August 21 2023

We started out the day by heading over to Mantakoh Street Bakery. We first debriefed with Augustine, the Mantakoh salesman who helped us sell our muffins yesterday. He was able to make a profit of 97 Leones from yesterday’s sales. He went back out this morning for 2 hours and made an additional 33 Leones of profit for a total of 130 Leones. Augustine restated that he was having a difficult time selling the muffins for more than 2 Leones each. So, we knew that we had to make some changes to the recipe to get the cost of producing one muffin under 1 Leone. 

We went into the day planning to make 5 trays of muffins, so we sent Bah, a baker from Mantakoh Street Bakery, to the market to buy 50 bananas, hoping that he would be able to get a better price than us. Bah managed to buy 50 bananas for 100 leones, 2 Leone each. We made the batter and made the decision to add a lot more water to increase the volume. We ended up adding a total of 8 cups of water to the batter, which gave it a consistency similar to that of a box cake mix. We were able to make almost 7 whole trays of muffins out of this. 

After plugging these new numbers into our spreadsheet we found out that this would bring the cost of making one muffin down to 1.12 leones. We are still looking for ways that this price can be brought down below 1 leone to increase the profit the bakery will make. Another way to lower the cost is to include half as many bananas as the original recipe to reduce the amount of bananas we use. Bananas are one of our highest costs in producing these cakes. However, at this point, if the bakery sells the muffins at 12 muffins for 20 Leones they will make a 0.5 Leone profit per muffin. This means the saleswomen can sell the muffins at 2 leones each and make a profit of 4 leones per 12 muffins. 

Bah said that he already had someone lined up to buy 48 muffins so we left those behind along with a logoed bucket. We took the remaining 116 muffins with the goal of passing them off to one of MEWODA’s saleswomen. Unfortunately, we were unable to secure the help today.

We then went with Jawara to get copies of our posters. They outline the ingredients and nutrients in the muffins as well as where they can be purchased. We brought the remaining muffins with us to the printing shack and tried to sell some in the surrounding area to garner some interest in our product and spread the name around. This proved to be very beneficial as we were able to sell 70 muffins at 2 Leones each and make a profit of 141 Leones. We also ran into a friend of Jawara’s who is interested in working with us as a supervisor or head saleswoman. She would aid in organizing any future saleswomen and maintaining a set price of the product throughout the market. We exchanged contact information with her and plan to get in contact before the muffins are done baking tomorrow.

Tomorrow we will return to Mantakoh Street Bakery and make another 7 trays of muffins with the increased volume of water, and maybe decrease the amount of bananas to lower the price further. We will give them to Jawara’s friend and Bah’s connection to sell at 2 leones each and see how much profit we can make. We will also return to Momoh street bakery and make 7 trays following the new recipe and let them sell them as they have been. After that, we plan to make our way to several grocery stores and storefronts to discuss the future of the SuperCake and how we might be able to integrate them into stores. 

August 20 2023

Due to the sudden setbacks regarding the marketability of our products, we wanted to try a different approach to selling our SuperCakes. We started the day off early at Mantakoh Street Bakery. We were pleased with the fact that the bakers had made a trip to the market to restock ingredients. This gives our team confidence that the bakery is capable of sustaining our business in the long term. The bakers made 5 trays of muffins under our supervision. The NewTrition team paid for the muffins and gave them to one of the bakery’s trusted salesmen. Our financial support was a one-time arrangement in order to instill confidence in the salesman that our product was going to sell in the market if he were to invest in it in the future. 

The salesman, Augustine, and the NewTrition team went to Jaway & Mac-tee Enterprise, located in a prime location for selling products in Makeni. This area is highly active due to the availability of public transportation to Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. We gave around 113 to Augustine and told him to walk around and sell the cakes at 3 Leones to see how the market will react. Selling the cakes at this price is crucial to continue our business long-term. The bakery sold the cakes to the NewTrition team at 2 Leones each, just enough to make a profit, so when Augustine sold the cakes in the market at 3 Leones each, he made a profit of 1 Leone per cake sold. 

