Green Business for Dummies

The main points of the book focused on how to make a sustainable greener business.

I mainly focused on chapter 11: Revitalizing your Local Economy, as it focused on how to become a Buy-local Business.

The book is written from an north American perspective, but I thought that it had quite a lot of useful information and thoughts regarding buy-local businesses that can be applied to any market.


The key points I picked up from the book which I thought could benefit our project are:

The buy-local business:


✓ Define what “local” means. The definition may seem self-evident, but
it’s an important distinction. Many retailers are independently owned
and locally operated, but they don’t carry locally made items.


✓ Figure out what your initial focus will be. Identify how your buy-local
business will set you apart from the competition.

✓ Co-operation is key to succeed. Research who could be potential business partners, and how could the partnership best benefit both parties.

WARNING!

As in all collaborative efforts, circumstances can always go awry. Watch out
for these common co-op problems:

✓ Going into business with too many folks or people you don’t have strong
background knowledge of can sometimes yield nasty surprises. Protect
your business by doing your research on potential collaborators.

✓ Marketing and purchasing power sometimes don’t seem worth the time
and effort necessary to participate in the co-op. Be realistic about the
true volume-discount purchasing potential.



Attract and educate customers:

1. Identify consumers’ barriers to buying local.

You can’t get people to buy locally if you don’t understand why they
aren’t buying local in the first place. According to informal studies, many
consumers simply don’t know what buying local really means, which
leads them to perhaps mistakenly perceive “local” big-box stores to be
cheaper, have better selections, or be more convenient. But don’t just
take my word for it. Ask a random sampling of residents around your
community simple questions like

• What’s the number one reason you choose to shop at a particular
store? (Ask this question first so you don’t lead the person into the
buy-local answer!)
• Do you ever consider buying locally first?
• Would you consider buying locally first if I told you . . . ? (Rattle
off a few compelling statistics here, like the ones in the following
section.)

2. Develop a strategy that encourages customers to identify with “being
local.”

Information campaigns alone rarely bring about behavior change. Education is an important component, but community-based social marketing asks you to go beyond that and get your customers to identify with
“being” something and to proactively commit to taking action.

Knowledge about buy-local


✓ Local businesses are owned by people vested in the community.

✓ Hometown entrepreneurs contribute to the local economy.

✓ The unique shops and services available in your community are part of
what brings tourists and their checkbooks to your locale.

Hyvä ja paha ruoka, Ruoan tuotannon ja kuluttamisen vaikutukset

Toimitaneet Tuija Mononen ja Tiina Silvasti, 2012

Projekti johon liittyy lähiruoka. Jotain uutta ja erilaista, siis kirjastoon mars! Kirjaston hyllyjä kolutessani käteeni osui tämä kirja ja hyvä etten hyppinyt ilosta. Minulla oli jotain uutta ja aiheeseen liittyvää, jes!

Kirja sisältää 231 sivua tiukkaa asiaa ruuasta. Asiaa siitä millaista se on ollut, millaista sen tulisi olla, millaista se on täällä kotimaassa ja millaista se on maailmalla.

Kirjassa käsitellään miten tietoisia ihmiset ovat ruuasta, erilaisista ruokavalioista, tuotantotavoista ja tarjonnan paljoudesta. Puhutaan politiikasta ( ja paljon ), geeniteknologiasta ja ilmastonmuutoksen vaikutuksista. Välillä aiheista puhuttiin myönteiseen sävyyn, välillä kriittisemmin pohtien. Kirja koostui mielestäni pitkälti mielipiteistä, jotka toki perusteltiin kirjalähtein. Odotin aika paljon kirjalta ja itse lähiruokaa koskeva sisältö jäi aika vähäiseksi.. No oli se mainittu ainakin.

 Kolahdukset kirjasta:

•  Luomun ja lähiruoan erot käsiteltiin hyvin kirjassa :)

•  Luomu on ollut jo pitkään "hittijuttu"-- vaikka siitä onkin kiistelty kuluttajien ja poliitikkojen keskuudessa.

•  Tarjolla on eettisesti tuotettua ruokaa, reilunkaupan tuotteita, kotimaista, lähellä tuotettua, luomua ja biodynaamisesti tuotettua ruokaa. Näitä suosimalla pyritään hakemaan ratkaisuja tavanomaisen ruokatuotannon aiheuttamiin ongelmiin.

