Not long ago we wrote about permaculture and Australian Permablitz's volunteer-based implementation of the concept in urban gardens around Melbourne. Now one of our spotters has come across the first for-profit example we've seen.
Launched earlier this year, San Francisco-based My Farm calls itself a decentralized urban farm that grows vegetables in backyard gardens throughout the city. For anywhere between USD 600 and USD 1,000—depending on size—the company will install an organic vegetable garden in a customer's back yard. My Farm will first test the ground for toxins and other soil-composition issues, and gardens can be as small as 4-by-4-feet or so large as to completely transform the back yard. Customers can also choose whether to produce just enough for their own family or whether to become owner-members producing enough for My Farm to sell as well. Either way, once the garden's in, My Farm will maintain it using organic and permaculture techniques including drip irrigation and a compost pile; the company's employees do most of the work by hand and travel by bicycle whenever possible. Maintenance costs are USD 20 to USD 35 per week, with discounts for owner-members. Then, of course, in addition to maintaining, My Farm will also harvest produce at its peak, leaving a basket of fresh veggies on the consumer's doorstep when they're done. For members, that basket includes some of the abundance produced by other backyard gardens as well, resulting in even more diversity. Finally, for those without their own gardens, My Farm's produce is still available for delivery: a full basket, suitable for a small family, costs USD 35 per week, while a small box for one is USD 25.
A like contender called Your Backyard Farmer reportedly operates on a similar model in Portland, Ore., according to the San Francisco Chronicle, and with food prices increasing the way they are, it's a safe bet that more are on the way. After all, rather than face another week of plastic (and expensive) grocery-store tomatoes from across the planet, who wouldn't invest a little extra cash to get their own garden producing the real thing?
Website www.myfarmsf.com
Contact: www.myfarmsf.com/contact.html
Spotted by: Stacy Jo McDermott
Back in 2003, we wrote about M&M's personalization service, which lets customers pick colours and have texts and logos printed on M&M's. As we pointed out, it's a great example of mass customization. And of what our sister-site trendwatching.com dubbed gravanity. M&M's has now taken the concept a step further by allowing customers to have their own likeness printed on the candy: M&M's Faces.
Ordering is done online: customers upload one or two photos, pick their colours and add up to two different texts to be printed on separate M&Ms. Using a simple interface, they can zoom in or out to select which part of a photo they want to use. A 'graphic specialist' then tweaks the photo file, creating a sketch-like rendition that looks good on small pieces of candy (example here). M&M's Faces are available in 7-ounce bags at USD 14.95 per bag (minimum order: 3 bags); a 5- or 10-pound bulk box for USD 162.50 or USD 312.50; or a variety of 1.6- to 1.75-ounce party favours (minimum order: 20 bags), priced at USD 4.99–6.19 per bag.
M&M's hopes its new personalization option will entice even more customers to tell their stories using candy-coated chocolate, and to share their ultra-personal M&M's at weddings, graduations and birthdays. Given that most people love to see themselves or their loved ones in print, that seems like a pretty safe bet. ;-)
Website: www.mymms.com/customprint_faces
Contact: www.mymms.com/service
P.S. We've covered dozens of businesses that cater to consumers' gravanity. Check them out here.
When we first covered San Francisco-based Crushpad back in 2005, the idea of a winery in an urban centre was surprising. Crushpad has since blossomed, and now a like-minded contender on the opposite end of the nation is picking up on the notion and combining it with a wine bar.
Due to open this fall, City Winery will combine a wine bar and event space with a fully operational winery in the heart of Soho, New York City. The private-label winery—apparently the city's first—will let consumers choose their favourite grape, consult with City Winery's master winemaker and then crush, ferment, bottle and label their own bottles of wine. The company will have the capacity to make about 300 barrels of wine in its first year, and 200 of those will be dedicated to a limited set of members, who will have access to City Winery's state-of-the-art equipment and professional team. Grape varietals will be sourced from vineyards in California, Oregon, Washington State, New York, Chile and Argentina under strict temperature control, and customers will be able to work with City Winery's specialists in person or online to customize their barrel, participating as much or as little as they like in the process. Membership is available on three levels, beginning at USD 5,000 annually plus the cost of grapes, barrels and labelling for about 250 bottles of wine. Wine classes are also included, as is the opportunity to trade bottles with other members; wine sales, however, are prohibited. About a third of City Winery's barrels have already been sold, according to its site.
