First vends made!

Wow! - Today I witnessed the first few people actually buy product from our final proof-of-concept machine.

Ian Rowling, the brains behind the scenes has completed all the integration tasks that were required to upgrade our interface screen to full colour and touch-screen functionality, re-tested all the system components and got the demo systems up and running...

..so we have started a live trial. We are aiming to simulate the placement of a machine in an office environment with regualr customers using it.

And the initial feedback has been very encouraging.

The (almost) free lunches
Around 30 people from local businesses around our workshops in Shoreham are now visiting daily to buy product (as supplied by our partner company Nibbles) and try the machine out for themselves.

The trial will run for about a week, and enable us to identify and iron-out any final bugs or interface issues that the public find or feedback to us about. We are actively encouraging feedback through a feedback form and discussions with each user as follows:
> Each user has been shown the machine, then left to pay for and purchase the products each day themselves.
> Each purchaser is given a feedback form for each time they use the machine, which they have to complete and return as a receipt.
> Purchaser eats product.
> Purchaser completes form - we are seeking to capture any and all feedback about the machine, the interface, the experience itself and the products bought.
> At the end of the trial period, we repay the monies spent to each user as a thank you for taking part.

Then we will collate all the data about the trial from our remote interrogation of the machine and build a picture of the times that people used the machine (helpful for knowing when is best to refill it), the condition of each product (how long it was in the machine and time of vend), the temperature of the machine at all times and the money taken.

We can then map this against the data received via the feedback forms to ensure that we have accuracy and continuity.

We will also have a list of things that we may need to attend to before our first placements are made (scheduled for early next month).

If you are taking part in the trial, thank you! and please feel free to feedback below!

How was it for you?

Promoting Healthy Eating at Work

Here's a great downloadadable booklet on how to promote healthy eating in the workplace. Of course, you could request a Go4Fresh machine and sit back and watch as your staff enjoy the fruits (and other healthy snacks!) of your efforts!

This was found on the Health Promotion Agency website.

Snacking trends research

This research paper from the International Dairy-Deli-Bakery Association provides further compelling insight into consumer demand for fresh, healthy food. This research revealed which snacks are selected, when and where they are eaten, and how those choices are made by the consumer.

Key findings from this paper that point to our Go4Fresh healthy food retailing opportunity being an ideal platform to deliver what the consumer wants include:

A healthy demand: Healthier snacks are in high demand as consumers today are very interested in products lower in fat, trans fats, and calories.
(With our machines, the consumer can choose their snack on calorific, fat or ingredient content)

Snacks take on new meaning: Having broadened their view of snacks beyond such items as chips, cookies, and crackers, consumers today are more likely to consider any small portion of food as a potential snacking candidate. Retailers, however, have not caught up to this new consumer thinking (while only 20% of consumers today define snacks traditionally, 40% of retailers still do so). This perceptual gap separating retailers and their customers is alarming — an indication that, as a group, retailers do not fully recognize their competition within the snack market.

Convenience is king: Busier lifestyles have led to an increased demand for convenient snacks — those that are easy to access, easy to prepare, easy to eat, and easy to clean up.
(You cant get much easier than healthy food provided in your workplace, with biodegradable packaging, too)

Eating several small meals a day: One of the greatest opportunities for the snack market — and one that directly addresses the health concerns that have triggered a decline in consumption — is to position snacks as part of a healthy diet of eating several small meals a day.
(With our machine, the retailer can cost-effectively and safely vend healthy foods, anytime)

The Perfect Snack: Consumers define the ideal snack as one that is healthy, tastes sinful, and is convenient in all aspects. This "holy grail" definition of snacks, though perhaps difficult to produce against, is insightful because it is constructed directly from consumer testimony. In other words, consumers know what they want and are very clear in expressing it. The question is, which companies will be able to meet this demand most effectively?
(And how are they going to vend it without the Go4Fresh system?!)

Compelling stuff, eh!?

Food Safety Week - starts June 9th!

Promoted and supported by the Food Standards Agency, next week is Food Safety Week.

How good of them to coincide it with our official launch this Friday!

Listen up, food brands!

As this News story from Brand Channel reveals, pressure from consumers demanding fresh and healthy food, rather than food packaged as simply "good for you" is on the increase, and the big food brands are starting to address the challenge; of resistance through purely delivering a branded product.

