Crate to Plate

Overview

Crate to Plate is an online subscription service, that delivers a series of seasonal local ingredients, paired with recipes, making the process of buying and cooking local food more accessible.

Crate to Place was inspired by the desire to provide healthy food while saving money and time. This quarter long project started out with the general topic of providing local fresh food to the students at University of Washington. Over the ten weeks Crate to Plate was designed. 

The Objective

Create a better way to bring healthy food to campus.

The process

Starting out, we interviewed around 10 students on campus to learn what their food habits were. We learned that many students had a hard time allowing themselves to purchase fresh food because of it being "expensive" . Students also expressed concerns with knowing what to buy, how much of it and how to cook with it.

The first item of business was to figure out if buying fresh food is as expensive as students believe it to be. We also wanted to figure out where the cheapest places to buy fresh food would be. 

We found that many grocery stores and markets that had a stigma of being "healthier" were increasing prices on perishable foods. Some of those same perishable foods could be found at a cheaper price at local markets in the Seattle area. 

After doing research we realized there were three things we wanted to solve for:

1. Providing fresh and local food to students.

2. Saving money.

3. Easy access for students to learn how to cook.

We brainstormed different ideas between a recipe app, to building a list and came to realization that the sweet spot landed in the convenience of receiving food, the amount received, how much it cost for the user, and direction on how to cook.

This led us to Crate to Plate!

The product

Crate to Plate is a application allowing students choose recipes, receive the ingredients they need, with the recipe included all dropped off at their doorstep. This application allowed students to have fresh local food at their fingertips while saving money and learning how to cook.

Crate to Plate would pair with local farms to support our local community. We would serve seasonal recipes dependent on what farms were growing and supply accurate amount of ingredients for the recipes for students to save money. The application also would partner with a deliver service in order to transport the food to the correct addresses.

My Role

I took part in concept design, recipe layout, wireframes, user flows along with video illustrations and storyboarding.