity to consume that food is rare. Either recipes do not involve
a specific ingredient, or the interest to eat something declines. Furthermore, busy families
tend to forget particular foods that are sitting in the back of their fridge. All of this leads
to an increasing problem regarding food security. 28% of food waste is due to food
becoming expired, and thrown away. FreshRemind by Chufood is set to tackle this
problem.
The solution is an innovative mobile application that is easy to use. FreshRemind will
allow consumers to scan receipts and log purchased goods. The app will automatically
sort the items by expiration date, and have set reminders to inform consumers in the form
of mobile notifications when food is expiring. To encourage users to eat the food sitting
in the fridge, we offer recipe ideas and grocery list compilations. This helps to reduce
food waste significantly, but also saves consumers money by reducing the amount of
food they have to re-buy.
Our target markets are specified into two main groups. We believe at Chufood that these
groups have the highest need for this product.
i) Single parent families
ii) Large families with multiple children
Often, single parent families are focused on work, and have less time to think about
meals. The result is forgetting to eat certain foods before their expiry date. This helps
save the parents time so that they can easily prepare meals without leaving food out.
Large families on the other hand purchase large amounts of food to accommodate the
large number of people in the home. This often leads to overspending and over-buying.
The recipe suggestion feature helps recognize the ingredients the family has, so that
families don’t leave out ingredients.
Chufood aims to reduce food waste in Canada by at least 15% from 28% of household
food waste. We plan to achieve this goal by 2020.
Our goal is to reach 10 000 downloads within the first 6 months of our app release. In
order to achieve this goal, we will use innovative and proven marketing strategies. From
our user growth formula, we have calculated the net profit in the first year to be $21 800
from a start-up expense of $29 300.
The risks of this model are obvious. However, upon comparison to other competitive
models, we realize that our app has a very strong, and distinct advantage over rival apps.
Our idea is revolutionary, and will transform the traditional family approach to grocery
shopping; thus, leading to an extensive increase of sustainable food practices, and evident
decreases in Canada’s food security problem.