Box Divvy is a social enterprise business that deals with the food community by connecting farmers directly to wholesalers. The business enterprise was formed by farmers unsatisfied with the operations of the food system. The intention was to ensure that consumers accessed quality food at extraordinary prices and compensate farmers fairly. Box Divvy has substantially grown over time since it has managed to bring together over 7,500 farmers in the network aimed at changing the food system to ensure that it is also fair among the farmers. Box Divvy must retain the quality of products and services rendered to customers and farmers even as the organization experiences immense growth.
Summary of Processes
Box Divvy, a social enterprise business, ensures that all its stakeholders receive the best services possible, with the profits generated channelled to the farmers to reduce the cost of operation. The company’s operations begin with the farmers aimed at ensuring that they produce quality farm products for their customers (Box Divvy, 2023). The enterprise advocates for conventional farming practices free from chemical sprays aimed at lowering the carbon footprint. Box Divvy also minimizes low food miles, packaging, and food wastage. Usually, the farm produce is collected for delivery to the consumers.
A key factor to note about Box Divvy is that orders are taken directly from the garden and delivered to the consumers. The social enterprise business has a smart app where the customers follow an easy procedure to place their orders. A customer can purchase individually or in a group for sharing. Whichever the case, Box Divvy guarantees its customers a sure way to access products at a lower price compared to purchasing from grocery stores. Additionally, the food produced is also fresh and of high quality, considering that the farmers deliberately omit chemicals when growing the vegetables.
The communities also run a food hub where members can access fresh and quality food produce. Moreover, the food community does not have to pay for the food hubs because it is located at an individual’s house, scouts, schools, or community centres. The person in charge of the food hubs is referred to as a hubster. Another notable operation by the Box Divvy community is that it offers delivery services for customers who purchase the product through the smart app (Box Divvy, 2023). The consumers have the responsibility to pay the cost of delivery. Notably, delivery is a crucial activity for a business that has the potential to affect customer satisfaction. For instance, it is convenient for consumers who experience time constraints and cannot pick the orders from the food hubs. On the other hand, there must be no delays experienced when delivering the commodities since such a practice will negatively affect the consumers’ attitude toward the business.
Quality and Sustainability Elements Analysis
Sustainability is a crucial activity in operation management because it ensures that the organization achieves its objectives without compromising the interests of its customers and other stakeholders. Box Divvy has to consider the interests of its farmers and consumers even as it pursues growth and profitability. As a result, the organization must ensure that the farmers continue to benefit from the enterprise by receiving fair compensation for their farm produce. In addition, it is essential to ensure that the enterprise supports its farmers to continue producing quality products by adhering to conventional farming practices, which minimizes the use of chemical sprays. On the other hand, the community enterprise must also be considerate of the needs and interests of their consumers such that they ensure they have access to quality, fresh, and cheap products at any given time.
Box Divvy can achieve quality and sustainability even as the company grows by ensuring that it enhances the quality of operations to meet customer satisfaction. According to Sucháne and Králová (2019), customer satisfaction is fundamental to enhancing a brand’s competitiveness. It is essential to note that multiple grocery stores provide customers with an alternative if unsatisfied with the services and products offered by Box Divvy. Accordingly, ensuring that the organization prioritizes customer satisfaction to experience sustainable growth is crucial.
Box Divvy management must also consider the cost of production that the farmers will use to grow the farm produce. It is essential to keep the prices low to realize a high-profit margin. The company has adopted a good business model whereby it is possible to minimize the cost of operation by adopting conventional farming practices that enhance environmental sustainability (Vittis et al., 2021). Chemical sprays applied on plants increase the cost of production, meaning that their elimination helps to lower the price of commodities. However, the farmers must ensure that lowering the cost of production does not negatively affect the quality of the produce.
Reliability is another key element for the sustainability of the operations undertaken by Box Divvy. The term reliability in this context means that the customers will access all the commodities they wish to acquire from the food hubs at any given time (Sunday et al., 2021). That means that the Box Divvy company ought to streamline its supply chain to ensure that there will be no commodity shortage at any given time. Box Divvy works so that it has customers that provide specific farm produce for the consumers. It is vital to teaching the farmers to practice rotational growing of their plants of interest to ensure that there will be no shortage at any given time. Thus, the consumers will not order a commodity and get a response that there is a shortage.
