The main tasks and outcomes of the project may be summarized in the following points
/1/ analysis of all the stakeholders that are involved in the food supply chain and in the food safety sector. The results included list of organisations that are key food safety information generators and providers as well as the type of the information that they are publishing.
/2/ we performed a thorough analysis of the food safety market and we define the total and the target market size. The analysis included statistics about food businesses that are manufacturing, serving and selling (retail) food products. The studied dimensions were the region, the size of the company and the type of the food products. According to the results, the total market includes more than 3 million food companies in Europe and North America. Focusing only on the micro and small food enterprises do not limit significantly this size as the vast majority of the companies are micro and small. In particular, there are 2.85 million companies in Europe and North America that are manufacturing, selling and serving food. Studying the food safety perspective of the food market, we identified those product categories that are more frequently involved in incidents. We will use this information to select the first companies to which we will sell the FOODAKAI solution. Based on the results of the market analysis per region, we decided to start from Greece, as a first region in which FOODAKAI can be validated as a solution and then to move to one of the big markets in Europe in terms of the number of food companies and sell there the FOODAKAI solution.
/3/ we conducted a competition analysis by studying the existing solutions, the companies and by performing a SWOT analysis. The analysis of the competition revealed a number of applications that may be direct competitors of Foodakai. The majority of the competing applications and services seem to be addressed at the consumers, providing consumer-related information with only minimum customization options. In addition, there are commercial applications with limited scope (e.g. the ones focusing only on allergens or legislation and regulations). However, food companies clearly need a solution that will combine such information with additional related one on food recalls and outbreaks of foodborne illnesses. The Foodakai application aims to fill this gap by providing such information and data, enriched with related data of different types.
/4/ we performed a content analysis which showed that there are several open data sources that could be used to provide the critical mass of content that is needed to build an application like FOODAKAI. From the legal point of view, there are data sources that allow commercial exploitation of the data and others that require to establish an agreement with the data provider. In the context of feasibility study we already define an initial version of a data agreement. Details about each data source such as type of content, license, url etc are provided in the final report of the feasibility study.
/5/ we defined the main features of the FOODAKAI solution and we developed a set of mock ups for the proposed solution. These mock ups will be used to validate the solution with a small group of real customers.
/6/ an initial version of the business model was developed and is presented in the feasibility study. FOODAKAI will be launched under a subscription model. Subscription levels may apply, depending on numbers of products and suppliers monitored. We will focus on the micro and small companies in Europe and North America, starting from specific countries like Greece and United Kingdom. Giving the large number of potential customers, our pricing plan will start from 20 euros per month. Considering the market size that was defined, the potential revenue if we penetrate 10% of the market can be 5 million.
/7/ the potential risks to the successful implementation of the proposed FOODAKAI solution and planned actions to address them was defined. The risk analysis is presented in the feasibility study.