•  Usein käytetyn määritelmän mukaan lähiruoka on ruoantuotantoa ja -kulutusta, joka käytää oman tuotantoalueen raaka- aineita ja tuotantopanoksia ja edistää siten oman alueensa taloutta ja työllisyyttä. Määritelmä on ajatuksellisesti helppo ymmärtää, mutta se on hyvin väljä ja mahdollistaa monenlaisia tulkintoja.

• Paikallinen ruoka tarkoittaa josssakin tietyssä paikassa tuotettua ruokaa. Se voi olla sekä lähiruokaa, että luomutuotettua ruokaa, mutta sitä markkinoidaan tiettyä perinteistä tuotantotapaa edustavana tuotteena.

•  Lähiruoka määrittyy tuotannon ja kulutuksen keskinäisen maantieteellisen sijainnin pohjalta; lähiruoka on tuotettu lähellä kuluttajaa, olivatpa kysymyksessä sitten peruselintarvikkeet tai paikalliset erikoistuotteet.

• Yksittäiselle kuluttajalle luomu- ja lähiruoka voivat olla toivottavia valintoja, mutta ne ovat usein myös liian kalliita. Jos niiden käyttöä voitaisiin lisätä merkittävästi julkisissa ruokapalveluissa, ne saataisiin hinnaltaan kilpailukykyisemmiksi. 

•  Erityisen runsaasti lähiruokaa on torimyynnissä kesäisin ja syksyisin kasvukauden ja sadonkorjuun aikaan. Lähiruokaa voi siis saada myös järkevään hintaan, edullisemmin. 

Kirjasta luvattiin takakannen perusteella "läpileikkaus ruokakeskustelusta" - no sitä se oli ja monipuolisesti.
Kirjassa käytiin läpi paljon maailmantalouden vaikutusta ruokakulttuuriin ja sen kehityskaarta. Kirja oli helppolukuinen, mutta ei kuitenkaan vastannut täysin odotuksiani. Sääli.

Päätinkin että hakeudun nyt Internetin ihmeelliseen maailmaan etsimään lisää tietoa lähiruuasta ja seuraava kirjani jonka tätä projektia varten luen liittyy innovatiivisuuteen.

Näillä eväillä pääsiäisen viettoon!!

- Marjo

Group meeting 27.3.13

Today the Five Fingers met over a cup of coffee as we held our early morning meeting! Bright and early we met at 8 AM sharp at Coffee House to go over a few details about our project.

As the deadline for book reports is almost upon us, we made sure that everybody were on good way with the writing – turns out that most of us have the texts done, and by the time this post hits the blog, all the book reports are likely already posted! Yay!

We decided on a few new tasks as well; some more questions for our contact person, some more articles, more books and more pictures for the blog! Also team leader Roland will contact the other team working with a similar task and we hope to get together and share thoughts and ideas. Some practical arrangements were made for the upcoming work day at Novia as unfortunately not all of us will be able to attend.

The Five Fingers look forward to the next meeting and to see, what can be discovered with lähiruoka – Turku with its neighboring area has great potential!

p.s. due to internet difficulties (namely the lack of it) this post is published on the 28^th, sorry!

INNOVATION

My task was to focus on the field of innovation, and for that I chose the book competing on the edge-Strategy as structured chaos. By Shona L. Brown & Kathleen M. Eisenhardt.

The main question throughout the book is how to do something better than before, you should always strive to renew yourself and your business. Something that is new today might be old tomorrow and the question is will you fall of the wagon or will you see the opportunity of the change. This isn't always easy and that’s why many businesses fail, according to the authors of this book there is one thing that businesses like Microsoft, Intel, and Nike and so on... Have in common, they are predictably unpredictable. Businesses like this have found the balance between structure and chaos which allows them to be innovative, basically by giving their employees FreeHand’s to come up with new ideas. The book takes up a lot of good points that you should think of when you’re competing on the edge, for example the challenge of change, improvisational edge, gaining the advantage of the past and how to win tomorrow today. Also at the end of the book the authors have summed up everything from the book into 10 rules which you can find at this link:

www-rcf.usc.edu/~fulk/545/.../structured_chaos.ppt –

In my opinion the book was weary good and I learned a lot from reading it, it’s definitely something I can recommend. I had some personal challenges with this book, because it’s in English which I am wryly not good at, but because this is a project were we are supposed to communicate in English I thought it would be good practice. 

The VARRU-project is making locally produced food more attractive

...and here is an interesting article about how the VARRU-program is trying to get more people interested in locally produced food.

Fun fact about the Finnish foodsupply

Here is some interesting information about Finnish food. Apparently we have the cleanest food within Europe! Go Finland!

