Local Seeds

Logo
Idea selection
Iteration of MVP
When Devpost crashed

The problem your project solves:

The Covid-19 outbreak has had profound implications for small local businesses in the hospitality sector - restaurants, pubs, cafes and other service businesses had to stop their operations due to strict social distancing safety measures. This has led to three main issues.

These businesses face cashflow problems as they are not generating any revenues and therefore are struggling to pay their staff, rent and bills. Plus, they have to deal with the uncertainty of not knowing when they will be able to reopen.
Some businesses are shifting to direct-to-consumer offering via deliveries, but delivery providers tend to charge expensive fees which erode margins in a sector where these are already extremely thin.
These businesses experience additional inventory and supply chain challenges as many of their product offerings involve perishable goods. Predictability of orders is key for them and is now disrupted by fluctuating purchasing behaviours, due to changing consumer needs as people are locked at home.

The solution you bring to the table:

Local Seeds is a platform that enables local businesses to become more resilient by leveraging alternative business models, products and services. The platform allows businesses to:

Build a membership scheme that helps grow their customer base and increase loyalty
Create new DTC revenue lines (e.g., DIY ingredient boxes)
Sell merchandising (e.g., cookbooks, tea bags, coffee beans)
Boost their digitalisation and their presence online (e.g., by creating tutorials, virtual cocktail making classes, virtual event such as pub quizzes etc)
Engage more interactively with their customers by using new digital channels and by involving them in the co-creation and development of new initiatives

How it works for businesses:

The platform provides tools for local businesses to better promote new and existing services to the local community and curate their membership programmes. While the structure of the programme is completely to the businesses' discretion, the app provides frameworks and resources to set up these new offerings and communication channels. For example, it suggests perks that have worked for others, it gives templates to structure their business page, it provides access to delivery services and new payment systems.

How it works for consumers:

Locals in the area can find and follow their favourite businesses on the platform and browse their newest offerings and services. They can then choose to support their favourite local stores by purchasing their products and services or by becoming members of those businesses. They can choose between two membership models:

(i) Basic membership (free): stay up to day on events; special offers / discounts and give feedback and contribute ideas

(ii) Premium membership (monthly subscription): access to discounts, exclusive online content/products (e.g. cooking classes), merchandise and other perks

Revenue model:

Businesses can use the platform to generate revenues in two ways: (i) ad hoc purchases of current or future offerings (e.g., merchandising) (ii) membership subscriptions

Local Seeds is a social enterprise that can create a sustainable revenue model by generating income through (i) selling data / advertisement (ii) partnering with a POS provider that would sponsor us in exchange for increased usage of their payment system

What you have done during the weekend:

-Friday: Ideation and Idea Selection

We started from scratch on Friday with a virtual silent brainstorming session on Mentimeter and evaluated ideas in terms of potential impact and feasibility to help us select one.

-Saturday: Proposition and MVP building

Saturday was spent fleshing out the value proposition. We started by building a virtual customer profile and value map in Strategyzer. We consulted domain experts and potential customers to validate our thinking and designed the consumer journey before starting wire-framing in Invision to build an MVP.

-Sunday: Validation and Story Telling

Sunday was all about bringing the solution to life. Half of the team worked on validating the MVP whilst the other half worked on developing a pitch and video to convey our story.

The solution’s impact to the crisis:

Local Seeds will help small businesses build resilience strategies to overcome the crisis. It will do so by strengthening businesses' ties with their local community, enabling them to tap into neighbourhood love.

Thanks to the platform, they will be able to reduce their cashflow problems by letting their customers subscribe or purchase products in advance, develop new delivery models and product offerings that improve their margins and widen their brand reach with new communication touchpoints.

The necessities in order to continue the project:

Over the course of the weekend, we have built the concept and a mock-up of the platform. We've also received some initial validation for our idea and we've iterated accordingly. As a next step, we would go deeper into the validation both on the business and the consumer side.

We would build an MVP landing page that we can use to validate some of our hypotheses. Once we have the MVP we'd run marketing tests to refine our messaging and understand what drives people to sign up. We'd also use the MVP to talk to a larger number of businesses to validate their demand and get an understanding of what kind of features they would like to see. We would also validate the idea with the wider group of stakeholders in the community, such as the local council. We would take a neighbourhood by neighbourhood approach, starting with a small sample to quickly test and refine the idea.

Once we've validated our hypotheses, we would need developer resources to build the platform and launch a first version of the website/app as soon as possible.

The value of your solution(s) after the crisis:

Local Seeds offers a platform that helps businesses build resilience strategies to overcome current and future crises and adapt to the new normal in the post-Covid world.

It will help them become more nimble and flexible by diversifying their product offering and revenue streams, and build the foundations and capabilities to continuously innovate and reinvent themselves.

In the long run, Local Seeds will promote a sense of belonging and shared responsibility, helping local communities thrive.

The URL to the prototype [Github, Website,...]:

https://xd.adobe.com/view/4c1aede8-d354-41d3-5721-d944925f5b21-3a2b/