Liah Castillo
Foodsavour
Through a team of three in SFU's entrepreneurship Start-up Experience course, Foodsavour: a mobile app that can keep track of a household's food inventory while discouraging food waste by linking each item with its financial value, was created. The purpose of this app was to reduce food waste, a major drain on environmental resources. It provided an easy to use tool for individuals or households to organize their groceries and meals.
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SFU’s Start-up Experience course is comprehensive and requires the application of all the core business courses' concepts through the creation of a business idea. It requires students to enter a showcase competition called the Opportunity Fest where industry professionals and investors would judge business concepts created by the students. Foodsavour was granted the Triple Bottom Line Grand Prize. Learn more at the Awards and Impact section.
USER EXPERIENCE/ USER INTERFACE (2019)
Project
Tools:
ADOBE | Photoshop, Illustrator
AXURE | UX/UI
UX/UI: Foodsavour
Awards & Impact
Against more than 50 other competitors, Foodsavour won the Triple Bottom Line grand prize, with the business concept benefitting the people and planet while sustainably generating profit. Along with winning the award during the showcase, the project was awarded the highest grade in SFU's Entrepreneurship Start-up Experience class of Spring, 2019.
- Matt Cooper, Foodsavour teammate
"I had the wonderful opportunity to work with Liah Castillo in BUS477: Startup Experience at Simon Fraser University in 2019. We collaborated on a group project called ‘Foodsavour’, a mobile application that allowed users to reduce food waste by tracking their food inventory. During the creation of Foodsavour, Liah was a natural leader and displayed strong project management skills. From the very beginning, she always took initiative, and she was largely responsible for our success in the course. Liah scheduled and ran most of our meetings, set deadlines for small tasks and major milestones, and her talents really shined through all the creative and design work she executed. Her eagerness to excel allowed Foodsavour to win the Triple P Aware (People, Planet, Profit) at Oppfest, SFU’s largest showcase of student entrepreneurship projects."
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Challenges & Solutions
Why a mobile app?
​Various potential solutions to reduce food waste have been assessed for effectiveness:
No other food waste solution utilizes a freemium business strategy, tracks food expiry, suggests recipes, and encourages grocery organization like Foodsavour. These features combined are necessary for ease of use, allowing a large number of users, and in turn, encourage more relevant grocery ad revenue while reducing overall food waste. Learn more in the business model section.
For the prototype mobile app, what would be an effective user flow to encourage frequent and regular app use while tracking food related activities?
Commonly used functionalities that aid in food procurement, preparation, and consumption was incorporated . By combining all the tasks in one application, seamless planning, inventory management, and tracking is feasible.
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Food Planning
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Grocery list creator
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Meal plan calendar
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Recipe plugins
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Grocery Shopping
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Deals and promos from nearby grocery stores ​
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Inventory Management
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Filters to allow for different sorting arrangements like: food type, expiry date, recipe presets, etc.
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Tracking of perishables with push notifications to let user know when certain foods are expiring
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Easy swiping function to confirm consumption of food and removal from inventory
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Prompts to donate to foodbanks with unconsumed food with maps of nearby locations included
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Challenge
Solution
​Foodsavour’s brand was portrayed in a way that conveys approachability and friendliness, emphasizing its purpose to help the users by saving their money and reducing food waste.
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An approachable and simple but clean design was incorporated for ease of use without looking ostentatious or expensive.
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With color psychology, shades of green were used to communicate:
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A Connection to nature and money
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Fresh produce
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Using high resolution photos of fresh produce and food would create a welcoming impression, invoking the feeling of anticipation when one is about to indulge on a delicious meal
Solution
Challenge
For branding, what would be an effective marketing plan to communicate what Foodsavour is, with the initial target audiences being young adults and small households?
Process
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Group formation
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Business concept ideation
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Research 1st phase
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1st Pivot
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Research 2nd phase
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2nd Pivot
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Research 3rd phase
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Business concept refinement
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Business concept finalization
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Business Model Canvas 1st draft
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Branding brainstorming
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Business concept proposal presentation
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Industry expert interviews
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Target market interviews
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Business Model Canvas 2nd draft
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Prototype creation
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Promotional video creation
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Opportunity Fest Competition Showcase
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Final business concept presentation with final business model canvas draft
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Project Completion
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Excerpt from a team meeting sketch of Foodsavour's interface flow
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Excerpt from the showcase film's storyboard