Snack Time?

We teamed up with Kiva and the city of San Jose see the potential of creating a new standard for street food.

Food carts are the next big thing, they are a significantly more cost conscious approach to starting a food business with the average startup for a food truck in 2017 being around $85k. This is a $2.4 billion industry that is ready to be addressed.

Design Team
Mada Alabduljabbar
Ben Martin
Scott Meader
Patrick Nagel
Mackenzie Pope
Fariba Rahimian
Jasmine Shakouri

Kiva
Sarah Adeel

CHALLENGE

Redefine street food to become the new standard for food on the go.

Food carts are currently seen by as unregulated, makeshift, and inefficient.

Vendors need at least 4 different kinds of permits and approval by the National Sanitation Foundation (NSF). This expense combined with the complications of appointment scheduling and paperwork create an unnecessary barrier to entry for properly registered food cart vendors. While interviewing with food cart vendors across the city we learned that there is a whole network where a “patron” purchases and permits 10 - 20 carts and employs people to push and sell their foods.

Empowered by our research, Kiva and the City of San Jose came up with a proposal package that would make it easier for people to purchase and register carts within the city.

After reducing the barrier of entry, we focused on designing a cart that aligns with the requirements of the city and the day to day use of a vendor while staying cost effective.

 
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How can customers build a relationship with the vendors?

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How can the form of the cart highlight the product?

 

 SOLUTION

An iconic food cart that creates a designated space for vendors to sell their food.

Cora Cart is designed to be a modular cart that can fit the needs of a variety of food vendors while being structured enough to pass NSF and city inspection.

As a team we knew if this cart was going to make a difference we needed to garner support from the city, vendors, and customers so we focused on an open, iconic cart that people could recognize immediately.

 
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After our work with Kiva, the project was passed on to Veggielution who released a pilot program for these food carts in December 2018.

What’s Next?