Kickoff: 2011
Partner: TSB / Design Council
Status: live
The story
League of Meals
League of Meals aims to get everybody to cook better, and reduce household food waste.
Staying independent
We responded to a call for novel ideas to keep older adults independent through food. Our solution - Pick Me Up - would allow older people to share things they need help with - grocery shopping, a trip to the doctor - with a closed network of friends and family. However, this idea did not go down well. We found that it made non-vulnerable people feel more dependent, and those that were already dependent needed more support than shopping, and were not open to tablet technology. It was back to the drawing board.
Sharing family moments
Our research had yielded insights about the importance of sharing food. Meals are a great way to bring people together to prevent isolation and maintain independence. We explored getting families to make food together, with older people contributing heritage recipes that could be archived using modern technologies. But again, we were on the wrong track. Older people were far more excited about new cuisines and flavours, rather than traditional recipes. Read more about the early phases of the project.
Let's make and share real food!
Why share recipes when you can share real food? League of Meals, the hearty, home-cooked alternative to a take-away. We set up a cooking group, supper clubs, and fundraising dinners to validate if older people who have time and a love for cooking can produce food that other people will buy. We found that, yes, people were interested in eating our meals. Will the community pay for food that is cooked by older people? Yes, but it's not sustainable or scalable. We also learned a lot about our older cooks' interests, needs, and passions.
A creative challenge to waste less
At our cooking sessions, we use ingredients that would otherwise go to waste. The cooks are challenged to use their knowledge and intuition to come up with dishes based on what's available. Both cooks and diners were passionate about real cooking, about wasting less, about reusing ingredients. We shared tips and tricks with each other, discovered new flavours, and different cooking techniques.
We organised a community feast, blogged, and started a newsletter to share what we were learning from each other in the cooking session, and discovered there is an appetite for this information.
A cooking course and community in a box
Improving eating habits, encouraging creativity & learning, reducing household food waste, and digital as well as social inclusion. This is the 'social return of investment' we are aiming for. Our activities so far helped us understand how we can achieved this while also creating business value.
Our current business model is a cooking course that's combined with a food subscription. Learn about new flavours and cuisines by ordering our weekly 'cook box' with fresh fruit and veg, dry ingredients, herbs, spices and condiments. The box comes with a cooking course that's all about cooking in more different, interesting ways. Our digital tools connect a community of learners, who can share their ideas online, and then meet and cook offline.
Work In Progress
Our next steps include more customer development, defining the product, and prototyping the course. We need to consult with a chef, and try the course concept ourselves. We already learned that people don't really know what they are spending on food per week, so pricing this will be challenge. Will showing the price per day convince interested potential customers? Our other risky assumptions are about food content production and the sourcing and delivery of the physical products involved.
Lots of things to throw into build-measure-learn loops. Stay tuned.
Projects
The Explora-lab-ora-torium
We're helping Comic Relief re-think their approach to income generation online, by launching six new products in just six weeks.
Jointly
Jointly is a mobile tool designed to support busy people who juggle working and looking after a loved one. Developed for CarersUK as part of the Sidekick School programme.
Buddy
Buddy is a digital tool to support therapy services. Clients use SMS to keep a daily diary of what they are doing and how they are feeling, in order to reinforce positive behaviours.