Before our visit to FoodCloud, many people we talked to were excited for us to see them in action! Everyone only spoke good things about them as we traveled around Dublin. Many previous companies we visited said that they had partnered with FoodCloud to participate in volunteer work with them and they were amazing. This only made me super excited to go myself. I didn’t have a lot of previous knowledge of what they do or how they worked but I was very interested to learn and hear all about it from them.
At the the visit I was not disappointed. They were well prepared and well informed about their company and about us which was really appreciated. They were able to relay relevant information about U.S. statistics about food consumption as well as similar companies in the states to themselves. I thought all of that effort was really thoughtful and we didn’t really have another company do that much research prior to our arrival. Usually we’re the ones that do the research about the companies before our arrival so we have prior knowledge and can ask good questions.
They have been able to make themselves so relevant and successful in Ireland. I think this is due to the fact that they are a very humble non-profit. They don’t want to sell themselves to make a profit, they don’t want to participate in some sort of market share. They stick to what they know and have become very skillful and have mastered to what they do. Their solutions are very simple and they make sure to enhance these solutions. For example, they have updated their app to fix previous problems.
On another note, all of our site visits and our work as teams has made me reflect a lot of teamwork and how difficult it can be. Especially when there are bumps in the road, it can hard to feel connected and feel as though you as a group are efficient at what you’re doing. One thing I learned and will take away from this trip is that teamwork must always be flexible, even if you’re a not so flexible person. There are many challenges that a team can face like being united as one and being able to work together efficiently and with flexibility comes the idea of comprise. Compromise is crucial when all your team members work differently than you and it’s hard to find a space of similarity. This is one thing I think FoodCloud and all of our other site visits understand and work on as well. Especially during these times, everyone needs to learn the skill of flexibility to work well with others during difficult times.