Before we sent Augustine into the market, we had faced some language barrier challenges with him. Augustine speaks very little English, so it was difficult to communicate with him as well as effectively convey what should be said as a representative of the SuperCake. It was clear to the NewTrition team that he did not fully understand the benefits of the nutrients that are incorporated into the cake, and more importantly, that he has to be communicating the benefits and the existence of nutrients in the cakes when he speaks to potential customers. 

After struggling for 10 minutes to sell the cakes for 3 Leones each, he returned to the bakery without our notice, defeated by the lack of sales. This was concerning for the NewTrition team because we need a salesman who is dedicated to selling our cakes and is patient with the process of introducing a new product into the market. 

For the NewTrition team, this is a problem because if we can not sell our muffins at 3 Leones,  our team will need to reconsider our recipe and experiment with lowering the production cost. In the meantime, Augustine suggested we buy small bags to sell 2 or 3 cakes at a time for a discounted deal. We then agreed that it would be sufficient to sell the 2 cakes for 5 Leones and 3 cakes for 7 Leones. This would mean that the cakes are sold at 2.5 Leones each and a 0.5 Leone profit is made off of each cake. While this was a step in the right direction, we still were not as successful as we wanted to be. We noticed that Augustine failed to advertise the health benefits of our cakes. This is a key component because we not only want to educate people, but we want to distinguish our product from the rest of the common cakes in the market. After not much success, we told him to try selling again in the morning, in hopes that more people will purchase our cakes.

Some of the challenges include:

1. People were not willing to pay 3 Leones per cake but were willing to pay 2 Leones per cake which would ultimately break even and not produce any profit

2. People wanted to buy more than 1 cake at a time, but we had yet to buy small plastic bags

3. The time of day - he was selling the cakes from around 3-5 pm which is past breakfast and lunchtime but not quite at dinner time, so many people had already eaten 

Next, we spoke with Musa Tholley at his farm in Makump Bana to understand how his business is run. This was a beneficial visit for us as we look into ways to increase the value of Vitamin A in our muffins through the incorporation of orange-fleshed sweet potatoes. Musa is a very successful businessman who started his own farming business producing numerous crops. He hires children in the surrounding villages to help maintain his farm and to give them the opportunity to make money to go to school. We talked about how we could get our products out to more people and he highly suggested trying local schools. He said many vendors go to the school during the lunch break and sell many of their products there. This would be something that our team should really look into because children are our customers of interest and will benefit most from our nutrient-dense SuperCakes.The issue with selling products at schools is that it requires a lot of mandates on your products and even specific licenses. Another issue is school doesn’t start till September and we will no longer be in-country then. Our team has begun looking into this and we are attempting to get connections in-country that will forward our venture in this aspect. 

Additionally, Musa highly encouraged us to have a strong advertisement for our product, so our team has been working on posters to hang up around various places in town. We also talked about a partnership with Musa Tholley since he sells orange-fleshed sweet potatoes and has communicated with us, that his ultimate end goal is to be able to create all-natural sweet potato powders that can be included in various recipes and provide high nutritional benefits. Having a direct source of orange-fleshed sweet potatoes will not only solidify our ability to get them but also lower the cost of obtaining them. Our team took his contact information and will be in touch with him later on. 

Our next steps are as follows:

