Inspiration
THE IDEA: August 2020, a frustrating holiday in Italy as vegans leads to our idea of a 100% vegan e-commerce platform to promote and facilitate the sale of plant-based alternatives (meats, cheese, etc.) to retailers across Switzerland.
THE PROBLEM: Locally, we have found that restaurants have few or no dishes with plant-based alternatives in spite of a rapidly growing community of environmentally and sustainability-conscious consumers. Not only does this limit restaurants' client base, it indirectly excludes vegans and other individuals who are trying to eat a more plant-based diet for reasons related to health, animal welfare, the environment, or, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic.
What it does
THE SOLUTION: We propose to fill this gap by connecting vegan food manufacturers (primarily small and medium-sized) with Swiss retailers (cafés/restaurants/supermarkets) via an e-commerce type platform, thus facilitating efficient and cost-effective transactions and distribution of plant-based alternatives to the end consumers.
How we built it
We seek your help to build a website! Promotion of the benefits of a plant-based diet, e.g. through sustainability scores of food products. Contribute to the global fight against climate change and loss of biodiversity by reducing carbon emissions resulting from meat and dairy consumption.
Challenges we ran into
Seeking to find founding team members who are vegan themselves Language barrier (Switzerland is divided into French, Swiss-German and Italian speaking regions)
Accomplishments that we're proud of
In August 2020, we participated in PIRATE Live 2020, a virtual event bringing together start-ups, entrepreneur enthusiasts and leaders in digital innovation. In September 2020, we conducted a food habits survey among the Swiss population (vegans and non-vegans) to measure the appetite for our start-up idea. From August onwards, we have been reaching out to and connecting with potential business partners and clients about our start-up plans.
What we learned
We're still learning many things around entrepreneurship and food-tech business eco-systems.
What's next for PlantVita
Launching our e-commerce platform; Capturing upstream value; organising events for retailers and end consumers to promote the products of the vegan food manufacturers; creating our own plant-based alternatives based on jackfruit/seitan, for example; starting a "foundation of the month" sponsorship programme.
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