A food and beverage cottage business is a small-scale business that produces and sells baked or prepared goods, and is most often conducted out of one’s own home. Among bakers and other individuals who prepare food, many run their own cottage business. According to a survey of 600 bakers conducted by the Better Baker Club, only a small fraction(3.1%) of bakers bake as a hobby. The rest of the participants either conducted a fully functioning business, were in the process of planning a home baking business, or occasionally sold their home baked goods. This same survey revealed that a cottage baking business was not reliably profitable, with 51.9% of respondents reporting that they have not yet paid themselves. This is problematic, because our own user research revealed that individuals run a cottage business as either a primary or secondary source of income on which they rely.

The other side of the coin is the American consumer, who is highly motivated to support local businesses, especially after th COVID-19 pandemic has been detrimental to so many of them. One survey found that 90% of Americans would go out of their way to support a local business, and over 82% of Americans say they would even spend more to shop locally and support local businesses. Shopping locally is generally beneficial, and according to some studies, consumers shop locally to support local creators,keep money local, and receive better service than larger businesses.

Research points to a clear hurdle for these bakers: marketing. Cottage business owners struggle to attract and retain customers, and need a way to find new customers.

Like many during COVID lockdowns, Melissa picked up baking as a hobby. During this time, she joined many baking-centric groups, and quickly realized that there was a whole group of people who ran businesses operated in a home kitchen otherwise known as cottage businesses. She noticed a lot of the same sentiment echoed again and again; these microbusiness owners struggled with many aspects of running a business, simply because most of them lacked the education or previous experience helpful for owning and operating a business.

We wanted a way to be able to bridge some of these gaps for cottage business owners, to help them to be able to thrive and continue doing what they love while supporting themselves and their families. We also wanted to be able to connect individuals with cottage business owners to enable them to support local businesses.

Problem Statement

Cottage business owners need an easy way to reach new customers and market their business so that they are successful and profitable.

Consumers need a way to connect with local cottage businesses so they can support their local economy.

Goals:

G1 Enable cottage bakers to showcase their businesses and attract customers
G2 Enable consumers to discover and connect with local cottage businesses

Research Insights

We approached the research with two goals in mind. First, we wanted to answer the question: what are the most significant challenges faced by cottage business owners in running their businesses. Second, we wanted to round out the persona of the cottage baker; who they are, and what drives them.

Our survey revealed a lot about the cottage baker. The majority of cottage business owners are between the ages of 31 and 45, and most run their business as their primary source of income. Cottage bakers have various comfort levels in using digital tools, however most report being very comfortable using digital tools to run their business. In addition to our own research, we referenced a survey conducted by the Better Bakers Club, which revealed that, despite being their primary source of income, most cottage business owners are unsure of their profitability, and many have not yet even paid themselves.

We had a few assumptions about how these business owners might respond to the question of their biggest obstacle, however the actual data revealed a problem we had not expected. Research insights pointed to a clear answer to this question: marketing. When asked to describe the most significant obstacle to running their business, the majority of cottage business owners pointed to marketing and customer acquisition as their primary challenge:

“Marketing that doesn't cost a small fortune or eat up a bunch of my time”
“Reaching ideal customers”

After conducting user research, sourcing data from outside sources, and understanding the market, we decided to create a tool to connect cottage business owners to potential customers.

Landing on the Solution

Once we began working on the solution, it became clear that a pivot would be necessary. Because our solution depended on engagement from both hosts(cottage bakers) and users(potential customers) we had to adjust and prioritize our problem space in order to decide which features to focus on building. As a result, we shifted our focus to

Design Learnings

User Stories :

User: Potential customers. Host: Cottage baker

US1: As a user, I need a way to find new cottage businesses so that i can support local business owners
US2: As a host I need a cost effective way to attract customers to my business so that I can continue to grow my business.
US3: As a user, I need a way to easily filter through cottage businesses based on search criteria so that I can find the right cottage business for my needs
US4: As a host, I need a way to showcase photos and details about my business and products.
Understand the final outcome…should action to describe the outcome

Lofi design

Lofi design 2

Implementation Details

Tech Stack Used

FrontEnd: ReactJs
Backend: MongoDB (Database), NodeJs, ExpressJs

Software Architecture: Monolith

These packages and tools can be used together to build the application with Node.js.

Bcrypt is a password hashing function that securely stores user passwords in a database.
Cloudinary is a cloud-based service for storing and managing media files.
dotenv is a tool for loading environment variables from a file.
Jsonwebtoken is a library for creating and verifying JSON Web Tokens (JWTs).
Nodemailer is a library for sending emails from a Node.js application.
Mongoose is an Object Document Mapper (ODM) for MongoDB.
helmet is a middleware for setting HTTP headers to help secure an Express application.
Multer is a middleware for handling HTTP requests with multipart/form-data.
Express-js is a fast, minimalist web framework for Node.js.

Future Goals

FG1 - facilitate transactions between user & hosts on the platform
FG2 - host product and business reviews on the platform

Learnings

Product Manager Learnings:

Melissa Davidson

With the help of the developers on my team, I was able to gain a deeper understanding of the work that goes into building a product. Specifically, why user stories are so important and how they get used in the process.
I got some valuable feedback from our mentor regarding clarity and organization of user stories.I have a better idea of how to communicate clearly and effectively through a user story, and how to use them to drive a product.
I gained experience using Trello to organize and manage a product, and the importance of this type of tool in the project management process.

Designer Learnings:

Abimbola Ayinde

I learned how important it is to collaborate with the developers early on in a project.
I learned how to apply non- linear design thinking to a real product.
I also learned about the importance of being flexible and reprioritizing design goals according to the project objective.

Developer Learnings:

Abayomi Ogunnusi

I learnt how to communicate my ideas and thoughts effectively and how to listen and understand the perspectives of others through software collaboration.
I learnt how to create and assign tasks, as well as how to track and report on the progress of the project through software collaboration.
I learnt how to collaborate and coordinate with other team members, as well as how to resolve conflicts and negotiate solutions through software collaboration.

Cottage Kitchen

Problem Background