1. Find discount deals for buying bananas in bulk 

2. Experiment with recipes containing fewer bananas 

3. Research ways to lower the production cost of the muffins

4. Work on the advertisement for our product 

5. Sell the muffins earlier in the day

6. Ask Jawara about connecting with the local school 

August 19 2023

The day kicked off with a trip to Mantakoh Street Bakery. When we asked them how the sales went yesterday, they mentioned that they made 207 Leones. We had purchased 70 leones worth of muffins for a seminar later in the day. They also informed us that they had been selling the cakes to their salespeople at a rate of 1 dozen SuperCakes for 10 Leones, or 2 dozen cakes for 20 Leones. This is not what we asked them to do. The NewTrition team meticulously calculated how much the ingredients cost and how much the cakes should be sold to make a sufficient amount of profit for future ingredients. The cost of ingredients, calculated based on prices we have encountered in-country, is 37 Leones per tray of 24 muffins, or 1.57 Leones for 1 muffin. This means we need to be selling the cakes to the salespeople for at least 2 Leones in order to make a profit. Unfortunately, at the rate that the bakery has been selling the cakes, they are losing 17 Leones per tray. This is a big concern and can not continue to happen if we want the business to be self-sustained. If the cakes are sold at 2 Leones, as intended, the bakery should be making a profit of 11 Leones per tray. Over time, in theory, this business should be able to sustain itself. 

For the salespeople, it ultimately does not matter what price they sell the cakes for, given that they have the liberty to choose their price to make the profit that they desire. However, the sellers have expressed concern about selling the cakes in the market for more than 2 Leones due to the small size of the muffins. In this case, the sellers would not be making any profit. The NewTrition team is now challenged with making the muffins bigger in size at the lowest possible cost to increase the value of the cake in the market whilst making a sufficient profit in order for the bakery to afford the ingredients. To do so, we will experiment with adding baking powder in addition to a higher amount of baking soda per tray. We can also try to use instant yeast and see if that makes the muffins rise, however, this will increase the amount of time it will take to make the muffins as the yeast will take time to activate and have to rest for several hours. 

The bakery also mentioned that they are having trouble finding a consistent group of customers who are willing to buy the muffins wholesale. This is where the saleswomen from MEWODA might be beneficial. We had planned on having 3 of the women from MEWODA come to the bakery today to buy a bunch of the muffins to resell in the market to make their own profit. However, the bakery did not want to continue making several trays of muffins until we have figured out the best recipe and business approach that gives the muffins a higher value and generates the most profit. Hopefully, once we have nailed down some of these details, the women will be able to contribute to our venture. 

Furthermore, we have been working on better advertising and marketing for the SuperCakes. 13 SuperCake logo stickers have been printed and put on the buckets in which the muffins will be sold in the marketplace. We will also be looking into finding a cheap printing business for our poster that we can put outside of the bakeries to advertise our products and their benefits. This will hopefully increase the number of people willing to sell our products in the markets.

In the afternoon, we had the opportunity to go with Lehigh University’s AI Strengthening Healthcare Access (AISHA) team to Makump Bana, a peripheral health unit in a nearby village. We were able to present a brief seminar about malnutrition and stunting to many women and their young children. We were assisted by Mabinty, a nurse with a specialty in under-5 laboring mothers and postnatal care, who translated our seminar to the audience. We provided the women with yesterday’s leftover muffins from Mantakoh Street Bakery and let them try the product at no cost. Most of the women and children thoroughly enjoyed our SuperCakes and were ready to buy more. Although the introduction of our products to these mothers increased our potential customers, this emphasized another problem our team will encounter and that is the accessibility of our products. Currently, the two bakeries producing our products are very close to the market which allows people in the city to purchase them with ease. The families living in the villages are much farther away from the city and many of them have little to no access to the markets. Most of these families grow their own food which lacks the important nutrients which is why many of them are susceptible to malnutrition. They also have very little money to purchase products that are high in nutrients. Unfortunately, it would be almost impossible to regularly ship our product to PHUs in small villages because the cost of transportation is so high, so therefore, the price of the cakes would have to increase as well to generate enough profit money. This visit to Makump Bana really highlighted the importance of having people distribute our products in various places in order to be as successful as possible. Our team is now looking into different ways to distribute our products to more areas at a low cost and make our products available to those who need them the most.

In the next coming days, we will work with the bakery to increase the size of our muffins so that the salespeople feel more comfortable selling the muffins for 3 leones each in the market. We will also implement our marketing strategy through posters at the bakeries and stickers on the buckets. We want to take note of how this could potentially impact sales. We will also be further exploring ways to make our products available in more rural areas where ingredients are hard to come by.

