Homeboy Industries
A go-to-market and pricing strategy for Homeboy Harvest, the organization’s hydroponic farm.
The brief
Homeboy Industries runs gang-rehabilitation and re-entry programs in Los Angeles, including social enterprises that employ the people it serves. One of them, Homeboy Harvest, is a hydroponic farm designed to grow 3,000 heads of lettuce a month.
The farm was still under construction, so the questions came before the first harvest: who would buy the produce, and at what price?
What we delivered
Buyer research
Case studies of LA-area growers, and three target customer profiles: ingredient-driven restaurants, high-end chefs, and specialty retailers.
Restaurant outreach
A database of 50 LA-Metro restaurants and chains, and interviews about how they source produce, what they pay, and how they take delivery. National chains buy through corporate; several local restaurants were open to samples and short trials.
Pricing recommendation
A comparison of prices across farmers markets, restaurants, and direct-to-consumer channels, recommending lettuce at about $4.50 a head.
These were recommendations to Homeboy Industries. This page doesn’t describe what the farm went on to do.