MARKETING OF LOCAL FOOD TO RETAIL STORES, CATERING UNITS AND RURAL TOURISM ENTERPRISES

I (Jeanette) have read the ”Lähiruoan markkinointi vähittäiskauppoihin, suurkeittiöihin ja maaseutumatkailuyrityksiin” (translated: MARKETING OF LOCAL FOOD TO RETAIL STORES, CATERING UNITS AND RURAL TOURISM ENTERPRISES) written by Jaana Paananen and Sari Forsman (2003). The text did not tell that much about marketing as I thought it would have done, but at least it gave me a lot of new information about local food and other locally produced products. These are some of the main points that I got out from the text:

• ·      At the moment, the demand of local food is bigger than the actual supply in Finland.

• ·      A main part of the local food-brand is that the actual process between the provider (i.e. the farmer) and the final consumer is as short as possible (no more logistic services than absolutely needed).

• ·      Customers are not ready to pay a higher price for local food, unless they can see the advantages with it: they want to be able to taste the difference, smell the difference or see the difference. They also want the information about the origin of the product to be clearly available

As we all know, local food has become an image-maker for companies, and the text that I read also pointed this out. Consumers become more aware about their consuming and the origin of their food and products, living in a “green world” like we are today. This leads to the fact that the demand of these locally produced products have increased very drastically over the last years.

The biggest consumer of local food is, according to the text, catering firms. These companies have been a big user of locally produced food and organic food already for decades, but only now has it suddenly become highlighted (and this as a result of the big “boom” around local food at the moment). But why do they choose local food instead of a bit cheaper food from elsewhere, and why have they done it for such a long time? There are many answers, but a few very clear ones: On one hand– their costumers want it. And on the other hand – It’s easier in many ways. It is pretty obvious that it makes a lot of things easier if you are in direct contact with your supplier, instead of going through many middle hands to reach your contact.

What can be considered as locally produced food then? Well, there are some main points that have to be outstanding for the products so that they can be called “locally produced”. These are some of them:

• ·      According to the study made by Paananen and Forsman, locally produced food is seen as something pure, fresh and good tasting.

• ·      According to some smaller companies locally produced food should also be differentiated from factory produce by means of production. The production process, preferably by hand and in small amounts is seen as a critical part of the locally produced goods brand.

• ·      Specialization: that fact that the food that is seen as “local food” is only found in a specific area plays a big role. For example if “Pekkas potatoes”, that you can buy in Parainen, is found in Porvoo, they can not be seen as local food, since the distance is very far between Parainen and Porvoo.

The biggest problems with sales of locally produced goods through convenience stores is the fact that some stores do not have the facilities and tools to handle the produce. Another big problem is the small producers ability to provide enough units of a product for the bigger demand of a large convenience store or a chain of stores. Large stores also have a whole other system for billing and payment, which in some cases can cause problems for smaller producers with smaller budgets and shorter time-spans for their own payments and costs.

Logistics

What is logistics?

Before having a better glimpse to the logistic management applied to the food industry, it is first important to know exactly what logistics, in a more general way, really is.

According to the Business Dictionary (www.businessdictionary.com), logistics is the “planning, execution and control of the procurement, movement, and stationing of personnel, material, and other resources to achieve the objectives of a campaign, plan, project or strategy. It may be defined as the “management of inventory in motion and at rest.””

This first definition, however, seems quite vague, and here is the official definition of logistics according to the “Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals” (CSCMP, formerly Council of Logistics Management) (http://cscmp.org/): “The process of planning, implementing, and controlling procedures for the efficient and effective transportation and storage of goods including services, and related information from the point of origin to the point of consumption for the purpose of conforming to customer requirements. This definition includes inbound, outbound, internal, and external movements.”

            We will first see how the logistic process is build and how it works before applying this model more particularly on the food industry and see what kind of special requirements need to be made.

Logistics. How does it work?

In the food industry in general, logistic starts first with the packaging of the product. Then the goods are being put in storage facilities such as warehouses or stock rooms before being transported to the retailing stores. The transportation part is crucial and requires special equipment such as refrigerated trucks or containers so the goods don’t perish. The transportation part is however the most “tricky” step of the process, since a lot of data needs to be take into consideration (the size of the vehicles, form of transportation, availability and schedule of drivers and the store access) (Kerstin Gustafsson, Gunilla Jönson, David Smith & Leigh Sparks, 2009). The whole process must also be “temperature controlled”. Then the food needs to be put once again in storage unites, and an inventory needs to be made, before the food is being sold to the end consumers. The logistic (or supply-chain) of eatable goods is really expensive and represents the biggest part of the final price of the products.