August 18 2023

We started the day off early at Momoh Street Bakery to bake 7 trays of muffins, 168 muffins in total. We took advantage of starting early in the morning to give the bakers a longer sell period during the day. The owner informed us that, yesterday, they were able to sell a total of 100 muffins, and therefore, made a profit of 200 Leones. With this in mind, our team wanted to take the risk of increasing the quantity of muffins produced. We had no role in preparing the muffins to ensure that the bakers understood the process of making the muffins for when we are no longer in-country. Though they are still having trouble using the scale to weigh the very small quantity of micronutrients needed, they remembered the rest of the process and performed it to perfection. We had initially planned for 7 trays, but due to the generous amount of batter in each muffin tin and the insufficient amount of water used, we could only complete 6 trays. The consistency of the batter was sticky and thick. The bakers put the tray in the preheated oven and sold the muffins later that day. Tomorrow they will update us on how many muffins they sold and the profits they made. This will help our team determine the sales performance of our muffin and determine the appropriate amount of trays to be made going forward. 

Once the trays were in the oven at the first bakery, our team headed to the second bakery, Mantakoh Street Bakery. Because we have been working with this bakery from the start of fieldwork, the bakers were able to make the muffin batter with confidence and very minimal assistance from our team. The only trouble they had was calculating how much of the micronutrients were to be used in the mixture because the value of micronutrients for one tray is less than 1. Our team plans on providing the bakeries with laminated copies of the recipe for 1-10 trays so they will not have to do any calculations for the amount of ingredients needed and can simply reference our guide. We have high certainty that this bakery will be able to correctly bake our products, but we are still working on a business plan to sell them in the long term. The bakery has expressed concern that they do not have a strong enough customer base yet, and is not yet ready to increase the amount of trays we have been baking. Therefore, we tried our best to make connections with the local people in their small village who could potentially further our venture. 

We were able to speak with a man who has a marketing business, and who offered to help advertise our product. It is important that we have a strong marketing strategy, so we will definitely be reaching out to him in the upcoming days. Another individual that we connected with is a saleswoman in the marketplace. We gave her a sample of our product and seemed to enjoy it. She bought 2 additional muffins and mentioned that she might come tomorrow to buy our product in bulk and resell it in the marketplace.

Our team next purchased more equipment, so each bakery has its own supply. We went to the marketplace and bought 2 mixing bowls, a few more knives (for shredding the ginger), buckets (to sell the muffins in), and oil. We then went to the supermarket to buy measuring cups, a grater, and a mixing spoon. We will be bringing this equipment and the gallon of oil to Momoh Street Bakery. In the future, the bakeries will be responsible for using the profit to buy more ingredients, but we promised them that we would get them started by purchasing the initial supplies. 

Our next steps are to try to get the saleswomen involved with the bakeries. We will be reaching out to MEWODA to see if they can gather a small group of women to go to each of the bakeries and buy the muffins wholesale to be resold in the market. This will help our team evaluate if having saleswomen from MEWODA is a good strategy. We will supply them with SuperCake merchandise so people are able to differentiate our product from the other cakes and muffins sold in the market. We will also be reaching out to sticker and poster-making businesses to continue developing our marketing and advertising strategies. Additionally, we will be going back to the bakeries to oversee their muffin production and sales.

August 17 2023

We started off the day by heading off to Mantakoh Street Bakery to debrief sales and make more muffins, however, once we got there we learned that the owner of the bakery was sick and all operations had been canceled for the day and we would not be able to bake. We did learn that they only had 6 of the 120 SuperCakes made the previous day still remain. They sold a total of 72 muffins and gave the rest out to locals for free to gain a bigger consumer base for our product. This gave them a profit of 144 leones.

After that, we went to meet with Bakar at the Water Factory to discuss the next steps for the SuperSip. Bakar had brought samples of our drink around town and even to a larger water factory in Freetown to gain some insight into how locals will respond. He determined that the yellow color of the product will turn people away and cause us not to sell. He believes that we need to work on making the product colorless and more flavorful before we can continue with any production. Bakar also said that it would not be possible to market our product as a juice as there are certain criteria and standards that need to be met.

