Introducing Jars: a food system we want 1/3

This year I’ve been working with Andrei Herasimchuk on a sustainable & healthy food concept. It’s actually a new personal food system that fits a new societal food system.

It’s called Jars .

Through Jars you create a better food system for the environment and your health by taking action today. You can enjoy affordable and healthy food when you make the right choice for a better future. Start today and help create a better food system!

To be clear, we are not done yet. We wish! We’ve prototyped out the idea that emerged a year ago, and continue to work on it. But I thought I’d share its progress with you here.

Why a new food system in a new food system?

Our current food system needs to change and we all know this.

Consumers want to be a force for good but the complexity of the problem feels overwhelming. Farmers deserve a more fair share for the great work they do.

We have a crazy idea that might just do the trick.

Jars introduces maker kitchens, physical spaces in your local neighborhood where consumers make their own food using specially designed workstations. Local farmers provide the ingredients to the maker kitchen for a fair deal. In this new model, profits are shared fairly to farmers, while consumers pay less than in supermarkets.

Consumers are a force for good

Jars is a maker kitchen that is located inside your community. This maker kitchen is equipped with specially designed workstations that let anyone easily make great food in minutes. These workstations provide a near zero waste environment with all the ingredients needed, already prepped and ready to be used at each workstation.

Every workstation at Jars allows you to make great food. Food that is fresh, healthy, and fits a busy, modern lifestyle. You’ll reconnect with your food by making it, along with all of the necessary spices, herbs, and kitchen staples available to provide you full control over flavor.

Jars will provide all of this and still be more affordable than the supermarket.

Do right by farmers

By creating a maker kitchen where you make your own food, Jars will be able to remove unnecessary middlemen from the system. More often than not, these middlemen take profit away from farmers and food producers. With Jars, these margins will go back to the farmer.

Economics of maker kitchens

By directly sourcing from farmers, taking into account seasonality and the fact we often don’t need A-quality looking vegetables or fruit, we can cut costs significantly.

Maker kitchens work with a membership model that allows us to balance the costs in relation to the food that is being produced and taken home. Recipes with their ingredients are tracked.

This allows each individual maker kitchen to understand what is needed to be profitable. A maker kitchen is optimized on the community level. If one member is a big fan of raspberry jam, but doesn’t want peanutbutter and another member loves pickling but doesn’t need tomato sauce, that’s all fine.

We aim to set the system up in such a way consumers can enjoy whatever they like to eat. And it should be easy for farmers to sell their produce, making it even more relevant once more maker kitchens go online.

Like with maker spaces — or making food at home for that matter — the responsibility of making food lies with the consumer. When you become a member of Jars, an experienced employee will explain the workstations and how to make food in a hygienic way. The employee is always there, in case you have any questions.

Testing the Jars concept

We are making our next move. Excited about our ideas? Our studio is located at Domplein 24, in the medieval city center of Utrecht in the middle of the Netherlands. Stop by and make your own peanut butter in 3 minutes, or less. We are open Monday — Wednesday from 9:00–17:00. But please drop us an email to be sure someone is available.

Or let us know in the comments what you think.

We’re excited to share our journey with you.

?? Indrek Vainu & Mihkel Vainu , Marielle Bordewijk- van der Krol , Rory Sutherland , Nicholas Gruen and Chris Monaghan for commenting on earlier versions of this post.

In the Introducing Jars series:

1. Crazy idea (this post)
2. Consumers as force for good
3. Do right by farmers