diff --git a/content/session/Mutual_Benefit_Model_for_Restraurants_and_Communities.md b/content/session/Mutual_Benefit_Model_for_Restraurants_and_Communities.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a0dc078 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/session/Mutual_Benefit_Model_for_Restraurants_and_Communities.md @@ -0,0 +1,46 @@ +--- +title: “Mutual Benefit Model for Restaurants and Communities” +has_sessions: [“economic_solidarity.md”] +--- +# Mutual Benefit Model for Restaurants and Communities + +### Problems: +* Small business restaurants + * are shuttering en masse as their dining rooms become uninhabitable due to the possibility of virus transmission, + * causing thousands of people to lose their source of income and ability to sustain themselves and their families. +* Households: + * are now where people are having to work their jobs, provide homeschooling and childcare, prepare food, and find a sense of normalcy amongst panic. + * In order to suppress the rate of infection, people should be staying within those households as much as possible, ideally only leaving to replenish necessary supplies. + * As available spaces for households to get their supplies (ie grocery stores) grows increasingly limited, those spaces become increased vectors of virus transmission. + * The current shelter-in-place reality may be our norm for the next 12-18 months. +### Collaboration: +* How might small business restaurants serve the needs of their communities and simultaneously maintain their businesses and workers? +* Can we alleviate the dependency on grocery stores and decrease peoples’ need to leave their homes and potentially spread the virus? +* Can we provide relief to households who are having to juggle too many tasks while living through a fearful situation? +* Can we help workers who need income and support? + +#### Could a small business restaurant embedded within a community could provide all meals for [X] amount of households per week at an average of $[X]? + +Restaurants might develop a new model for this time by providing a full meal plan for households to pay a fixed weekly cost to have all their food needs covered. Households could pick up their food in a touchless system, quickly and efficiently in staggered times. + +A neighborhood focused model could be adapted and used in a multiplicity of contexts to incisively develop sustained communities that might push back against the spread of the virus. + +### Benefits: +* Small business restaurants + * A subscription service could provide more consistent and forecastable income. + * Cooking larger serving sizes of food would allow more exact product orders and less food waste. + * Less dependence on single serving packaging would lower costs and waste. + * An opportunity to organize larger scale support for business. +* Households + * Less time spent worrying about buying food and preparing meals for the week. + * Complete meals would ideally mean better nutrition to weather illness. + * Less time spent in potentially dangerous shared spaces. + * Reduce kitchen injuries and food handling issues to keep people out of hospitals. + * Increased access to safely handled food with a reduction in the amount of touches on food products. + * By organizing as a community to support a small business restaurant, individual costs go down when compared to ordering takeaway food on a per-meal basis. +### Considerations: +* Could multiple restaurants work together to share workload and provide variety for their communities? +* Could the week’s provisions be a combination of prepared food and essential grocery items? +* How might this system meet a multiplicity of dietary needs and restrictions? +* What is the physical and technological infrastructure needed to facilitate this system? +