1. Competitors are pre-made meals like Katie’s Plates, Nourish Foods, Fresh n Lean , and the Caf; Meal Prep services like Hello Fresh and Blue Apron; Vending Machines like Healthy You and Fresh Healthy; and Food delivery services like DoorDash, Waitr, GrubHub, and Uber Eats.
2. We will specifically provide college students with healthy, fresh food at a convenience by having partnerships with local farmers, grocery stores, and restaurants. One way to mitigate food cost would be to utilize the unwanted food that the supermarkets don't want. Problems would arise when considering regulations regarding food waste as a sellable good. Many college students may not want to eat unwanted food, either. I think we should focus on sourcing produce from local establishments. I do believe we can eliminate food waste by giving unpurchased food from our vending machines to a local homeless shelter or back to farmers for compost. This would be attractive to consumers that are conscious about the food waste problems.
3. Providing healthier options and a refrigerated vending machine. The options can differentiate between different tastes, meal preference, and style (Mexican food, granola bars, etc.)
4. Ours is both a product a service. We would provide food to students and the homeless while delivering food to different vending machines and homeless shelters. I think we could focus on either just the product (healthy, packaged food to-go) or both the product and service.
5. We will solve the problem by providing a refrigerated vending machine that keeps the food fresh, healthy food that is derived and dispersed locally to build a stronger closed-loop system, and address hunger/nutritional deficits in low income communities.
6. The shelf life of food, Conditions for placing the vending machines on campuses and their routine maintenance, and guidelines for getting unwanted food from stores and restaurants