Research and Context

SPECIALIST STUDY

mindmap

chosen idea

I am going to create a beautiful and visually satisfying cooking animation (twenty seconds) alongside a delivery food brand, promoting healthy eating (especially in a pandemic) and creating less waste, this is aimed at the ages of 20-85 as these are the ages of vulnerable people that will have bank accounts. In my christmas break I took the time to think about exactly what I wanted to do with this project, I knew I wanted to do an animation. Through the holiday as usual I was on my phone on social media, anime scenes of food being made were trending because of their satisfying look that people were in love with. These scenes had inspired me and I decided to do this animation project about making food at home and it relating to covid since food and resources have been an issue throughout these times. The next step was to decide how to apply it to the very lose brief we’ve been set. I thought of having this as an advert for a restaurant or a grocery store such as Tesco etc.

The restaurant idea did not fit due to the concept, this was an advert about making food at home, so a restaurant advertising making food from home would defeat the purpose of going to a restaurant. I am more into the thought of advertising a shop delivery system where they send you products to create restaurant quality fresh food to help customers healthy in these times of isolation. The brand “Hellofresh” came to mind as a lot of youtubers I watch publicise it. The brand has a website where you can put in personal details about your diet such as being vegetarian etc. and they will send you meal set ups with fresh ingredients every week with less plastic packaging that fit what you enjoy eating. This is great for the environment and great for people working from home in this global pandemic who may not have time to go to the shops every week or may not want to expose themselves to the virus and only go out for exercise. Especially big families who may struggle to think of meal plans.

medium

For my project I want to use the digital medium, with my new Huion Kamvas display pen tablet creating a 2d animation. I am not sure on software, I only just bought this and it is my first pen tablet. My next step is to research user friendly professional softwares that allows me to create 2D twenty second animation easily. I will make sure to go into detail on my progress and learning when it comes to the new software. I also plan on using an AI software that analyses your video/animation and makes more in between frames. I plan on making an animation of up to 15 FPS and turning it into 30 FPS in this software.

In previous animation projects I have solely worked on the iPad Application named Procreate, this is an art app but in the beginning of 2020 it introduced an animation tool that is extremely user friendly, this also allows you to create beautiful short animations because of its original art intent giving the user beautiful brushes and easy to access colour palettes you can access across any project - unlike photoshop. To be honest, I may end up using adobe animate although vector style isn't what I usually do.

analysis

This project is very new for me since I have never made animation on my computer, I have always used my procreate on my ipad. This whole project I will be logging my learning and experience with a completely new software that I have not yet decided upon. The project idea is new in the way that it will be inspired by “Hellofresh” but I will re-design the brand and packaging to help my animations background and advertisement, I also have not seen an advert for a food brand that has used an animated food making process in a home kitchen.

In my project I will better the world in the way I will be bringing awareness to self care in these hard times, I will also be supplying people with the knowledge of how general grocery shopping can affect the world and is one of the leading parts of plastic consumption, as my project inspiration “Hellofresh” has packaging that is completely Recyclable which is much more renewable than the current food consumption availability. I am making healthy food more accessible to people vulnerable to covid by advertising this food scheme that allows people to safely have healthy food at the click of a button, this is positive in the way it helps people stay healthy when they may not be able to have access to fresh food. I also plan to make this project affordable for big companies to stock buy and spread out to homeless people so they have the opportunity to eat healthy.

Making this cheaper also means families that are facing financial struggle can afford healthy food. When people buy from hello fresh they are paying for the delivery, service fee and food itself so it can end up being expensive, maybe i'll have the business partly run off of volunteers so that people can afford it and not have to pay for delivery. For me in my previous projects I have used a lot of target audiences of the coming of age, age. This project has given me a new target audience in the way I usually aim at 15-30 but this is aimed at 20-35, giving me a slightly more mature audience due to create media for and will give me a different perspective on my project that I haven't had before.

Essay research plan

10 pieces of research for Essay

Essay Title “In what ways has Hellofresh changed the food market for food subscription services? What help have they supplied during covid”

Introduction and attractive starting line

How many people are subscribed to hello fresh
The reliability of hello fresh and reviews of the website etc.
Research on the competition to Hellofresh and their accessibility differences
Article about grocery stores yearly waste
Questionnaire on the knowledge of plastic waste from normal shopping - reflection on answers and my take
Article on the physical health downfall during the 2020 pandemic
Article about GYMS and resource shortages on how it affected people
Questionnaire on the knowledge of mental health and struggle of food access throughout the pandemic - reflection on answers and my take
The difference of people using hello fresh for a month compared to grocery shopping for a month and the waste from both
Questionnaire on if people would switch over to a less wasteful source of food purchasing that is affordable and user friendly

End conclusion

ESSAY

In what ways has the Hellofresh brand changed the food market for food subscription services? What help have they supplied during covid?

