The Factual:

When conducting my expert interview, I spoke with Sarah McWhorter. She is the Customer Development Manager at Farmer’s Fridge. I reached out to a few employees on Linkedin as well as contacting Farmer’s Fridge through their information email. Sarah contacted me through the information email address. I asked Sarah three questions. The first question was, “How was the process of expanding your deliveries into multiple states?” In short, she said that getting the food from Chicago to other states overnight every day is difficult to manage. She described that a very detailed point of sales system had to be created to make a schedule that ensures the right food will end up in the right vending machines. She said the system provides them with lots of useful insights to make sure food isn’t being wasted and that their customers are getting the products that they want. My second question was, “What are some problems you face when figuring out how to replace and donate the food left in the fridges?” She said that maintaining a strict delivery schedule is the biggest issue they deal with. She said since the kitchen is in Chicago dealing with issues like weather and absent workers it makes the situation increasingly more complicated. She described the scenario they would be in without their schedule as a “snowball effect of complaints.” She again brought up their point of sales system as being a key factor in maintaining their schedule. My follow-up question was “Was it always in the company’s plan to donate the unsold food?” She said no, the original plan was to use their systems to keep food waste as close to zero as possible. However, they quickly realized that was not going to be possible so they needed to figure out another solution. Donating the food lined up well with the company’s mission so the process of incorporating it was met without many rebuttals. She did say that the process wasn’t easy because they had to come up with a whole extra step in their delivery routine, this increased their labor costs. My final question was “Why are you not targeting the college student market as much as the hospital and office space market?” She said that the process of gaining territory on college campuses is tied up in more red tape than the other types of establishments they are located in. Schools are also much more concerned with quality standards than other establishments. Even though Sarah is confident in Farmer’s Fridge’s standards some school administrations feared that one bad salad could cause a lot more upset than what it is worth. She also noted that in colleges where meal plans are popular they do not do as well because compared to the lunch the school gives the students, Farmer’s Fridge is more expensive.

The Reflective:

For the first question, I was glad to hear that my suspicions were confirmed about this part of their operations and that it was as difficult as I imagined. My head immediately went into thinking about how a system like that is even created and how many people it would take to build it. For the second question I was shocked I didn’t think about weather as an issue, it seemed so obvious and I was happy that I know now that I have to take that into account. I wished I could’ve asked if they had missed that in their original planning too. Unfortunately, Sarah explained to me at the beginning of the interview that the company is in “hyper-growth mode” and they did not have a lot of bandwidth to spare so our conversation had to be short. I was able to squeeze in one follow-up question and I was glad I did because her answer was not what I was expecting to hear! I had read an article while doing my competitive analysis where the CEO stated that one of the company’s beliefs is that every person has a right to eat fresh and healthy food. So, when she said they originally did not plan on donating what was left I was definitely a little shocked. However, once I let her continue it made a lot of sense why they didn’t. Finally, the last question cleared up a lot of the questions I had about Farmer’s Fridge on college campuses. I hadn’t really thought about the differences between undergraduates across different types of campuses because I was only focusing on Baruch. It made me sad to hear that some schools didn’t believe in Farmer’s Fridge’s ability to handle food safety but it helped me realize that it is okay if a product is not for everyone.

The Next Step:

The first question helped me confirm that I want to keep my business as local to NYC as possible with some expansion into Long Island. I know that as a company grows you want to keep up with that growth by expanding but I could tell when I brought it up that it seemed like a big stressor for her. I think I could deliver a better product more reliably if I continue to focus my efforts locally. The second question also confirmed my belief about staying local because I know that I do not have the ability to create a point of sales system as intricate as that. I would need to hire help and that would be a huge overhead cost for me. If I keep things small in the beginning I can take time to save money and get a good feel for what I will need from the system before jumping headfirst into programming it. The last question made me realize a few things. One, that this idea is really going to succeed mostly on commuter campuses. Fortunately for me, NYC has an incredible selection of these types of schools to pick from. And two, that I will need a very convincing plan to make college administration boards listen to me. I think that if I use my angle of being a NYC college student myself that I could convince them of the need for a product like this on campus. I think this expert interview goes to show that the student response survey makes sense, students at commuter colleges (aka Baruch) will see value in my product. For my next step, I definitely need to get in touch with the Baruch administration to figure out how the process of getting a vending machine on campus works.