Eatopia is a platform with the mission to support individuals on the journey to plant-based diet. These are the future vegans, vegetarians and flexitarians. We want to create a good experiences of daily vegans´ eating and shopping in busy cities like London in the next 5 years.
Eatopia encourage users and stakeholders to prioritise choice of healthy plant-based products over those with contain a lot of sugar, fat, sodium and meat. Eatopia learns about users’ behaviour and brings the knowledge back to the food and beverage industry in order to improve its services. And finally, Eatopia might become potential tool for local health promotion planning and tactics.
Our platform is represented by a playful interactive mobile app which combines experiences from both the virtual and real world. We reward progress of individuals by credit, which might be used to support impactful projects, or to get discounted products and services offered by Eatopian partners.
MA2 – Team 2
Mengdan Guo
Preedachanok Somprasert
Radim Pekarek
WHAT?
Tell us what the concept is about. What are you designing? What are the key benefits?
We are designing Eatopia – a platform with a mission to guide individuals through all stages of plant-based diet. From those on the stage of discovering health risk of meat overconsumption, through flexitarians and vegetarians, to vegans. From the perspective of Gen Z , there will be lower barriers to the most of trendy, junk, vegan food in the next five years. It will be less safe to be vegan than ever before. We want to help them to solve multiple problems they will face.
We are prototyping an image recognition mobile app for the real-time use which will help to find the high quality vegan food, products, and restaurants. We measure the quality by its impact on health and environment. Furthermore, the app aims to support peer-to-peer missions with the purpose to burn out calories and learn about nutrition together. By following the rules properly, individuals are rewarded by coins, which might be than spent in our Eatopian Market. The market is a great opportunity to make a real impact in the world, because the coins can be used to support a not-for-profit projects which makes the world better.
Also, we want to better understand needs of individuals and bring the knowledge back to partners from industry. The industry is preparing for the growth of vegan trend which is the UK´s fastest-growing lifestyle choice. The benefits for being in the Eatopian Network are: 1) having a certificate of trust, 2) our platform will create an ad/marketing channel, 3) better understanding of the users´ behaviour and preferences identified by proper analysis. We want to help retailers and wholesalers to better understand Gen Zs, and help them to improve their future vegan offers.
WHY?
Tell us some of the key findings of your background research and what is the problem you are trying to address.
During interviews with Gen Zs representatives, we found out three major pain points to solve through all stages of meat reduction: 1) to sustain healthy habits, 2) to get oriented in the current chaotic market offer of vegan products and services, and finally 3) to overcome social pressure from the transition to the plant-based diet. There are other three key points that has navigated us to articulate the problem statement below
Veganism is an increasing trend Vegan diet is of high health risk It is hard to sustain healthy eating habits
Our problem statement sounds: In the next five years veganism is predicted to become more mainstream, However, the food industry will be full of unhealthy vegan products. How might we maximize the use of AI to empower city-living Gen Zs to seamlessly transit to healthy flexitarian, vegetarian or vegan diet that is customized and balanced?
DESK RESEARCH Veganism is on the ride, especially for gen Z. According to the data compiled by Google search claimed that vegan is the fastest growing culinary trend since 2012. Veganism has grown 360% in the past ten years. The sale of meat-free product increased by 20%. Surprisingly, 44% of gen Z think that being vegan is cooler than smoking, and 25 % of them try being vegan in the past year.
As the consequence, there will be a huge change in veganism market since gen Z is 40% of all future customers. The plant-based protein market is estimated to value up to 16.3 billions dollars US worldwide by 2020 , therefore the food industries are now changing the game to target on these vegan beginners. These are for example McDonald, Tesco, and for example M&S is inventing a various types of vegan products on its own.
Due to the sales from the leading supermarket, there is a high demand of unhealthy vegan products. The vegan ready meal & snack at Tesco increased by 40%. Sainsbury sales of vegan cheese surpassed the company prediction by 300%. The fake meat grew by 451%. This is an evidence to confirm that these trend will create a problem for the vegan beginners such as gen Z. On one hand the appropriate planned vegan diet can reduce the risk of heart disease by 25 % up to 19% less likely to die from heart disease 12% fewer death from diabetes and kidney failure when compared to normal people and people who eat unhealthy vegan diet. On the other hand, If you are unplanned vegan you are at risk. The unbalanced vegan diet can cause nutritional deficiencies and slowly develop the chronic diseases. The unhealthy vegan products (like high processed food which contain a lot of sugar, sodium and fat) cause obesity, diabetes type 2, high cholesterol and hypertension which are the major causes of heart disease. The American College of Cardiology claim, that an unhealthy plant based diet will increase the risk of heart disease by 32 %.
WHO?
Tell us something about your users and key stakeholders involved.
Primary actors of the platform are individual Gen Z living in London or any other big city. Eatopia aims to solve the key problems they might face on the journey to plant-based-diet.
Importantly, gen Z is the major representative of increasing vegan trend. They are driven largely by concerns about animal welfare, environment and health. The benefits of our platform perfectly match gen Z needs. For example, 76% of gen Z worries about protecting the environment, 54% of vegan gen Z become vegan because the animal welfare and environment reasons. We consider all these interests in the features of our service.
Secondary platforms´ actors include food and beverage wholesalers and retailers. They will have a chance to promote their products and services through our platform. Our platform has the potential to learn from users´ behaviour, which is useful for designing the future customer-oriented bids. Furthermore, being part of our network will be sign of trust in the eyes of our end-users.
There is another segment – government, which might have an interest of keeping health of vegans. Unbalanced vegan diet can cause nutritional deficiencies, or increases chance to have some ofheart diseases by 32%. We want to cooperate with local schools and healthcare departments to engage young people interested in vegan lifestyle. Our platform will promote healthy eating habits and prevent chronic diseases.
WHEN?
Give us an idea of the future scenario where your project will be working.
In 2024, veganism will be mainstream. Market will be overcrowded by trendy, junk food. Young Gen Zs will be in much higher risk to develop some of diseases, because their barriers to adopt this lifestyle will be lower than in 2019. Nowadays, young people are forced to learn about the diet, because life as vegan is complicated. But in the close future, there is the risk, that people will take this as just a fashion, and they will underestimate the health risk related to unbalanced diet.
In the context of user life-cycle, we want to intervene at universities i the cooperation with the support of local government. According to the theory, people coming to universities are going through a big transitional moment in their life. It does not depend if they are locals or overseas. This big moment has disruptive power. It has potential to damaged our old bad habits and create space for new useful habits. This is good opportunity for our platform.
WHERE?
Tell us if you have thought of a specific location where to prototype.
We plan to start in London, because all project members are based there. We plan to start test our prototype at near universities. In general, we focus on big cities, because people there are in higher risk to develop major diseases related to unbalanced diet.
HOW?
Give us an idea of your strategy, your process, your prototyping plan and the next steps.
The whole team is willing to continue this project, because the aim of Eatopia combines our interests. Our prototype plan includes tests with 1) individual Gen Zs, 2) with industry partners, and with 3) universities.
Individuals
We are not focusing only on the initial transition to veganism. We also concern of people who are already in other stages. From this reason, we want to strengthen our prototype at these moment:
Before : Promoting coaching program During : Coaching program for being healthy vegan After : Maintaining lifelong healthy vegan diet
Furthermore, we want to test our concept of gam which is currently based on multiple reward systems. We want to be sure, that gamification is the right approach.
2) We want to test our prototype with potential industry partners and talk more about their needs in this context.
3) We plan to bring the concepts at universities and schools. So they might be the goal of our initial prototypes.
