House cricket - a sustainable source to protein

Purpose and goal:

The aim of the project was to validate and verify the customer benefit of the business case for which we set up a hypothesis, as well as to establish long-term customer relationships.

The goal was to validate the business case that we set up, and to get one was cricket producer to sign a cooperation agreement with us, that we would be paid as a % of their cricket harvest (in kg). Unfortunately, we did not reach this goal, as it turned out that the cricket market is still very immature.

Expected results and effects:

Our efforts did not result in our set objective. However, we have gained new insights around the market, which we did not know before the project. These insights have led us to now want to pivot in our approach and invest in a pilot plant instead. At this facility, we will then be able to show how good our crickets are in practice (and not just in theory). This, in turn, can lead to us instead becoming the cricket producer that we have not yet found as a customer.

Approach and implementation:

Our project consisted of 3 different sub-activities: a) optimize the business case b) verify customer benefit and willingness to pay c) build customer relationships.

We have worked with all 3 sub-activities in parallel during the course of the project. We have had contacts with many house cricket producers who thought that our business case was good. But at the same time, they themselves were a startup, with no large-scale facility. However, we have established many new contacts and expanded our network, who knows maybe some of these contacts will lead to down the line?