No other food related service has been so publicly and strongly criticized as fast food…and for good reasons. If you have been living under a rock for the last decade or so maybe you have missed the powerful arguments that Schlosser, Pollan, Kenner, Spurlock and many others have put forward to the general public about how unhealthy and unsustainable fast food really is.
Despite some of the menu changes implemented lately, fast food is still far from achieving a balanced people-planet-profit equation. Some might argue that the whole fast food model is so irreparably far from what healthy sustainable eating is, that we would be better off without McDo + friends altogether. The truth is though, these businesses offer something consumers can’t find anywhere else: affordable, quick, portable and tasty food (too salty I know but still). So what to do? The guys behind The Spoke say: don’t fight it, learn from it! Recognizing these major -pluses- is what inspired them to reinvent fast food in a way that it becomes a true win for everyone.
The Spoke i
s a community driven fast food ride-thru restaurant. They offer healthy food in a transparent and locally interactive way. The menu is developed in participation with the consumers, as they can suggest recipes and give feedback on the current food offer. The kitchen is visible and there is actual people taking your order. It’s a friendly model that allows communities to act together in shaping local fast food. How great is that!? Check them out!
This project came about after winning a competition hosted by Yoxi, a new platform for social innovation (so many cool things happening right?) and it shows just how powerful open-source innovation and social entrepreneurship can be if this initiatives find the right support.
So there you go…fast food reinvented!
*Logo taken from: http://thespoketogo.com/images/the_spoke_logo.png
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I bet there are a bunch of ‘healthy fast foods’ popping up out there.
I ate at one with a Couchsurfing buddy outside of Santa Fe, Real Food Nation: http://realfoodnation.biz/?page_id=13 . Of course, it’s right outside the largest passive solar housing community in the States, so I think they have a ready customer base …
The place looks like it could be a McDonald’s, but with darker windows and more flowers and just generally more ‘goodness’ emanating from within … for example, there is a drive-through, but the menu is handwritten in colourful chalk …
In a couple of the young bike-ster cities, I’ve also seen some bike-up bars/cafes … I loved one that stuck a tire pump out the doggy-door for anyone to use.
Hey, that is pretty cool! Yeah, there are some great projects out there! Like Max, a Swedish fast food chain, that has made super intresting changes. They also look pretty much like your average fast food restaurant but they include the carbon footprint of each burger on the menu, they only use wind power and they offset their emissions! The food is also pretty good, they use fresh, gmo-free ingredients and the taste is great.
http://www.max.se/en/default.aspx
So, yuuuumm for fast food 2.0!
Yes! We need this positive vibe, good examples.
But question: what about the people visiting these places? Are they: above average educated, above average income, not obese… Do they again reach this particular group, or do they actually manage to get the McD-fans to come to these places?
As for The Spoke, since it’s just starting I doubt there is any analysis of who makes up their market. But I would presume that their competition with traditional fast food burger-type of restaurants is, for the moment (given the current menu), a bit more tangential compared to Max for example. What we will have to wait and see is how the customer base develops. Their model is really interesting, especially from a marketing/business perspective because their offer is not static and the dialogue with the consumer feeds in directly into their product/service proposition. This feedback cycle is not new of course, companies have always taken consumers into account when developing or modifying their offer, but how literal and how fast this suggestions show up in the menu might be just what it takes to convert former fast food fans. While being true to their core value proposition, the food served at The Spoke could be anything that the community wants it to be and that co-evolution of market and company is a strong competitive edge.
Regarding Max, they do have the consumers on their side and in Sweden they are clearly preferred over McDonalds and Burger King*. There might be some factors other than sustainability related issues in play here though. Many consumers might like Max due to how embedded it is in the Swedish market (it’s been around since 1968, five years before McD entered the market) and their quality/price offer but the fact that they have internalized sustainability values is a definitely win for everyone.
*http://www.tnp.no/2272-fast-food-wars-begin-on-may-17th
I just learned about a ‘new model of food’ tangentially similar to ‘The Spoke’, but with even more of the social-justice-and-sustainability theme built in: the new ‘healthy street food campaign’ in Jakarta that’s led by Mercy Corps. I’ll link a few great articles below, but the essence is, as the NYTimes puts it, while we talk and think about ‘food deserts’ existing in NY and London and Iowa and so on, the situation that exists for poor families in the emergent megacities (such as Jakarta) are more ‘food Saharas’, and most everyone DOES turn to (unhealthy, cheap) street food as their daily source of sustenance. So Mercy Corps’s strategy was: ok, that’s the situation, let’s work ‘inside that structure’ and create ‘healthy street food’ AND business opportunity. So, it’s a ‘social enterprise’ model … with the benefits and challenges inherent in the model. One unique point here: they were targeting children (and improving childhood nutrition) in particular, which added a whole new set of challenges to the venture. So, here are the articles, to read more:
NYTimes article: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/23/in-food-deserts-oases-of-nutrition/
NYTimes Opinionator article with more on the ‘social enterprise’ aspect: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/26/the-path-from-charity-to-profit/
KCRW Good Food podcast (where I heard about it originally … go to around minute mark 30 if you download; and, actually, immediately before that is an interesting feature on mobile markets in the USA food deserts …) : http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/gf/gf110723eating_in_ancient_ro
Thanks Leah!
This model seems like a great blue print for social innovation within food. Talking about cheap food, this connects with something I was reading earlier about how much money you have to pay to eat healthy.
A study from the University of Washington showed that it would cost almost $400 (US dlls) to follow the official “MyPlate” government recommendations.
So eating healthy is not only a matter of personal choice, price is almost always a determinant factor.
Study: (http://www.foodpolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/Monsivais-FF.pdf)
MyPlate: (http://www.choosemyplate.gov/).
Very interesting indeed!
Reminds me of something I read a while ago. In 2008 the Los Angeles city government decided no more new fastfood restaurants could be opened in the poor areas (south LA). It was for an area of 83km2 for 1 year. The city hoped that with this effort, the market for healthy and more traditional restaurants and supermarkets would grow.
Does anyone know the result of this? It has been 3 years since they started, so there should be some kind of result (although clearly it is debatable how succesful such a thing can be in the beginning).