foodtree blog

Earlier this month our team went through the first of three consultation sessions with Climate Smart.  

Climate Smart's consultation sessions are focused on ways that we as a company might ensure that we run an environmentally responsible business, even as a young company.  It's a process in which you learn to measure, reduce, and leverage the impact your company has on green house gases.  Interestingly, we share our track with a shipping business, government agencies, a team from Whole Foods, and a multi-generation umbrella store (among others).

We don't want to get into too much detail here, but the basic concept is that your company is burning fuel.  It's probably also buying fuel and electricity. On top of that, your suppliers, employees, and customers are creating carbon impact which you may or may not have some influence over.

These sessions give you the tools you need to take an account of your carbon footprint and how you might implement processes to ensure that footprint shrinks or remains neutral.  

As a startup, we thought it might be useful to share our perspective on this exercise as it relates to other young companies.  Startups have unique advantages when it comes to being environmentally responsible.

It Is Still So Simple

If you're a young company, you don't have a lot of complexity in your business environment.  While other companies are navigating their respective departments or wondering how their employee car lease program works, we know every inch of our business top to bottom.

Practices Are Developing

The biggest advantage you have as a young company is the ability to shape your business processes.  In an older company, you face challenges when it comes to changing the way people behave, or a company process functions.  In a startup, you're generally still building those methods and can do so mindfully.  

For example, it's easier for a startup to digitize their record-keeping, or to change suppliers.

Measurements Are New

As a startup you generally decide what you're going to measure as it relates to the outcomes you're looking for.  

This isn't just financial accounting we're talking about.  This is the KPI's you decide to watch as you iterate your product.  As you're building those metrics into your business you can easily add carbon footprint measurements to the list, and track them from the very beginning.

Decisions Are Ahead

The process of putting climate metrics into your company measurements is that it will condition the company to make responsible decisions going forward.  As a startup, most of your decisions are ahead of you.

This means that when you decide on travel arrangements, or new office space, or you upgrade your servers, you do so mindful of your commitment to the environment.

Hiring Gets Easier

This is something we'll be watching as time passes, but we're convinced that people want to work for responsible companies.  

We saw this at our ClimateSmart session, as a handful of people there had volunteered so they could educate their department heads or colleagues.  Many were hoping to initiate climate smart practices at their firms...as opposed to top-down initiatives the movement was coming from within.

Going forward we think an increasing chunk of the workforce will want to work for companies that take their commitment to the environment seriously.  Startups need to hire to scale, and this is another way to attract top talent.  (As a sidenote, we're hiring.)

Conclusion

We are a third of the way through our climate training, and will continue to share the experience here.  

We'd love to hear from you...is your company paying attention to the climate?  How are they improving their impact?  Are there any other startups out there who are trying to measure this stuff right away?

Earlier today our CEO, Anthony Nicalo, posted on his blog regarding our desire to bring more team members on board.  We're very excited about the next release of our platform, and we want to bring motivated and talented people on board who will help us continue to improve it.

There's more info over here, so get in touch if you or someone you know would be a great fit!

Want to be part of the solution? Foodtree is currently hiring whipsmart database and Rails wizards to join our small team. We're in an early phase, so there is an opportunity to share the risks and rewards. We want more people like us, who care more about fixing our food system than a guaranteed paycheck. Email me (anthony at foodtree.com) if you are interested.

Here at Foodtree, we've been doing a lot of thinking about local food markets.

The primary spot that most eaters encounter the people actually producing their food is at the local farmers market.  In recent years, farmers markets have become increasingly popular, with more than 5,200 in the US at last count.  In Canada, estimated sales in 2009 topped a billion dollars.  That's billion with a "B"!

Just last week Tara Mc-Donald, executive director of the Vancouver Farmers Markets, had this to say:

"We can't create farmers markets fast enough, there are waiting lists of farmers who want to get in, but we don't have enough space at any of our markets to put them all," said Tara Mc-Donald, executive director of Vancouver Farmers Markets, which runs the city's four established markets. "We are seeing upwards of 12,000 people a week." [link]

That's a sentiment popping up everywhere, and yet meaningful connections with the proprietors at these markets is pretty tough to pull off once you've left the market.  Just look at the Vancouver Farmer's Market online directory...not a single street address is listed and there's room for a phone number or a website, but not both.

With just minutes of research, we know that many of our local vendors have street addresses, phone numbers, and websites, and in many cases they even have facebook pages and twitter accounts.  Every one of those details is a way for eaters and producers to share feedback, answer questions, and remain loyal to one another.   

All over North America, the same problem exists.  The most basic directory information for our very best food producers is very difficult to find, and even harder to use for things like shopping lists, recipes, or sharing within a community.

So we're starting at home, and we're going to solve this problem.