City Winery's venue side, meanwhile, features a flexible space that can accommodate up to 200 people seated or 400 standing, with an in-house stage and sound system. A full catering kitchen is onsite to serve the venue's multiple dining and tasting rooms, while the wine bar will have more than 50 wines available by the glass each night. Through City Winery's VinoFile membership program, customers can track their wine consumption and get related suggestions from the on-site sommeliers and winemakers. A special cheese bar from Greenwich Village-based Murray's Cheese, meanwhile, will be manned by a full-time expert to create the appropriate wine pairings from a selection of over 30 cheeses. City Winery also plans to create unique pairings of private concerts with such delicacies as wine and chocolates, mushrooms or truffles, port or scotch.
Frequent Springwise readers will undoubtedly notice the way City Winery's efforts tap into the customer-made and still made here trends, while offering consumers some much-sought-after status skills to boot. Will City Winery follow in Crushpad's footsteps and relax its rule prohibiting wine commerce among its customers? We'll keep you posted. In the meantime, one to watch!
Website: www.citywinery.com
Contact: info@citywinery.com
Spotted by: RK
We've already written about programs to adopt a vineyard or an olive tree, and now two Maine brothers have found a way to offer consumers the chance to adopt a Maine lobster trap.
For USD 2,995, consumers can own a Maine lobster trap and all the lobsters it catches for an entire year through the Premium Trap program from Catch a Piece of Maine. As "partners," as the company calls them, customers of the program are assigned a dedicated lobsterman who will fish their trap throughout the 32-week season. Everything he catches is tracked with a colour-coded band placed on the lobsters' claws, and all data is recorded online so that the partner can view their trap's activity, manage their catch and schedule shipments from anywhere. As lobsters are caught by the trap, the partner's account grows; as lobsters are requested for shipment, it decreases again. Lobsters can be shipped in batches of four as soon as they are caught, or they can be saved for later (in which case the company will substitute one just caught for the original); either way, details are included on when, where and by whom they were obtained. Catch a Piece of Maine guarantees at least 48 1.5 lb lobsters for each partner—totalling over 70bs.—and also 12 lbs. steamer clams, 12 lbs. mussels, and 48 servings of Maine-made desserts over the course of the year. All shipments are sent via FedEx overnight delivery throughout the continental U.S.; shipping costs are included in the fee. Partners are even invited to come aboard the company's lobster boat in Maine if they can, to meet the lobstermen and experience the harvest first-hand. Corporate gifts and single-meal orders are also available, and Catch a Piece of Maine donates 10 percent of its profits to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, educating 5th and 6th grade students about the Maine lobster industry.
At a time when local fishermen are struggling to make a living, Catch a Piece of Maine's partnership program allows lobstermen to receive a premium for their product while also preserving their sustainable fishing methods, the company says. No less significantly, it also gives consumers an active hand in what has typically been a hands-off business. Finally, it dovetails nicely with the still made here trend, giving consumers a geographical connection and a story to tell about the source of their food.
Website: www.catchapieceofmaine.com
Contact: brendan@catchapieceofmaine.com
Spotted by: Andrew Borislow
We've featured two businesses that offer custom-blended tea: Blends For Friends in the UK and Design A Tea in the US. Since tea-lovers aren't the only ones to yearn for a hot beverage they can call their very own, we knew it wouldn't be long before one of our Springspotters pointed us to a company offering custom-blended coffee.
From Germany this time, Sonntagmorgen (German for Sunday morning) sells made-to-order coffee blends online. Customers can choose from nine regional varieties and set their own blend ratios. A 250 gram pack of coffee can contain 4/7ths Ethiopian Sidamo and 3/7ths Indian Pearl Mountain, for example. Adjusting is easy: just flick arrows up or down. Once the momentous blend decisions have been made, coffee-meisters specify a grind (or whole beans), and can then move on to add flavouring. Sonntagmorgen offers 13 aromas, ranging from vanilla to chili peppers, and users can select up to three.
Finally, customers pick a name for their personal brand of joe, which is printed on the label along with the varieties and aromas used. Prices for a custom-made blend depend on the types of coffee used, but average around EUR 7 for a 250 gram bag. Until entire pantries can be stocked with personalized food, customization opportunities abound for smart and creative entrepreneurs. (Related: Mixed-to-order muesli.)