We all hate covid, the restrictions that come with it and the struggle of resources. It is a popular wish to help people in these times, especially vulnerable people who need it the most, whether it's having a bad immune system or not being able to wear a mask because of exemptions. It’s a popular dream to create a place for vulnerable people that allows them to safely purchase healthy food in an affordable way so they don't become more vulnerable. This essay will cover articles on food waste, how we can solve it and the future steps of home delivery as well as a questionnaire. In this essay I am going over Primary and secondary research to ensure my project has enough research to back it up, I could also use primary research to reinforce my research and inform my future decision. This research will help create a solid foundational knowledge of the hardships in relation to resources in covid and how to help with that, and the overall food wastage. This research will be prioritised to the food and meal plan delivery company ‘HelloFresh’, this is their self description - (TrustPilot, 2020)

“You’ll choose your favourites from our weekly menu of exciting recipes and decide how many meals you’d like for however many people. Then, we’ll deliver those recipes and fresh ingredients to your door, every week, so you can cook delicious dinners of your choice. We’ve got recipes for everyone from meat eaters to vegetarians, families to couples and from those with low calorie diets to others who want quick, easy recipes. Most importantly, you’re in control of your box, so you can skip a week or two whenever you like in your account area.”

Amongst teenagers of the 21st century, YouTube is consumed to a high rate. The brand “HelloFresh” sponsors most of the popular YouTubers Generation Z watch, to share the message of their brand to a broader audience. It is convincing to the masses that it's a popular and well known company of food delivery. But how popular? Article from ‘FoodNavigator.com’ titled ‘HelloFresh’s strong first quarter illustrates shift in consumer eating habits‘ (2020) - “4.18 million HelloFresh delivered over 111 million meals and reached 4.18 million active customers, up from 2.48 million in the same period last year, a rise of 68.4%.” This is a good indication of the reliability from ‘HelloFresh’, this is based on the amount of people who’ve ordered their products in a year's time. It shows that people like their products from becoming subscribers to the brand and staying subscribed. Next thing to look into is the reviews of ‘HelloFresh’ and the other food delivery companies to find out if 4.18 million customers is actually a wealthy number in the delivery business. These were helpful statistics because it gives a ground base of what attraction ‘HelloFresh’ has annually and what other businesses may have annually.

In these reviews we will be looking at positive and negative ones, about the customer service and food quality. Here is a negative review from the trustworthy review site ‘Trustpilot’, by Mrs Jayne Fenemore titled ‘missing items on first delivery’ (2021)- “You would of thought this being our first order that it would be 100% correct but no. There was recipe cards missing so I had to go online to download which was a pain and there was no coriander in the box. The portions of meat were very small considering they were meant for three people. And nearly all meat minded and of cheap quality.” there were quite a few one star reviews left like this. It is a very concerning factor that there were so many people let down by the payment method, subscriptions, amount of food and the customer service being such a low quality in the UK. The deliverables may be better in Berlin, Germany since that is where ‘Hellofresh’ was founded, although a good company would have amazing service world wide. There are only 11% of bad reviews, so I’ll look into one of the 60% excellent ones- titled ’Life is better because of Hello Fresh!’ by ‘Lesley Macneil’ (2021) “I was just fed up with having to think of 7 different dinners every week. I am so happy I did. 9 times out of 10 the meals come with all the ingredients and when I have informed them of errors they provide a refund. The meals are delicious and mostly suit the whole family. They are definitely easy to prepare and the choice is very good. I nearly gave 4 stars as ‘HelloFresh’ is not perfect, but this service has made family life regarding meals so much less stressful, brought new recipes into the home and I understand that new businesses have teething troubles. They deserve the five.” There are a lot of “Excellent” reviews like this, done by parents explaining how there have been a low percentage of missed items in orders overall and they had a refund whenever there were any. They seem to understand that the business would have too many orders to keep up with, and they don't seem to mind the odd mishap since it provides easy and healthy meals for the family while they're very busy and would otherwise be overwhelmed with having to plan meals all the time. For the project I will be working on, something like the following could be used to put onto the branding, “All benefit but parents LOVE this most” something like that.

