Background
Due to a nasty gut disease I was diagnosed with in 2016, I turned my diet and lifestyle upside down in a personal journey of self-healing, and to avoid taking any steroids or medication for the rest of my life. I tried many diets; some which exacerbated my conditions, but none that gave me relief.
In January 2018 I stumbled on the "carnivore diet", which involved eating only food products that came from animals (mostly beef due to the nutrients) and water. It sounded mad, but I had nothing to lose and tried it - and to my surprise, after two weeks my symptoms were gone and after 30 days I felt better than I did before my diagnosis! So I stuck with it...
Fast forward 2+ years and I'm still a strict carnivore and I'm very proud to say I'm in full remission and healing well. I attribute this mostly to beef; specifically grass-fed beef and the incredible healing properties it has - along with the environmental and welfare related benefits.
Problem
Since I was eating a lot of meat, I needed to ensure it was high quality and well-sourced. This meant grass or pasture-fed beef was my best option - but the problem was that this wasn't easy to find or even understand as a consumer. In the UK the term ‘grass-fed’ has no legal definition and can be used to describe produce from cattle and sheep that are ‘predominantly reared on grass’ i.e., for just 51% of their lives. There is no specification for what they are fed for the other 49%.
The majority of beef and sheep meat in the UK is not marketed through its production system; but rather according to the breed (e.g. Aberdeen Angus beef), country-based quality marks (e.g. Scotch beef and Welsh lamb) and post slaughter treatment (e.g. 'matured for two weeks’) as well as through basic ‘assurance schemes’ (e.g. Red Tractor) and, depending on the cut of meat, through nutritional factors (e.g. ‘less than 20% fat’). For the majority of meat retailed in the UK, it is not possible at the point of sale to discern how and in what system that meat was produced.
As I researched the topic and spoke to friends, I started to realise this problem and lack of understanding was shared amongst many. Some of my friends just stopped buying meat as they didn't know where it was sourced from or how the animal was treated (not to mention all the bad and inaccurate press about red meat). I started to speak to farms and butchers in London and hack together my own solutions to to get around it to purchase my meat, until it clicked - why not create a proper solution?
Solution
After some market research and ideation, I decided to build an MVP website named "Where To Meat". It is an online website that helps consumers looking for grass-fed meat, enabling them to locate nearby grass-fed retailers with a unique location finder that brings UK restaurants, farms and shops together in one simple experience, whilst educating and informing them about grass-fed meat.
In my spare time I started to wireframe and design the site, but then in September 2019 I decided to commit and work on the project full time for a few months. It took me about 6 weeks to create a database of UK farms and butchers; including all the images, copy and features unique to each location. I also developed part of the front-end, with my brother and friend helping to build a modern tech stack and back-end, and implement Vue.js.
Outcome
We had a very successful launch - with around £100 of advertising spend in the first 30 days after launch, the site received:
- Over 3,300 unique users
- Over 24,000 events triggered
- Almost 400 users visited or contacted a business through the site
- Over 24,000 events triggered
- Almost 400 users visited or contacted a business through the site
Design Process
Research
To validate the problem and understand if there was a market, I decided to build a landing page test and pay for some advertising to drive traffic to it and gauge interest. The results were positive and enough to justify building a solution. You can see the plan and results below.
Branding
Logo
Colours
Typography
Screen design
Homepage concepts
Homepage
Results
Nearby
Location
Desktop homepage
