FAQ
What's the problem?
Restaurants, food trucks, and pop-ups (today’s kitchens in general) face a long list of challenges: high startup costs, recurring operating expenses, staff management, ingredient availability & spoilage, food waste, excessive single-use consumables, consistent sales, changing consumer preferences, value extracting digital marketplaces, complex delivery logistics, and so on.
These challenges discourage many would-be chefs from entering the market and lead to the quick demise of many new ventures. Even established, successful restaurants have a hard time surviving in the long term. We have all experienced a previously high quality restaurant choosing to downgrade their ingredients in order to stay alive.
As consumers, the cost of these challenges are passed on to each of us. It may be directly: in terms of the rising costs of going out to eat. Or, it may be indirectly: with cheap ingredients that are lacking in nutrition, or worse, contribute to chronic health conditions.
The root of these challenges lies in “on-demand” operation (i.e. restaurants typically open during specific hours, waiting to respond to immediate consumer demand). We acknowledge people will always want to walk up to a restaurant and place an immediate order; “on-demand” kitchens will always exist.
Not all kitchens operate with immediacy. The idea of scheduling food preparation ahead of time is nothing new and “in-advance” kitchens already exist (e.g. catering – although not accessible on a daily basis). Recently, new local options are getting started (see The Minnow, PDXMealPrep), but they each reinvent the wheel to offer their services. As for promotion, no marketplace exists for their meals to be discovered.
In summary, the many challenges faced by current “on-demand” kitchens prevent new chefs from entering the market, make it difficult for existing kitchens to survive, and leave consumers paying in a number of ways. “In-advance” kitchens (which avoid some of the challenges entirely) are on the rise, but each must re-implement the logistics from scratch and lack a marketplace for discoverability.
What's the solution?
When a kitchen does not cater to immediate needs (operates “on-demand”) of consumers and instead shifts to “in-advance” operation, many of the challenges that are typically faced can be avoided altogether. To facilitate this paradigm shift, we will build infrastructure to promote an ecosystem of “in-advance” kitchen operations. This infrastructure will assist with the logistics of planning meals to be prepared at a future time, from a single day to months ahead of time.
Whereas "on-demand" kitchens operate with essentially one model (i.e. their weekly open days and hours), "in-advance" kitchens will operate within a spectrum of models ranging from very far in "in-advance" to hybrid or nearly "on-demand". Within "in-advance" there are many models including but not limited to cold, hot, crowd-funding, CSA-like subscriptions, to something as simple as a reservation (but also choosing your meal). Food Forethought will explore and experiment with the execution of different models. In operating our own and assisting others in operating a model, our aim is to learn and then then build infrastructure to support new chefs in pursuing this model as well.
The infrastructure will include but is not limited to software automation (cost estimation, ingredient purchasing, taking orders, etc), partnerships with kitchen spaces, education & training, reusable container utilization, a digital marketplace, and delivery logistics (delivery is much easier when "in-advance").
“In-advance” operations are inherently more efficient. As a chef tests a recipe, they can fine tune their process and labor costs. There are no spoiled ingredients; only what is necessary is purchased. These efficiency gains are passed down to us as consumers. For chefs, the prospect of commercially preparing a meal becomes financially more attractive.
In addition to efficiency gains, the risk to enter the market is dramatically reduced. The costs and sale price can be determined ahead of time, guaranteeing a reasonable outcome.
“On-demand” restaurants are incentivized to use their ingredients in a “first-in-first-out” manner; the least fresh ingredients are prioritized to be used in your meal. “In-advance” meals default to the freshest ingredients. Additionally, it is easier for kitchens to provide transparency of ingredients.
With a lower risk of entering the market, consumers benefit from a wider range of chefs offering meals available to them.
Chefs will no longer have a primarily singular path of opening a typical restaurant or food cart or pop-up. They will not have to reinvent the wheel to offer meals “in-advance” and their individual talents will benefit from being initially discoverable in a marketplace.
In summary, rather than addressing the challenges of “on-demand” kitchens directly — Food Forethought will seek to avoid these challenges altogether via the creation of infrastructure to support broader establishment of “in-advance” food operations.
Who?
Kitchens: - existing restaurants - commissary kitchens - private chefs - local meal kit providers - any individual with a signature dish
Consumers: - families - seniors - busy professionals - students - anyone unable to access affordable, nutritious food
Incentives
The incentives for chefs are: - increased efficiency (batch preparation, automation of purchasing & delivery logistics) - less risk (lower startup costs, no recurring operating expenses, pre-sales) - discoverability through a marketplace
The incentives for consumers are: - cost savings passed down from efficiency (directly as lower prices, indirectly as better ingredients & nutrition) - locally prepared (money stays in the community) - fresher meals (ingredients purchased right before preparation) - wider range of culinary choices
Impact Potential
The broad, long-term impact potential is massive. The first-order effects are efficiency increases and cost reduction, waste reduction, simpler logistics, etc.
Second-order effects are additional opportunities for individuals to access alternative income streams, health benefits (children not on track to developing chronic health conditions from poor diet), increased connection between cultural boundaries through food, and so on.
The underlying goal is to prove this model first in a hyper-local fashion with St. John’s and PSU as starting points. In these trials we will develop an open-source model which can be replicated to an additional specific area (e.g. Kenton). As each individual district gets established, an aggregated marketplace provides discoverability to each. The end result would be Portland as a first-of-its-kind model for local & fresh meal preparation which is organically supplied by its own wide ranging culinary citizens. In this future, the barrier for anyone to prepare food for their community and access to affordable, nutritious food are both much lower.
Food has become commoditized. The power of food to heal and the universality which crosses cultural boundaries is lacking cultivation (pun intended).