While looking at the reviews of ‘HelloFresh’ on ‘Trustpilot’ there was this side bar of other food delivery services reviews. This was perfect because research into the ‘HelloFresh’ competitors and their statistics was set as the next step. For this we will look into Mindful Chef, this is the one with the most stars, it will be good to see why it got more stars than ‘HelloFresh’ in the UK.

This part will review the good and bad reviews written for “Mindful Chef”, another food delivery service for all. For the good review, we will be looking at the one left by ‘Christine Blacker’ titled ‘Give it a try if you like good food’ (2021) “I have always said that I would never buy a product like this, but my meals were getting very predictable. Saw Mindful chef on Facebook and decided to give them a try. No waste, just beautiful restaurant quality food prepared by me in my kitchen. What's not to love” this review was left by someone who, quote; ‘I have always said that I would never buy a product like this’ but was pleasantly surprised that this was worth the try, this product was advertised on facebook as they mention, which means the company would be heard by the Generations that use Facebook, such as ‘Generation Y’ (Millennials) to ‘Generation X’ (baby bust) I found these generation names and ages on the website “Robinson, M. (2021) Which Generation Are You?”. This means this is also their target audience rather than ‘HelloFresh’ who also branch out to younger generations by advertising on youtube. For the bad review we will look at this one left by ‘customer’ titled ‘Never received my food’ (2020) “Never received my food, never record a reply from customer service. Did not receive my money back. Just lost £70 when I have Covid. Really needed help with food.” This customer was very upset with how they were treated and the money they lost, there was no response to this review and it was written last year too, this is very poor treatment towards this customer when other bad reviews were responded to. There was another bad review about the amount of plastic being used in the packaging and the company responded to the review saying how they have struggled to meet their goal of becoming plastic free by 2021 due to covid but are trying to get back onto it. There weren't many bad reviews, the good ones outweigh the bad ones by a long shot, it is a shame there were some customers who were relying on the weekly deliveries especially while sick and were let down. This information is helpful because it shows how other brands deal with customers where ‘HelloFresh’ had not responded to any bad reviews, this shows a lack of management as well as their lack of organising a few orders. It is important to take into account that this delivery service ‘Mindful Chef’ has half the reviews total that ‘HelloFresh’ has, so its a bigger variety of opinions and messed up orders to throw into the mix. Although even if ‘Mindful Chef’ had double the reviews they had now it would still be better than the ‘HelloFresh’ Reviews analytics.

In this section we will be searching the web to see the specific annual waste of ordinary shopping. How much do shops throw away, how much waste do families produce from the packaging provided and are there articles about it? This is an important topic to others as it impacts the environment and has an add on to daily lives issues such as worry and chores. After this piece of research there will be a questionnaire made- seeing if people understand the extent of the plastic produced by general shopping. My question is “What is the grocery stores yearly waste?” This means looking into how much food and plastic waste they cause yearly simply by not having direct customers that order what they need/when they need it.

Quote from “GOV.UK” titled ‘UK supermarkets sign government pledge to help halve food waste’ -“Food waste in the UK totals 10.2 million tonnes per year, of which 1.8 million tonnes comes from food manufacture, 1 million from the hospitality sector, and 260,000 from retail, with the remainder from households. 13 Jun 2019” this shows that the food waste in the UK is a massive problem and is not solved by now, a total of 10.2 million tonnes annually is horrific. How can we solve the food waste? When looking to google one of the first things that came up were that food deliveries waste less food as the customer gets exactly what they need, set for when they need it delivered by one vehicle around an area of multiple deliveries. This information is based off of the article labelled ‘How online ordering could cut food waste’ by “GreenBiz” - “We tend to make smaller but more frequent orders when buying online. This bumps up emissions from delivery but the total emissions associated with food consumed at home can fall by as much as 41 percent. This shift is a major opportunity, because ordering online can lead to big reductions in wasted food. 8 May 2020” the issue of more common orders and less food being delivered could be solved by people stock buying every month and having small orders once in a while in between those monthly orders- limiting the constant more often orders.

This information is very useful, it will help create a Google form that will give an insight on the general knowledge of the waste from “normal” shopping. With my project I will be making an animation advertising a original new brand concept based off of ‘HelloFresh’ and other companies like them, this information saying food deliveries have caused less food waste for the world has helped me heavily. It’s a good thing to order online when it comes to bigger food branches as they can afford it, especially in covid. But it is also important to support independent businesses down the road that haven’t gotten to the point of delivery yet because they are too small and struggle to grow because of these big companies people resort to- who cause a lot of food waste.

