Competitive advantage. It’s something we hear about in marketing all the time; how to put yourself ahead of the competition, how to stand out, and how to maintain that edge. Today at Foodcloud, I was surprised to hear a completely different approach. As part of our final project (as well as any other large scale consulting project I’ve done) a huge component is the competitive analysis, which can be challenging for companies that either have a confusing business model or are so innovative that they’re the only ones occupying a market space. Our group’s company, GEC, was especially difficult to pinpoint competitors because of how many areas they work in, but Foodcloud wasn’t able to identify competitors because although they exist, their industry doesn’t pit them against each other. What’s unique about Foodcloud, is that their goal is to help their community through eliminating food waste and hunger, not profit or being the top dog. Instead, they’re able to focus on connecting the right people to those in need, as our speaker talked about directing donors or those in need to other locations or charity sites instead of a flat out “no”. When Foodcloud can’t help them directly, this does much more for the community (and their reputation) than trying to contradict health and safety regulations in order to score a customer.
This emphasis on helping the community makes this kind of business model very complicated, but ultimately very successful. By sticking to the regulations (such as health codes for accepting food donations) they have in place, they avoid the risk of harming someone or putting those in need in more danger, which would have serious financial consequences on top of the moral ones. Additionally, by viewing companies with similar initiatives not as competition, but as sharing a common goal, that creates goodwill amongst them and may help Foodcloud should they be in need in the future.
Something else I found really interesting about their processes was the difference between “best before” and “use by” dates. Of course, I’ve seen both of these used in purchasing and consuming food and definitely view them differently (I’ll admit, sometimes you look at a jar of food with “best before” and go “yeah… thats probably fine.” but will not touch it if its past the “use by” date instead), but hadn’t considered the implications on a larger scale. When dealing with cases and cases of food, making that distinction could definitely impact a huge chunk of food waste, even larger than I could fathom.
My mind continuously goes back to the non-competitiveness of Foodcloud’s market. While the good of the community should be the forefront of business and decision making, this is definitely not always the case, so I thought how they made a point of mentioning directing people to the right resources (even if thats not Foodcloud) was really cool. Of course, this doesn’t make as much sense for for-profit companies, but could still serve as an incredibly innovative model towards collective growth in similar markets, with goals larger than profit.