Website: www.sonntagmorgen.com
Contact: www.sonntagmorgen.com/index/kontakt
Spotted by: Sven Hock
With food prices soaring across the globe, consumers are understandably concerned. To help ensure that retailers don’t pass on more of the price increases than is strictly necessary, Italy's Department for Agriculture, Food & Forestry is offering transparency by text message. Its SMS Consumatori service tracks prices for over 80 types of fruit, vegetables, meat, dairy products, fish, etc and lets consumers access them when they’re out shopping.
To use the service, shoppers send a text message to 47947, typing the name of the product they want a price for. (The system recognizes both singular and plural nouns, as well as variations.) They instantly receive a reply listing both a wholesale price and average retail prices in the North, Centre and South. If a product has various varieties, the service sends separate messages for each of the most popular ones. For example: text "pear", and SMS Consumatori will return three separate messages, for Kaiser, Conference and Abate pears.
Taking a thorough approach to getting its prices right, SMS Consumatori sources information from 2,200 different stores, ranging from butchers, market stalls and greengrocers to 'ipermercati' and discount stores, and covers all of Italy. Prices are updated from Tuesday to Saturday. The project's website also shows price development over time, and where the highest and lowest prices for each product were found. Shoppers can even fill a virtual shopping cart and see what its average cost would be; registered users can save their shopping baskets for a personal view on historical data.
The service is free, but to keep costs and traffic down, consumers can request a maximum of 5 prices per day and 30 per month. Since it doesn't look like global food prices will drop anytime soon, this is one to set up elsewhere if you're in government or telecom/mobile. For more on how to prosper (or fail) in a fully-informed marketplace, check out trendwatching.com's briefing on transparency tyranny.
Website: www.smsconsumatori.it
Spotted by: Giulia Cuccolini
A few weeks ago we wrote about Bikecaffe's coffee tricycles in the UK, and now another pedal-powered purveyor has been spotted on the streets of Copenhagen.
Ole Skram has begun tempting the pedestrians and cyclists of Denmark's capital city in recent weeks with the smell of freshly brewed coffee from his coffee "chariot"—an espresso machine mounted onto a three-wheeled carrier cycle with a specially designed frame. The machine can brew coffee for several hundred people, but Skram is keeping the details of its inner workings to himself. The "coffee-man," as he's become known, says the idea came to him as he was sipping coffee at his local café; soon thereafter he found a blacksmith who could construct a contraption for mounting the coffee maker onto his bike. "I think it has turned out very well," he says. "It has spirit, flowers and charm, just the way I wanted it." Skram and his chariot can be found around central Copenhagen as well as at Østerport station and planned events.
We've seen Coffee 2.0's ascension into Starbuckian ubiquity; relocalization through homegrown and fair trade retailers; mobilization through motorized coffee carts and now—the eco version—pedal-powered vendors in Denmark and the UK. Where will the next coffee chariot appear? You decide! ;-)
Website: n/a
Contact: +45 60 65 16 01
Spotted by: Lars Hedegaard Pedersen
For UK office workers, making tea is serious business with a political component all its own. No one wants to get stuck making the office tea every time, and that's just the problem a new, tea-focused website helps solve.
MaketheTea.com is a new site from UK dairy brand Cravendale that aims to facilitate the tea-making process among groups of the beverage's fans around the world. Users of the site begin by entering their preferences for the all-important drink, including amounts of milk and sugar they like to add. (Options are also available to indicate preferences for those who prefer coffee or another beverage.) Users then invite their friends to join the site as well, forming a group of linked drinkers. Once that's done, users need only click the "Brew Now" button and MaketheTea.com will randomly select a brewer from among the group members to make that round of tea. Post-cuppa, users can then "rate or slate" the maker, depending on the quality of the brew.
Part viral marketing campaign, part life hack and part social network, Makethetea.com was launched in late April. Since then, it has facilitated the making of more than 40,000 brews around the world... Not to mention serving up an undoubtedly strong cup of goodwill for Cravendale, its maker. (Related: Group dining made easy.)
Website: www.makethetea.com
Contact: brewmaster@makethetea.com
Spotted by: Bjarke Svendsen
