By Ian Ortega
I love local food. But I have noticed whenever I order it, something always kills the experience. There’s just something off-putting about the ‘silver plate’ packaging. And then, it gets worse for the soup. How long will it hit most people that liquids are better packaged in cylindrical objects?
The answers are always around us. There’s a reason that tin is cylindrical, that water bottle. Well, the exception could be on some packaged juices. But generally, for stability, you go for the cylinder. But Ugandan restaurants still insist on wrapping around the ‘silver plate’ to prevent the spills. Unfortunately, nothing saves the spills, I figure, the deliver bike keeps swerving many potholes, the food keeps moving.
So the local food unpacking is always ‘messy’ one way or another. And at the risk of throwing café javas on your lips, but they keep finding ways of improving this unpacking experience. They keep improving. And that’s what would be required of our local foods’ restaurants.
Perhaps, it’s a call to every person out there that an opportunity exists to plug into the food delivery ecosystem – one of the product packaging designers and manufacturers. Is this something that Glovo can fund through some open innovation competition?
To build ecosystems, you need to identify all the constraints in the ecosystem. One of the constraints here is just the packaging. How do you make it cheaper, environmentally friendly, but also aesthetically pleasing for the customer to unwrap their food. How do you maintain this beauty of the local food experience when one orders from home? Or and did I tell you; it just sucks to have all the assortments of food being slapped onto each other. Like your avocado is onto your sweet potatoes, merged into your rice. Sometimes, the whole point of ordering out is to utilize the same elements of packaging as plates.
In our case, you often must pull out the plates and go through the rituals of serving the food. Well, to me, that’s a constraint to be solved for. The experience can be better. And by making it better, we have shared value across this food delivery ecosystem.