A new experience for the UK’s oldest food market
Brief
How will changes in technology, society and climate affect food markets and the people within them?
Executive Summary
Working with Borough Market – the oldest food market in the UK – the team and I designed a platform that would set Borough Market up for success for the next decade. By integrating various stakeholders within our process, we ensured our deliverable remained focused and could make a big difference in levelling up the market. The platform is designed to allow market vendors to build more meaningful connections with their while empowering the market management team with the data they need to make informed decisions
The Royal College of Art x Borough Market
2021
5/5 - Excellence
Desk research, in-depth interviews, expert interviews, surveys, synthesis wall, trend analysis, future forecasting, ideation, journey map, storyboard, service blueprint, service offering, prototyping
Client
Year
Grade
Methods
Background
For our Term 1 project (3 month duration) at The Royal College of Art we explored how food market traders’ jobs could evolve over the next 5-10 years. We reached out to Borough Market – the oldest food market in the UK - who were very excited to partner with us, granting us access to some to some of the UK’s best food producers.
Borough Market is over 1000 years old and has gone through many changes as the city evolved. The growth of supermarkets pulled more of its frequent shoppers away in favour of more convenient options, forcing the market to pivot from being a provider of daily produce to one of speciality and special occasions. More recently, the COVID pandemic changed the flow of visitors, with many people now working from home and not passing by its very popular commuting hub (London Bridge).
Low footfall and differences of opinion between market traders and management did not help alleviate the pressure of such stressful and uncertain times, and many traders carried a tangible sense of worry.
“It’s really important we get Londoners, visitors and tourists back to Borough Market because this is the best market in the world.”
Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London
Research
We identified two levels of stakeholders:
Primary stakeholders
Market Traders & Producers
Borough Market management
Customers (existing, lapsed, potential)
We researched our primary stakeholders by interviewing them in-situ, ensuring we visited the market at multiple times throughout the weeks to properly gauge how active the traders were. We also ensured we had a representative distribution of the different types of traders.
Secondary Stakeholders
Local community
Londoners
Food and agriculture experts
We reached out to the wider London and foodie communities through a survey, allowing us to gauge the popularity and current perceptions of Borough Market. We had the opportunity to speak to Carolyn Steele - author of Sitopia and Hungry City and a leading thinker on the relationships between food and cities. This gave us a strong theoretical and practical framework, allowing us to stand on the shoulders of giants.
Insights
Borough Market has been around for over 1,000 years; survived plagues, the Great Depression, 2 World Wars, terror attacks, pandemics, and more. From families carrying on centennial legacies of butchery to new food start ups, to food stalls serving fresh dishes from around the world, Borough Market is home to an incredibly diverse array of people and stories.
Today, Borough Market is at risk for three main reasons:
Conflicting incentives
The diversity at Borough Market is both one of its greatest strengths and a major challenge. In addition to each type of vendors having different needs, the past 5 years have seen Borough Market transition to more “prepared food” vendors (think street food stalls), introducing a whole new set of needs and challenges. For example, the space that was once reserved for customer parking has been transformed into additional space for stalls. While this brings more space and more choice, it no longer allows customers to do their big weekly shops due to the inability to bring the produce back home. This impact has been substantial for produce and ingredient traders. Additionally, the introduction of prepared food stalls has shifted the market’s perception with customers from being primarily produce led to now being seen as more of a food court.
Top-down ways of working
The market operated in a hierarchical way. Communication between parties is few and far between, with little to show for any conversations had. Despite being a self-relying ecosystem, there are no systems in place to facilitate discussion and drive change across the market. Traders felt that they were often in the dark when it came to management decision making, while management felt that many traders were not being as collaborative as they could be. In addition, the lack of digitisation effectively leaves Management flying blind: they have little idea on who their customers are, what the most popular items are, or any real metric of footfall across the week.
Tourist-first mindset
The busiest time of the year for the market is December, where many tourists visit London and experience the market’s selection of top-tier produce. Consequently the market has prioritised the tourist experience over that of a local shopper, leading to a greater emphasis on specialist produce.
The combination of these led to unhappy vendors, a struggling market, and customer needs not being met. These insight inspired our design direction, rooted in the market’s 1000+ year history and its connection to the local community and environment:
Prototyping & Testing
We developed a click-through prototype which we tested of usability and accessibility with vendors across the generational spectrum, and made many adjustments to how and where information was presented. Traders were particularly excited about the empowerment which came over being able to track their performance in comparison to similar vendors, as well as the ability to understand more about their customers.
Throughout the prototyping stage we spent a lot of time at the market, grabbing every opportunity to talk to customers and traders. These visits played a crucial role in refining our prototype and ensuring that we stayed aligned to the real needs of the market vendors, Borough Market Management and customers.
Delivery
Introducing Buro - A suite of micro-services that enables Market Traders to learn and connect with their customers both in person and remotely, while generating shopping data that will help shape Borough Market.
We adopted a micro-service approach as this tech platform would allow Borough Market to launch each service independently of another. This empowers the market to grow at a pace which vendors can follow and feedback.
Online Market Place
Delivery Hub
Inventory & Content Management
Calendar & Events Management
Back-end Analytics
By integrating all relevant stakeholders in our research and prototyping phases, we delivered a prototype that, when implemented, would:
Give market traders with the tools they need to shape how and when they work.
Empower borough market management with the data and insights they need to make informed decisions
Enable market shoppers to buy and shop in new ways with greater convenience and more meaningful connections with traders
