is a launched service innovation for UK social enterprise The Big Issue to connect with Gen Z.
About this project
The Big Issue is the UK's number one street paper and social enterprise, helping people who are experiencing homelessness or unemployment. As the traditional magazine business doesn't appeal to younger generations, The Big Issue needs a new form of value exchange with Gen Z to foster the interaction with social issues, build brand awareness and continue their mission.
Team members: Sam, Rajvi, Yijing & Channy
RESEARCH
Research scale: 40 Gen Z people
Research locations: young neighborhoods (Islington, Shoreditch, Russel Square...) and universities (Imperial, UCL, LSE...)
Key research questions:
What social causes are you interested in? From what channel?
What social causes are you engaging in? In what form?
Are you aware of The Big Issue?
...
INSIGHT
We synthesized the key learnings and mapped them onto the "Engagement Spectrum" to show how Gen Z are interacting with social issues. It helped us to see the opportunity to effectively reach Gen Z.
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PROBLEM STATEMENT
We wanted to target the Casual Practitioners (60% of Gen Z) who are mostly university students, so how might we
connect The Big Issue
with university students
through daily activities
we chose ... food
We identified food as a channel to engage Gen Z with The Big Issue.
We also did some case studies to validate this strategy.
Change Please
A charity coffee brand on university campuses
Migrateful
A charity training migrants and refugees to cook
It shows that a social impact brand can work on university campuses and gain influence.
It shows hospitality is a proven vehicle of social mobility for people in need.
Big Issue Kombucha
A social enterprise from their incubator program
It shows The Big Issue is willing to try hospitality and has the resources.
Proposition
What
Big Issue Food is a social enterprise
that aims to employ people in poverty
to prepare and sell food
through pop-up stalls on university campuses.
Who
How
Where
Service Model
We refined our proposition by clarifying who are our stakeholders, how this business works on a macro and micro-level, and what are the value gains for every stakeholder.
Risk identification
We identified 3 risks in our proposition:
01
Would our service be desirable to students and what is our market fit?
02
How could we make it feasible for The Big Issue to start a food business?
03
How could we create a deeper engagement between students and The Big Issue
For each risk, we created a prototype, tested it, and learned something from it. We then integrated our learnings to derisk our proposition.
Risk 1
Desirability
We needed to validate a demand for our service exists among university students and find our USP.
How we prototyped
To gauge students' interest in our proposition, we created a fake social enterprise food service, along with sample menus, flyers, and an Instagram account.
We tested on 70 students across 3 universities: Kingston University, London South Bank and Imperial College. We introduced the proposition with menus and left them a flyer with our Instagram account. We gauged their interest by monitoring our followers.
What we learnt
01
People would buy our food.
Most participants were really interested in our proposition, with a third of participants following our Instagram account.
02
We identified a market.
We identified that people were often unhappy with their university canteen, and wanted our affordable menu.
03
Every university is different.
Universities can vary, so our target market won’t be accessible at all institutions.
Risk 2
Feasibility
Achieving this proposal without a partner would be challenging, as we didn’t have the skills or expertise to run a food business.
How we prototyped
Partnership Model
What we learnt
01
There's
interest.
BaxterStorey could see value in a partnership with The Big Issue, including social good and hiring chefs.
02
We gained agreement.
We got agreement to run a full trial based on our business proposal.
03
There's long-term potential.
We had positive feedback on a more long-term partnership based on the business model.
Risk 3
Engagement
We wanted to ensure that we could build a robust relationship between The Big Issue and students.
How we prototyped
We used role play to start understanding where in our food service we could engage people with The Big Issue's message.
What we learnt
Food packaging is a good way to engage.
Food packaging is a great opportunity for engagement and together with a digital service, could provide lasting engagement for The Big Issue.
Finally
Launch!
We launched the pilot of Big Issue Food at the Royal College of Art Battersea campus.
Results
The pilot was a big success that led to a long-term relationship between The Big Issue and BaxterStorey.
150
meals
We sold 150 meals, with queues stretching around the room at points.
75
feedback
We gave out a feedback form to every customer and half of them were collected back.
15 min
earlier
BaxterStorey sold out their food at 1:45pm. They started at noon and had expected to finish at 2pm.
97%
positive
Among the feedback, 97% said they liked and wanted to support the initiative by visiting us again.
Changing lives
with every bite
©Ken Chen, Sam Royle, Channy Hong, Rajvi Shah & Yijing Chen