Anthony Pisapia

I think Ikea has solved the domestic hunger problem, they just don’t know it. Have you been to their cafeteria? Is the food great? No, it’s not great. Is it cheap? Yup, it’s cheap.

A social innovator/missioneur would ask, what’s the right price point to feed a family of four? How much could they contribute if I picked up the slack? If I could feed a family of four on $10 a day, would that have impact? Could I sustain my business on the $10 a day or do I need to subsidize? What scale would I need to operate at for it to work?

Ikea’s cafeteria is a service function of one of the most profitable furniture businesses in the world. Cheap, hot meals, readily available. Right now its being used as a marketing/customer service asset.

Now I’m sure Ikea does not want to be overrun by people with little or no money (how would they sell furniture), but they don’t think twice about offering the service for their own gain. So I wonder, why doesn’t every low-income community have an Ikea style cafeteria? Heck, in this economy even a middle income community might be able to sustain one. Does it need to be subsidized? Who could subsidize it or even gain benefit from the audience? If we backed one of these cafeterias up to a Walmart, would everyone win? Everyone would win except McDonalds.

These are the questions a social innovator/missioneur should ask:

1. What can I learn from low-cost models that are succeeding, no matter where they are?
2. What information can I use in the for-profit world to solve a social problem?
3. What mutually beneficial partnership models can be developed?

Only when these questions are answered will we have true social innovation.

Not everyone can pay, so there’s room for two models. Most “free” and “purely charitable” models are overtaxed because they are trying to solve the problem alone. Folks who can pay and folks who can’t pay all get the same subsidy and the system becomes overburdened and fails.