This is why we set up an open collection spreadsheet for the Vancouver farmers markets, and sent along this tweet last week:

If you're in the Vancouver area, feel free to pitch in.  Lots of what we're looking for will turn up in Google, via vendor web pages and larger food directories.  Some of it isn't available or doesn't exist, and that's fine too.  Entering "N/A" into a spot on the spreadsheet is perfectly acceptable.

Are you a food producer serving the Vancouver markets?  Make sure your information is accurate!

Here's the thing; we'll happily do this ourselves.  We think a decent list of the local farmers market vendors is something a community should have.  

Making the collection effort public seemed to be a fun way to bring everyone together on this, and to allow those of you who were just at the market to give a little back to the vendors who smiled and shook your hand.  

Thoughts?  Comments?  

If you're in another city, we're planning our next few projects, so let us know where you are and we'll try to include you!

Two Friday's ago, we asked our community to have a little fun with us.  It was spur of the moment...I felt like sending food to a few of the wonderful people who were following our twitter account.  I tweeted the following:

Without even mentioning a specific prize, in a few short hours our followers had retweeted and recommended us over and over.  We crossed the six hundred mark easily.  What I found most compelling was that it wasn't a handout spree; the people who started following us all seemed (and continue to be) interested in food and our relationship with it. 

As promised, the next day I used a random follower tool (twitrand, if interested) to pick out two lucky winners from our community:

After all the fun I had, I'm wondering if we should make small food giveaways a regular thing?  We spend a lot of time here researching local food systems, and this could be a fun way to introduce you to the food being made near you. 

What do you think? 

I wanted to drop in and reach out to the community to explain some of the things we are going to do so that you guys can start participating right away.

We're building foodtree to help everyone find food that makes them happy. We're building it so that the people growing, raising, or catching our food and drink have a great way to share their hard work with citizens. Simply throwing up a website that acts like a phone book for farmers wouldn't accomplish these goals very well, right?

via flickr.com

The first thing we've got for you is a bit of a photo movement. It's simple, really. When you're out and about shopping for food, wine, coffee, or anything you'll be consuming, take two seconds to look at the labels surrounding you. Especially look at the ones you see on whole foods; fruit, vegetables, meats, and the rest.

Then pull out your phone and snap a photo.

After that, put it on Flickr and tag it with "foodtree". If you're using an App that let's you geotag the photo (that means you can tag specific locational data to a photo - this kind of functionality is still a bit rare on most phones) we'd encourage you to do that too.

We're going to do some pretty cool stuff with these photos. For now, it's a way for anyone who likes the idea of knowing more about their food to immediately start participating in the effort to make finding that kind of information super easy.

If you don't have a Flickr account, grab one here (they're free, and a great way to manage your online photos). Did you know you can email your photos to Flickr?

And hey, while you're at it, join the foodtree Flickr group!

- Derek

I emailed the designer of our awesome new logo to see if she could hook up a business card design.

Appropriately, she asked about the timeline (we're a startup, yesterday would be great) and whether we wanted a standard, nice business card or something more outstanding, something she would have to concept and design.

Knowing that concept and design was my answer I sought out a bit of explanation. My message:

I'm doing this crazy thing this year where I only eat and drink things that I know the origin of...and I can't stop thinking about social science research into happiness and the importance of connection. Humans as social beings. And the connection between the pleasures of the table, i.e. food and further linkages to origins and context. The best and most memorable meals for me have always been the ones that were fully shared. Not only sharing around a table, but shared knowledge and understanding. Remember the fish you caught or the wine you sipped with the winemaker or the potatoes from your grandfather's garden? Those things made you happy. Those foods tasted better because you knew something about their origins.

The discussion of happiness and social connection/ relationships also makes me think about the genealogy references with foodtree.

I don't have a succinct way of communicating this yet, but I can't get Bobby McFerrin out of my head and I'm thinking of the problems with food safety and the importance of transparency to trust and I end up at "foodtree. don't worry, eat happy."

So, um, yes, please. Concept and design a nice business card.

What do you think? Does "don't worry, eat happy" resonate with you? Either way, you should watch this video. I hadn't seen it before and it's awesome.

Bobby McFerrin - Don't Worry Be Happy

- Anthony

UPDATE: Here's the story in TechVibes http://bit.ly/8D7x34

The project that's become foodtree has been in the works for a very long time, but we're getting near the point at which it will be helpful to have an outlet to communicate our thoughts on the process of getting a company off the ground.  This'll be it for the time being.

Foodtree is Anthony, Shelly, and Derek, and we're in three different areas of the continent.  The project and company took root with Anthony in Vancouver, British Columbia.  Derek's in Chicago, and Shelly's in Washington DC, so our success could turn out to be a nice reflection of what's possible these days with the help of technology.  We can shrink this world into rich, useful conversations that feel as if they're happening in person.  The ability to collaborate across time zones is remarkable.

Stay tuned for talk of food, technology, collaboration, and business building!