Some recommendations to help the Box Divvy food community enhance quality and sustainability include training sessions for their farmers. The training sessions will focus on equipping the farmers with more knowledge on enhancing their products and maintaining high-quality products (Bohlayer, 2022). Notably, the company’s growth is not only on the consumers but also involves the farmers willing to benefit from the social enterprise due to dissatisfaction with the current food system. The food community enterprise can use some of the business’s profits to train its farmers. Another recommendation includes improving its delivery services to be available anytime to fit the diverse client’s needs. Such a move can help to deliver products to a large market share with no delays (Ghajargar, Zenezini & Montanaro, 2016). Thus, the management needs to streamline this aspect.
Operations and Strategies to Grow in Other States
Box Divvy’s social enterprise business must consider the nature of its business model even as it seeks to extend its operations in other states. Freisinger et al. (2021) note that the business model is a key determinant of whether a business will be successful in each market. Thus, Box Divvy should consider using a business model that has worked elsewhere. One essential factor that the management should consider is that the business is community-based. Thus, it is essential to maintain such a status quo in other states where it proposes to initiate its operations. The market research should include understanding the food system used in the target states and comparing it to Canberra and New South Wales operations. It will be possible to determine what aspects need to change. Nevertheless, the organization’s mission to provide consumers with quality and fresh produce while giving farmers fair compensation is acceptable in other places.
Box Divvy management should begin by identifying farmers willing to join the organization in each target country since they will be the source of the product. The farmers should undergo training on how to grow farm produce using conventional tactics. The trainers should emphasize how the strategy helps lower production costs, making it easy to sell the farm produce at a lower cost (Niţă & Ştefea, 2014). Secondly, the organization should also consider ensuring that they market the farm produce to the surrounding community by emphasizing its low price, quality, and freshness. It is anticipated that the products will sell given that the community has become sensitive to its lifestyle, including the types of foods consumed. However, there will be a need to convince the consumers why they should not purchase from grocery stores but from farmers. Finally, the management must also consider the culture of each state individually and evaluate what factors contribute to customer satisfaction. The farmers must adhere to these provisions. For instance, the company should teach farmers how to grow local produce and not introduce foods consumed in New South Wales and Canberra.
Reference list
Bohlayer, C 2022, ‘Insights into an Action-Oriented Training Program to Promote Sustainable Entrepreneurship,’ Transforming Entrepreneurship Education, pp. 87–101.
Box Divvy 2023, Home- Box Divvy, BOX DIVVY.
Freisinger, E, Heidenreich, S, Landau, C & Spieth, P 2021, ‘Business Model Innovation Through the Lens of Time: An Empirical Study of Performance Implications Across Venture Life Cycles’, Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, vol. 73, no. 3-4, pp. 339–380.
Ghajargar, M, Zenezini, G & Montanaro, T 2016, ‘Home delivery services: innovations and emerging needs’, IFAC-PapersOnLine, vol. 49, no. 12, pp. 1371–1376.
Niţă, CG & Ştefea, P 2014, ‘Cost Control for Business Sustainability,’ Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, vol. 124, pp. 307–311.
Suchánek, P & Králová, M 2019, ‘Customer satisfaction, loyalty, knowledge and competitiveness in the food industry,’ Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 1237–1255.
Sunday, AA, Omolayo, MI, Okwilagwe, O, Moses, ME & Bernard, AA 2021, ‘Evaluation of Effective Maintenance and Reliability Operation Management – A Review,’ in S Tummala, S Kosaraju, P Bobba & S Singh (eds), E3S Web of Conferences, vol. 309, p. 01012.
Vittis, Y, Folberth, C, Bundle, S-C & Obersteiner, M 2021, ‘Restoring Nature at Lower Food Production Costs,’ Frontiers in Environmental Science, vol. 9.
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