Evanee Wu_11/09/2009 Thesis progress

Mission Statement
Increase awareness of American heirloom fruits values, specifically focusing on cranberries and grapes, by making them into profitable products.

Hypotheses
1. Making the foods exclusive encourages people to buy them.
2. Cook the foods in collaborative with well-known chefs/restaurants to increase the foods' reputation can get public aware of the food value.
3. Thin skins of the cranberries and Bronx seedless grapes make them difficult to maintain in a good condition through transportation. However, it potentially creates opportunity for new products.

Research Methods
Goals: get a thorough understanding of the subjects
1. Learn the foods from their properties: read both published and online articles and manipulate the foods in person.
2. Contact Makalé Faber Cullen to get more cultural backgrounds of the foods.
3. Research on exclusive food packaging, marketing, and products.
4. Talk to farmers and try to visit a farm which cultivate any of the subjects.
5. Interview with people who shop at farmers market. Understand how they care about heirloom fruits.
6. Interview with people who buy gourmet groceries. What motivates them to buy certain products?
7. Visit gourmet grocery stores. What types of products do they carry? Why do they see the products valuable?

Analysis:
Initially I was aiming to help various types of endangered foods since they're all considered having less market value. It resulted in a big issue for my project since every type of food is not commercially cultivated by different reasons. After realizing it this week, I narrowed my subjects down to cranberries and Bronx seedless grapes because they are both difficult to transport.
I got a lot of information on cranberries over the week. It is not an attractive fruit when it is raw and fresh because of its bitter and sour taste. However, its byproducts are both delicious and nutritional benefits. This encouraged me not only focus on advertising its taste but also finding opportunities to create new byproducts.

Stakeholders
I've been reading and understanding a lot of existing programs which helps preserve the endangered food through Slow food USA and Renewing American’s Food Traditions(RAFT). Makalé Faber Cullen, a cultural anthropologist who directs the RAFT, Ark, and Presidia initiatives of Slow Food USA at its headquarters in Brooklyn, had suggested me to use reclaimed, sustainable packaging.

Stakeholders & Experts:
-Slow food USA: Seeks solutions on maintaining food diversity.
- Individual participants on slow food movement: Concern the slow food movement and are eager to help. Most of them collect information in various areas of food culture, i.e. food education, quality food suppliers, local agriculture.
- Farmers
- Food Retailers: Expand product lines. They are models to study food business.
- Urban villagers: Discover a fresh, fun, and delicious dining experience. Observing their food consumption and eating patterns helps me to find a potential solution.
- Cultural anthropologists: Understand the dynamics of food cultures.

Design Opportunity:
At this point I found two possible directions to go in: one towards to food product marketing, and the other towards to turning the difficulty to benefits. In this case, it will be doing with bad cranberries and grapes during transporting process.

Design Criteria:
Exclusivity: The targeted fruits will face an extreme difficulty to cultivate in a commercial scale. Therefore, making them exclusive will encourage consumption and keep their cultivation.
Material: Using the foods as materials. There are products which are not from food industry using fruits as one of the ingredients. For example, cranberry scented perfume or cranberry skin care.
Educational: always keep in mind that the ultimate goal of the project is to educate people about these heirloom foods and their values. This cannot be sacrificed by economic decisions.

Conceptual Development
1. Making exclusive packaging with educational information. The products are not necessarily expensive but have to show the food values.
2. Advertise the foods to influential people in dining industry. Those people are considered as trend leaders who can lead the public to adopt a new vision on dining.
3. Find the new usage of the foods. Efficiently use the ingredients to increase the profitable value.

Feedbacks:
People do not buy foods primarily because that they are heirlooms.
People are willing to spend more if the foods are perceived to be better. They may not understand completely about the foods but they can be convinced by marketing strategy and advertisement.
Cranberries should not only be eaten during Thanksgiving. The cranberry is good for people if they constantly eat it

Next Steps:
-Explore more on the foods. Experiment and manipulate them to find if it's possible to turn them into products other than foods.
-Survey a larger group of food shoppers and understand what's their attitude to exclusive foods.
-Survey more gourmet storeowners to understand how they determine to carry certain type of foods.