This caused us to pivot and start working on paperwork that will be helpful for our business plans and models. First, Angelina and Olivia began working on a Cash Flow Analysis and Sales Projections. Realistically assuming that the bakeries can sell 500 muffins a day 6 days a week where the cost of goods sold is 1.57 leones per muffin and the products are sold at 2 leones each, the bakeries can make a gross profit of 30,859 leones in 6 months. 

Cash Flow Analysis 

Sales Projection 

Afterward, Olivia made an easily digestible poster outlining the nutritional value of our SuperCakes, while Abby created a sticker that will go on the buckets that will sell our SuperCakes and the presentation for sparring, with our Professor Khnajan Mehta, tonight.

SuperCakes Poster

SuperCakes Bucket Sticker

Angelina then made a business contract that can be used with both of our potential partnering bakeries to ensure the future production and success of our SuperCakes. The document outlines the responsibilities of both parties, pricing and payment, marketing and promotion, quality control, and the time frame of the agreement. We will run this by Khanjan, and discuss it with the bakery before we make any official deals. We hope to make this a formal contract by August 20th. 

Temporary Bakery Business Model 

The next step for this project will be obtaining a duplicate set of all the materials needed to bake the muffins so that we will be able to begin leaving them at the bakeries. We will also be purchasing four of the buckets that are commonly used to sell products in the markets and sticking our logo to the front, so that we can become an identifiable brand in the markets. We will also begin to think about how to improve the drink products and continue with baking our muffins.

August 16 2023

Today we had the ambitious goal of making a total of 250 muffins between the two bakeries that we have been working with. We started off the day by heading directly from the hotel to the market . We needed to find 10 bags of sugar, a bowl of ginger roots, and 100 bananas. Unfortunately, at this first stop, we only managed to find 5 bananas that were ripe enough to use in our recipe. However, we were able to find all of the sugar and ginger that we needed. We next headed to the fruit stand outside of Monoprix supermarket. We were able to find the 95 bananas that we needed for 240 Leones. 

Afterward, we headed to Momoh Street Bakery to make another five trays. Again we tried to take a backseat in the making of the batter and only provided assistance when it was necessary to give the bakers the chance to make the batch on their own. They were able to make the batter successfully, however, this batch of muffins was far stronger and tougher than those we made this morning. We think the reason this happened was that the young lady who was measuring the 20 cups of flour was not careful about filling the cup just to the brim. The cups were overflowing with flour. Excessive use of flour could have thrown off the dry-to-wet ingredient ratio, thus making the muffins a bit denser. After baking, we spoke with the owner, who informed us that after tasting our batch yesterday, one of their salesmen prepaid for 40 Leones worth of SuperCakes to sell in the markets today. Momoh Street Bakery has already seen the worth and profit of our product and the owner has already said how excited he is to continue this production and create a solid business plan. 

The next steps for our team include a meeting with Bakar at the water factory again to discuss how our drink product can be improved and advanced. We will also buy buckets and that we can stick our logo on to advertise the nutritious nature of our muffins while they are being sold in the markets. We will also return to both of our potential partner bakeries to make another large-scale batch of muffins and briefly discuss business plans. 

August 15 2023

The NewTrition team started the day off by conducting an educational seminar at MEWODA. We were proud to present in front of 20 potential saleswomen for our products and the bakers at Mantakoh Street Bakery. This event was designed to educate the women about malnutrition and stunting, introduce our nutritious products, and better understand each woman’s business experience in the market. 

Topics discussed in the seminar included:

1. Malnutrition and its effects

2. Specific foods that are high in nutrients that should be included in the daily diet and are easily accessible in the Sierra Leonean market 

3. The health benefits of the nutrients we are using in our products

4. An overview of our SuperCake and SuperSip products 

5. Questions about each woman’s business and location relative to the bakeries we have been working with 

The script we followed during the seminar is attached below: 

MEWODA Educational Seminar 

We also handed out samples of both of our products to get direct feedback from the women who attended our seminar. 