Consumers want more - they want assurance that the food they buy is genuinely, reliably healthy and good for them. No confusion, no hidden ingredients, just facts.

Not that Ian (Our founder and technical whizz) has been saying anything different since he started the Go4Fresh development project! That's why our machines are not only stocked with only top quality fresh food (obviously!) but they also display the nutritional content and even calorific values of every product on the selection screen - we know consumers have a choice and, more importantly, an increasing voice.

What's your take? Would you choose to buy fresh, healthy, BRANDED food over an unbranded offering, or has your trust in the major brands weakened?

(photo credit> bingbing)

Healthy eating initiative for local businesses

Last night I attended the "Crawley Business Debate"; an event organised by Crawley Borough Council and indeed it was a lively debate with a good deal of interraction between the range of business and council representatives present. Hosted by Jeremy Taylor of CADIA (the voice of businesses in the Gatwick Diamond), it certainly had the right ingredients.

What was very interesting and had me sitting on my hands for fear of leaping up to have my say, was the recurrent issues of feeding and servicing employees in Manor Royal (and other business areas), the abhorrance of reliance on a burger van visiting, and the key factors of traffic on the crowded roads in the area; over 31,000 people travel into the Crawley area each day to work and 86,000 work in total!

Indeed, Easit (who are also featured at the Polishing the Diamond event next week) got several namechecks regarding their lift-sharing system during the debate, and I feel that Go4Fresh should have equal prominence!

Of course, with Go4Fresh's proposition we can address many of the issues that arose:

• Our machines can be filled once a day, outside of normal traffic hours
• we deliver safe and healthy food at any time of day
• we remove the need for staff to drive into town (its too far to sensibly walk from say, Manor Royal)
• all the packaging (of Nibbles' products) is 100% biodegradeable and we can even collect it all

..so I waited until the end of the debate and took my opportunity to collar the Council members!

Many of the council members should now be attending the Polishing the Diamond Event next Friday, at which we obviously feature and will launch, so they should get a really good handle on what we are about, but what I am hoping for (and I told them this) is be some backing and support from the Council to promote the facility that we offer. This would help us (in the same way as it has Easit) get in front of the bigger businesses around the Crawley area, and perhaps more importantly, to promote to the 86,000 workers the fact that there is a means of having accessible, healthy, short shelf-life foods in their workplace - to create a buzz and build the demand from the consumer end.

Help please, Crawley Council!

Food Makers turn to healthy food

At Go4Fresh we are obviously keen on healthy food initiatives, so it is interesting and encouraging to see this post in Reuters today. (thanks @MikeAshworth for the pointer!).

Although the aims of these major brands in this instance appears to be to bolster food prices in a pressured economic situation through delivering percieved extra value, the underlying stats make interesting reading and it all adds further weight to our findings for a demand for healthier food AND for a means of delivering it.

The bottom line from the report is that consumers will generally pay more for a better quality product when times are tough.

To quote the report - “The emergence of so-called health and wellness foods with lower fat, sugar and salt are aimed at keeping consumers buying premium brands even amid the escalating credit crisis, high fuel prices and housing meltdown.”

Some major brands are quoted in the Reuters report and indicate:

• Kraft Foods reported that its “better for you” foods are growing two to three times faster than its other food lines. According to Kraft North America President Rick Searer: “Health and wellness is a priority.”
• In the U.K. Unilever indicated that it has been “cutting out fats, sugars and salt from foods as a way to bolster its health and wellness lines”. Bauke Rower, Senior VP of Foods for the Americas says “The long-term trend towards better food and people looking after themselves is here to stay.”
• France’s Danone cited that the health benefits of its recent introductions of two probiotic products with live bacteria should mean “strong revenue growth.” Even with two price hikes since last August, Danone Chief Executive Juan Carlos Dalto: “We are very optimistic we will see nice double-digit growth in the years ahead in North America.” Even though these two products cost 10-30% more than other yogurts.

I welcome your feedback on this:
> Do you look at pricing first when considering a healthy option?
> Do you think this is just brands seeking to exploit a new opportunity, or are they fulfilling a need?
> What pressures are on you to choose the "healthy option"?
> What constitutes a healthy option to you and where does "freshness" come into consideration, if at all?

