Hi all!

A few ridealongs later, Soraya and I finally felt ready to start drafting possible solutions that we could work towards in the remaining semester.

These are the opportunities we’ve observed at Food for Free:
1. More brand associations
2. Greater involvement from the donor agencies
3. Advanced communications between drivers and food recipients
4. Getting drivers’ buy-in to change
5. Technological solutions that alleviate workload (as opposed to adding)
6. More strategic with donor partnerships

Of the above, we decided we could tackle opportunities #1, #2, and #3.

Opportunity #1 or increasing branding should be relatively low effort, so we are not too concerned over that.

Opportunity #2 or raising donor involvement, however, may be more difficult, given donors are decentralized with their own processes. We are going to study the operational process of the best donor, a Trader Joe’s in Cambridge. From there, we will put together best practices and process flows that can be shared with other donors. Additional aspects to this would be assigning a point-person for accountability at each donor site and to more strongly communicate end-user impact to these donors.

Lastly, we foresee moderate level of effort with Opportunity #3 or adding advanced communications with partners. We will be looking into texting solutions so drivers can easily notify recipients prior to arrival. We would like to include drivers at every stage of the design so maximize buy-in of the new technology.

More to come next week on our progress!

Cindy and Soraya