This is an email about building a service and retail business. It was written to the splendid tunes from my new playlist, SportsBall - inspired by the H.S. football game DJ last Friday!
I’ve been researching my way to a greater understanding of produce departments and grocery stores for a series of weeks. I’ve found a slew of facts and figures and have built a wider view of the lay of the land.
One dynamic I’ve been shocked by is the amount of produce going wasted in grocery stores in the US.
//no.1 - They’re armed with spikes
Pineapple tastes great, is sought after on fruit platters and a miracle of transportation, trade agreements and agriculture. How we get these in the Midwest for $4 is still beyond me. However, cutting one with a dull knife is zero fun. And, buying 1/2 of one pre-cut in clear plastic container for $8 makes even less sense.
So, we waste 13 of every 100 pineapples?
//no.2 - It’s a basketball of food for $8
You can get and $8 watermelon, or 1/8 of a watermelon pre-cut for $8. And still, we waste a lot of watermelon.
//no.3 - You’re right, I don’t know either
And this stat from the same report is stunning. Without a picture to see what’s inside, a family member or job to have taught me, or wild curiosity few of us exhibit, just how is anyone going to buy a papaya with confidence they’re going to find success and enjoy it?
Sum
Those are some crazy figures. And, we’re all paying for someone to cut our food if our kitchen knives are sharp or not. And, that pre-cut stuff has loads of food safety risk.
What if there was a product that 1) provided approachable, easy to learn from and free education on how to prepare produce items in three different ways and was accessible from your phone in store via QR code? Would that change your shopping habits? And what if 2) there was a sharpening service you could access from a combination of your produce department and your mailbox?
That’s the future we see. We’re starting first by aiming to partner with the top 1/3 of the 38k grocery stores doing 900B a year in this country (with ~70% of transactions having a produce item it the basket), and we’re building it one step at a time. We share revenue with them AND help them reduce waste with education and sharpening services for their customers.
Let’s go!
On Your Way
Cut an extra apple for lunch this week?
Or, it’s harvest time. Head over and see an $8 watermelon turned into $48 of pre-cut watermelon in just a few minutes. Go do the same this week? You’ll be among ~91K people searching google for “how to cut a watermelon” each month.
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