Do people use their own bags when shopping? How do they travel to the shop? Do they get deliveries? What's their personal take on the amount of waste the UK produces annually? These are all questions that needed to be answered for this project, so a google ‘Form’ was created to find these answers.

This question was made to have multiple choices, you could choose one, two or all, automatically this was made into a bar chart. I received almost 40 responses which I feel will create a reliable source of information. The answers for this question was that thirty-one out of thirty-seven people have shopped at a popular chain supermarket such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s Etc. There was only thirteen people overall who get weekly and monthly food deliveries on top of other shopping. This is important information because it shows how popular online shopping is when it comes to food. This information is also important because it shows that people are just as supportive towards online shopping as they are to independent businesses such as corner shops. I am not very surprised the popular shop option was chosen most as it can be the most reliable in the sense they will always have what you’re looking for and that goes for delivery too, there are chain shops dotted all around so the delivery would be less expensive, professionally dealt with and more accountability rather than ‘HelloFresh’ who have missed items from their orders because they aren’t as far spread as chain stores. Knowing that a lot of people go towards mainstream shops because they are so convenient I could find a way to convince people to shop online at my make believe brand. I’ll need to find something specific that is convincing such as using electric cars for the deliveries and/or recyclable packaging, perhaps Hemp Oil plastic which bio degrades significantly faster than normal plastic.

This question was made as a single response, so the person could only choose one answer, due to this it would be made into a pie chart automatically by ‘Google Forms’. This question was meant to find out how conscious people are about plastic waste, the answers were surprisingly pleasant as the majority (thirty-four out of thirty-seven) had said they use their own bags when shopping. Two people had said they get deliveries and one person said they get the plastic bags at the shop.

This question was also set to have multiple choices, you could choose one, two or all, this was a multiple choice question because there are multiple ways of going to the shop. This question was asking people how they travel to the shop, this was made a question because of the previous piece of research on the waste from shops, one solution was to have the delivery service since it is only one car driving food and delivering it. These answers were disappointing because a lot of people said they go to the shop using a car alongside other means of transport. Although it is bad news people often drive to the shops, it means that if people order deliveries they would all stop having those small journeys and a few cars would be delivering the food to all the homes who would individually drive there. Eight people said they get deliveries alongside going to the shops and the majority answer of twenty-four clicks was of walking. At least twenty-four out of thirty-seven people walk to the shop as well as other means of transport. Because a lot of people drive to the shop I could include somewhere in my advertising that it is a benefit to use this service due to not wasting fuel from going back and forth to the shop. I could also include services other than meal preparation such as yogurt pots and other things to stock buy that wouldn’t be available in these kinds of delivery services such as HelloFresh.

This question was made to see why people had chosen the number above, It was a written response so they could go into more detail of their reasoning. The majority of people got the right answer, seems like they truly understand the waste our nation produces. Most of the reasons were just this, saying they know we waste a lot so they opted for the highest number; ‘I assume the worst because many people are wasteful and aren’t considerate with how they use resources.’ This is one of the responses that displays a lot of what people said. There were three people who said the smallest number- then there were four who said the second highest. Seven people in total hadn’t chosen the right answer, one of their reasons was that society has adapted to have recycling etc, so it mustn't be too big. It is from the responses to this question that people do see food waste as a big issue, as most people chose the largest number. It may be wise to address this concern in any branding or package design that I work on. For example the packaging may need to make it clear that it is fully recyclable, either subconsciously or more directly. I made significant efforts through sources not related to HelloFresh to discover if HelloFresh really does have an ethical operation, for example - delivery driver welfare, transparency of food sources, welfare of people further down the chain etc carbon footprint of products. Sadly the only thing I could find on the whole internet was this facebook post about someone receiving a non free range chicken meat in an order, although there were no images to back this person's statement it is something to take into account, I could put on my branding that all resources are free range- to be able to afford the cheaper delivery I am planning on including to ensure more people can access healthy food I could have the primary workers as volunteers.

For my CMP I am planning to design and make my own food delivery service with an aesthetic animation to advertise it, I will try to incorporate the aspects that I went over in this essay that made the companies I analysed successful as a base in my own project. To make the animation I will need to explore the different animation softwares using youtube and websites. Will people resort to only online shopping because of the global pandemic? Is online shopping and deliveries going to stop when the pandemic is over? Will I be able to make an animation and a box and logo design in time for the project deadline?