24A - Venture Concept

Opportunity

What is the need?

The opportunity I’m focusing on is the problems vegetarians
and vegans have while shopping for groceries or eating out.
The FDA only requires food labels to list the ingredients in a
food, but not the ingredients within those ingredients. So, for
example, if a food product says “gelatin” not everyone may
realize that it contains animal hooves and is therefore not
vegetarian (common products that contain gelatin are Jell-O,
marshmallows, and gummy worms). Products like these may
seem vegetarian upon first glance, but actually aren’t, and
the FDA does not require food labels to specify if a product
has animal meat, broth, or parts in it. This means that
someone could be vegetarian for years and never realize a
food product they’ve been eating doesn’t meet the
qualifications of the diet. There are no existing apps that
address this problem- current food apps are aimed towards
losing weight or knowing the caloric contents of food. This
window of opportunity will be open until someone else
comes up with this idea and successfully executes it.

Who has the need?

Vegetarians and vegans. Even people who aren’t strictly
vegetarian or vegan might have this problem if they don’t
know which products may have animal parts or products in
them and they simply want to cut down on those products.
The people who have this problem tend to be people who are
new to the diet (a market that is expanding more and more
each year). This is because people who have been
plant-based for a long period of time probably won’t download
an app for it, since they probably think they already know
everything there is to know about the diet. What this market
uses currently is mostly Google to look up individual
ingredients, but this is tedious and not everyone actually
wastes time at the grocery store Googling every single
ingredient on every product they buy, so some misleading
products still end up slipping into a vegetarian or vegan’s
basket.

Innovation

My innovation is an app that would scan a QR code (with
augmented reality) on a product’s label and be able to
immediately tell a person if a product is vegetarian or vegan.

I would use a scale based on if a product has traces of animal
products in it, actual animal products in the ingredients, and
actual meat in the food. What’s considered vegetarian is a sort
of gray area (for example- is something cooked with chicken
broth considered vegetarian? There is some debate around
this), which is why I would use a scale and not a hard yes/no.

The app would also have a calendar feature to keep track of how
long you’ve been plant-based, and would also have a community
section where people can share recipes and tips on staying
plant-based.

In order to make money, I have two options that I’ve thought of that could be combined into one at a later point possibly. I would either
rely on making a deal with the grocery stores- they print the QR
codes on their products, and I put advertisements for their store in
my app- or I could just sell the app for an up-front fee of $5.00. I
think doing both would be too much, because when someone pays
for an app they generally expect it to be ad-free.

Venture Concept

My app would solve the problem I identified because a consumer
would be able to pick up an item, scan the QR code, and
immediately know whether an item fits their own personal version
of a plant-based diet. Consumers would be willing to buy my
innovation because health and food are markets that people put
money down for. Whether someone’s plant-based because of
animal cruelty, sustainability, or for health, a person who is willing
and committed to eating a plant-based diet will go to great lengths
to stick to that diet which reflects that strong personal choice. I
don’t think it would be hard for them to “switch” to this product at
all. As long as it’s in the app store it would appear under related
keywords, so the product would literally be at customers’ fingertips
and could be downloaded within minutes. My competitors are other
health apps, but their major weakness is that they don’t target
plant-based consumers. I’ve tried downloading every food app I
could find, and there seem to be two kinds: those that are based on
calorie counting and knowing the amounts of fat, carbs, etc that is in
a food item, and those that are marketed towards vegetarians but
only provide recipes (which you have to pay for). Packaging - the
graphic design of the app - would play a major role, because it
communicates worth and plays a major role in how a person
perceives a product. The other food apps on the market look juvenile
and crowded, but with a green color scheme slapped on to convey
that the app is for vegetarians. I can easily do better. Customer
support and the customer experience also play a large role in the
success or failure of an app, so I’d also have to make sure I tweak the
product a lot in beta before the official launch.

Minor Elements

My most important resource will be the rapidly-growing market of
plant-based consumers.

The next opportunity I would want to tackle is rating different foods
based on how sustainable and environmentally-friendly the product
is. This might be a companion app, or possibly a feature within the
same app. In the next five years I’d like for my app to become a
household name within the vegetarian community that becomes an
essential app for the market, with my own team of employees who
work on the bugs and make improvements to the app’s features. It
would also be amazing to be partnered with grocery stores all over
Florida so that anyone can walk into a grocery store and know that
the QR codes will be there.