Most food systems initiatives fail in one of two predictable ways.
Failure mode one: the food doesn’t move.
The first failure mode is the one most people anticipate. A market gets built and farmers can’t make the unit economics work. An urban farm produces well in year one and collapses in year three when the founding director leaves. A food council issues a report and nothing measurable changes.
Failure mode two: the technology doesn’t fit.
The second failure mode is quieter and, in our experience, more expensive: the technology doesn’t fit. A regional food hub installs a $400,000 ERP system designed for a distributor ten times its size. A nonprofit buys CRM seats it can’t operate. A foundation funds a data platform that doesn’t connect to the funded organizations’ actual workflows. The food system survives the tech, but it bleeds.
Both failures share a common ancestor.
The people designing the food work and the people designing the technology work were different people, and they didn’t know how to talk to each other.
Our entire practice is organized around closing that gap.
If your food project has a tech stack that feels wrong, or a tech roadmap that doesn’t connect to the food work — that is the thing to fix first. Strategy, governance, and partnerships matter, but they all run on infrastructure. Get the infrastructure right and most of the other problems become tractable.