Update on funding and progress..

Having built my two initial businesses a long while ago from only a handful of coins and sweat, I had never fully appreciated how much effort and the challenges that are involved to get an innovative idea and turn it into a fully-funded start-up... but I am on a new and exciting learning curve!

When I got involved in Go4Fresh, we needed a small amount of working capital to build the first batch of machines, and had applied to a government funded body for this "friendly" investment. That may not be the correct terminology, but since start-up investment (made famous by TV's Dragons Den) often means parting company with a large chunk of the equity of the business, and this doesnt, then to me it's friendly! That funding has taken since at least last November to get close to realising and, since it is essential for us to buy the components to make the initial batch, our launch date has slowly slipped away.

And so it was that today, after a long, long journey, and an application form that's been back and forth across the internet between us so much that it has its own Airmiles account, we (and Colin, our superb supporter and mentor from the Gatwick Diamond Hub) found ourselves sat with Zoe and Martin from Finance South East for them to quiz us on final queries and details from our funding application.

And it seemed to go well. Very well in fact. The "concerns" pile didnt last long and we had no trouble backing up the information they had received, then we swiftly moved on to how we would be using the money and where the development may continue in the future, and had a good, healthy meeting culminating in the enjoying of some of our fresh food delivery partner company's excellent sandwiches - Thanks Nibbles!

In all, it was a really good meeting and at the end Zoe and Martin advised us that they are recommending us for the final consideration, at the panel on the 28th of May - Hurrah!

What many may not realise is that, in addition to completing the development work on the batch of production machines (by using an outside contractor we are "productionising" the units so that they can be made as cost-effectively as possible, redesigning to use standard components where possible), negotiating with sites, partners and suppliers, developing the branding, the marketing and new opportunities, we are also having multiple meetings, comversations and reviews to business plans to try and make everything as watertight as possible to attract that all-important external funding.

It's hectic!!

So, fingers crossed for us on the 28th, please!

That's incredibly close to our launch date of the 6th June, so we may have to work some wonders to get our production units actually made by soon after that date, but I have some ideas... and the sooner some machines hit the ground (well, offices, hospitals etc) , the sooner we start to earn some revenue!

Go4Fresh launch countdown

Take one dedicated inventor, one open-minded accountant, several experienced vending and fresh food specialists, a fair smattering of support and guidance from a business development team, blend and brew for several years, then add one entrepreneur and you pretty much have the ingredients to Go4Fresh.

A very fresh approach to the often stale and fusty world of vending.

What do you think of when confronted with the term "vending machine"? A large, characterless, metal box that takes your money (if someone's little treasure hasnt jammed it up or kicked it in), then may, or may not, allow one of its guarded "treasures" to drop mercilessly into a perspex-flapped tray at your feet?

You can buy all sorts of chocolate bars, fizzy drinks and overpriced water from these machines, but rarely can you buy anything actually healthy, can you?

Healthy, as in "made with fresh ingredients within the past 48 hours"?

Healthy, as in "no added nasties or preservatives"?

Healthy, as in "stored, delivered and monitored at a constant temperature"?

And that's because its complicated.

Complicated generally means expensive, and in the past that was good enough reason not to sell it to us poor public. However, now consumers have found a voice and the demand for healthy food is increasing rapidly.

However, at Go4Fresh we've developed a clever, yet simple to use and maintain machine that can be accessed and interrogated remotely. It's fully temperature controlled, knows exactly what sandwich, pasta salad, sushi, fruit salad or whatever other healthy item is in each and every chilled compartment, how long it has been there and what the exact contents (physically and calorific) of each one are.

Giving you, the consumer, great food, in great condition 24 hours a day.

Medium to large firms, hospitals, colleges and the like will be able to provide a source of monitored and healthy fresh foodstuffs to their employees at no risk or cost.

Now, the team at Go4Fresh are putting the finishing touches to the first production machines ready for a major launch in Crawley in June and we've started this blog to share the experience.

If you have a view on healthy food, you want it in your office, or want to find out more, please
comment on here and we will feedback to you. There'll be a website shortly, but since this is where we'll talk about the development of the company, you'll find out about it here first!

Cheers! - from all at Go4Fresh.