Co-Creating a New Era In Fresh Food

Redesigning the National Food Supply Chain

Client: FreshRealm

Industry: Food & Beverage, Lifestyle

Services: Consumer Research, Brand Strategy and Design, Industrial Design, Engineering

Challenge

FreshRealm, a technology start-up with a mission to make fresh food a possibility for all, wanted to create an accessible platform to connect consumers with fresh food producers and reduce the waste involved in the system. They saw that while 48 million people in the United States live in food insecure households, 40% of food grown perishes before it reaches the market. The challenge for the teams from RKS and FreshRealm was to define, design and introduce a new platform and brand that is able to ship fresh food straight from growers to consumers or business in convenient and sustainable way, ultimately reducing the wastage of perishable food.

Process

To better position the FreshRealm technology and brand, the research team analyzed the current food production and delivery ecosystem; from growers, to pickers, to shippers and consumers. Through user shadowing and interviews with key ecosystem players the research team formulated critical needs insights and challenges needed for both economic and consumer benefits. Analysis was undertaken to identify optimal shipping form factors, combined with food values, shipping times/cooling requirements, channel analysis, consumer experience, and ergonomics.

Solution

The FreshRealm Cloud is designed by FreshRealm to yield massive efficiency, make fresh food accessible everywhere while greatly reducing distribution time and the amount of food that is wasted. By connecting the food makers, food packers, food carriers, merchants and shoppers via cloud technology, FreshRealm reinvents the current distribution of food and is able to lower costs, add convenience and reduce the time to it takes to reach the consumer by 80% and increases the amount of available fresh food by 75%. FreshRealm delivers food two days after it’s made directly to people’s homes and places of work in a reusable vessel that keeps food cold at 40◦ F for 40 hours without any electricity or consumables. The cloud technology and refurbishable vessel allows geographically-distant individuals and organizations to work together for on-demand food-making and just-in-time national food delivery.

“[Upon our first meeting with RKS] the stars were all aligned. We met and it was instant connection. They got what we were trying to do.”

- Mike Lippold, CEO of FreshRealm

Learn more about this program

Traditionally, single use packaging has been used for sending food, an incredibly inefficient process that creates a tremendous amount of waste. Designed to be emptied, resealed, returned, sanitized, refurbished and reused, the FreshRealm vessel is not only is a sustainable solution, it is more economical too.

With its outstanding insulation performance as the driving feature, the reusable vessel replaces current disposable packaging methods and keeps food cold at 40^◦ F for 40 hours without any electricity, excess packaging or dry ice. This innovative vessel eliminates waste with every shipment and the more times the vessel is used, the more it benefits the entire system.

Designed to unify communities, the FreshRealm platform has developed a co-drop delivery network to allow people to place group orders in a single vessel. The modular drawer system in each vessel provides an accessible user experience in both single recipient and multi-person delivery situations.

Whether it is lunches for the office, meals for group meetings or dinner for the home, FreshRealm allows consumers to have fresh food delivered directly to wherever they are.

FreshRealm’s new food management platforms is able to seamlessly link shoppers and merchants to a national network of food suppliers, food makers and food packers. This cutting-edge solution allows geographically-distant individuals and organizations to work together for on-demand food-making and just-in-time national food delivery. Eliminating the traditional vertically integrated chain and aligning already available food production providers to the FreshRealm platform can reduce distribution time from the ten day product lifecycle, which the current food industry is designed for, into a two day system.

By only shipping food when it’s ordered, the FreshRealm platform removes the false demand that requires retailers to over-order. Instead of always having too much or too little capacity, FreshRealm and its partners utilize and pay for just the amount of capacity that is needed.

Redesigning the National Food Supply Chain

Challenge

Process

Solution

“[Upon our first meeting with RKS] the stars were all aligned. We met and it was instant connection. They got what we were trying to do.”

Re-sealable, Returnable and Refurbishable Solution

Crowd Sourced Co-Drop Delivery Network

Food Management Platforms via the Cloud

Redesigning the National Food Supply Chain

Challenge

Process

Solution

“[Upon our first meeting with RKS] the stars were all aligned. We met and it was instant connection. They got what we were trying to do.”

Re-sealable, Returnable and Refurbishable Solution

Crowd Sourced Co-Drop Delivery Network

Food Management Platforms via the Cloud

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