Concerning logistics and “Lahiruoka” (local food), the process of logistic is quite the same. However the price of the process might be smaller for local food than food that has travel from the other side of the world since the distance from the production site and the retailing place is much smaller.

Concerning the literature about Logistics, I decided to choose this book: “Retailing Logistics & Fresh Food Packaging, Managing change in the supply chain” by Kerstin Gustafsson, Gunilla Jönson, David Smith & Leigh Sparks. (the PDF version of the book can be found HERE).

I choose this book because it is, in my opinion, a quite easy book to understand and it focuses on the supply chain management for food in a very wide way which is quite handy for this group since we don’t know already what the final assignment is and because it still gives a good overview of the whole thing. The book is filled with examples (especially with example from the British retailer TESCO) and case studies in order to have a better understanding of this part of the entire process.

Kirkas Brandi - miten suomalainen tuote erottuu, lisää arvoaan ja perustelee hintansa / S. Lindroos, G. Nyman & K. Lindroos

As books are an essential part of INNO, we decided within the group to all focus on different fields to cover as many different topics as possible - I focused on branding.

I chose "Kirkas Brandi" because it clearly focused on how Finnish companies and services could improve. International megabrands such as Apple, Nike and Sony were used as examples, but Finnish success stories were naturally the vocal point - Fiskars, Iittala and Lumene to name a few. Divided into chapters cleverly named "brightness", "star" or "beacon", the book gives you a wide perspective on what to think about when creating a brand for your business or service.

Keeping in mind that we don't exactly know what we need to do I still tried to scan the text thinking that if we need to brand something, it's more likely to be a service not an entirely new company. So I focused on the social identity level (social belonging, individuality) and the spiritual level (values, experiences and preferences of the client). Whatever you're branding, the single most important thing is to have a solid core - without that your brand is hollow and will not live up to the expected standards. A weak brand is useless and can't be rescued with all the money in the world. This is especially important for new brands which have little or no market yet.

Things that we could find useful in our work? The impact of mental images is definitely valuable for us, regardless of the task, we need to consider the expectations of our clients and step into their shoes as they go through the service process. The "steps of value" (arvoportaat in Finnish) will give us many insights of the different qualities of our task.

A very recommendable book indeed! A small minus for the sometimes difficult-to-understand- drawings.

First working day @ TuAMK 15.3.13

Last Friday our team met up for the second time to continue the work we've started on "lähiruoka" - locally produced food.

The morning began with an overall discussion on how everybody were doing, how the project was evolving and how the group got on in general. We received some questions to think about and the result of which should be presented to all; these included a question grid that encouraged us to reflect over things we already knew, versus things we need to know in order for the project to proceed.

During this process we finally came up with our name - the Five Fingers! Hooray!

After a well deserved lunch break we continued working, this time focusing on literature. We decided to all focus on different fields to collect as much information as possible - and then to come together as one and be even smarter!
We also came up with a business plan that looks like this:

Roland:
- Read Green business for dummies. 
- Try to contact local farmers and business owners regarding their view on locally produced food items and some first hand experience dealing with the market.

Linda:
- Focus on branding
- Will be in charge of writing blog posts about the groups activities

Alexandre:
- Focus on logistics
How does the logistics for local food items differ from the normal items.
Pros/ cons?

Jeanette:
- Focus on markets (Local markets, potential competitors)
What's the overall situation for our company on the market?

Marjo:
- Focus on local foods (try to define it) The book you brought with you (hyvä ruoka paha ruoka)
How does local foods benefit the consumer, farmer and the business owner?

Tony:
- In charge of reading other teams blogs (Should get them from Timo and the innoblog) and sharing it with the team
- Focus on innovations (competing on the edge) I red the description and it sounds interesting.

In addition, all of us will come up with questions for a possible interview with the client. We formed a goal - what is it that we wish to accomplish by doing all of this? The aim looks like following: 

" We should have a portfolio containing a wide variety of information regarding local foods (Product, market, logistics and so on) which should contain all aspects of local foods that we can come across as we do not really know what the specific assignment will be."

Also, we agreed on a terrifying punishment if someone doesn't pull their part or meet the set deadlines: Bake a cake for the team!

For now, over and out :)

the dawn of the blog

...blogi herää tiistaiaamuun. Huomenta kaikille!
..bloggen vaknar upp på till en strålande tisdagsmorgon! God morgon alla!
..the blog wakes up to a gorgeous tuesday morning. Good morning all!