Some of the most valuable feedback about the muffin product was:

1. To increase the amount of banana used to enhance the flavor 

2. Lighten the texture - the muffins are too dense 

3. Sell them for cheaper - the muffins are too small to be sold for 2 Leones

4. Add more sugar 

5. Increasing the shelf life of the muffin will increase the value of the product 

The main feedback we received about the SuperSip product was that the mango flavor should be stronger. They seemed to be interested in this product just as much as the muffin product. 

After they tried the product, we asked for their advice on the best approach for selling the SuperCakes. We need to advertise our product in a way that stands out from the rest of the cakes in the villages and marketplace. They suggested that we create stickers for the buckets including all of the ingredients and symbols that signify good health. In addition, we could put these images on a large poster board that would attract the attention of those near and far. However, it is important we stray away from using any sort of words on the buckets as most people are illiterate and will not understand. 

Before we left MEWODA, we were able to speak with the owner of Mantakoh Street Bakery, who attended our seminar. They seemed to be enlightened by everything we had to say and really understood our mission and the detailed benefits of our products. He told us that they were able to make a profit of 60 Leones from selling 30 muffins yesterday. This is a great start because it shows that people were willing to pay 2 Leones for the product. We have made plans to go back to their bakery tomorrow to make a larger batch of muffins again to see how they sell. 

With the constructive criticism of our products in mind, our team wanted to change a few things about the recipe before we went to Momoh Street Bakery later that day. We planned on increasing the amount of sugar from 2.5 tablespoons to ½ of a cup (per 24 muffins) and adding 2 more bananas. Furthermore, we researched typical banana bread recipes and many of them use both baking soda and baking powder. This is something we can also experiment with in the future. 

We also had the opportunity to purchase some cakes in the market to get a better understanding of the flavor, taste, and texture of the cakes currently sold in the market. We bought cupcakes, banana bread, and biscuits. The cupcake and the banana bread had a very sweet flavor and taste with a light and airy texture, while the biscuit was more “bread-like” and closely resembled our product. We talked to the saleswomen about the ingredients used to get a more fluffy texture for her cakes/bread and she said eggs and butter. We have considered incorporating those into the recipe, however, we are trying to avoid adding any unnecessary expenses. Therefore, we will try to make the adjustments previously stated, and go from there. Our goal is for the muffins to have the same consistency as the ones we tried from the market.  

Around 1:00 pm we went to Momoh Street Bakery to run a first trial of a batch of 24 muffins with them. We showed the owner and the bakers the measurements of all of the dry and wet ingredients, how to weigh the micronutrients, and how to fold/mix all of the ingredients together. In this batch, we applied our adjustments to the recipe which were using ½ cup of sugar, and using 2 more bananas (10 instead of 8). We also experimented with not oiling the muffin tins before putting the batter in to see if it was truly necessary to be coating the tins. If successful, this could reduce the cost and amount of oil used. We ended up baking the muffins for about 35 minutes, flipping them over for the last 5 minutes. The muffins came out amazing. They were much lighter and more moist than previous batches and rose a lot more. This bigger size means that we should be able to sell our muffins for about 2 Leones each.

We gave a couple of these muffins to kids in the area and they all really enjoyed them. However, the owner’s daughter said that they might need even more sugar, which is something we will be including in future bakes. We will increase the amount of sugar from ½ of a cup to 1 full cup for each tray. 

After we baked the muffins we had the opportunity to meet one of the bakery’s leading salesmen. The owner explained to him that these muffins are more nutritious than the ones already sold in the markets which means they have high health benefits. He seemed very excited to begin selling our muffins and even had him sell this first batch. 

Overall, our team was able to successfully implement the majority of the feedback from the women by adding more bananas and more sugar during our visit to Momoh Street Bakery. This ultimately made the muffins lighter, and more moist - both of which the women were requesting. The last adjustment we need to make based on the women’s recommendation is to increase the shelf life. Over the next few days, we will be including Sodium Propionate in the recipe which should improve the muffin's shelf life. 

Olivia calculated the amounts of Sodium Propionate needed  in this document below:

Sodium Propionate Levels

Our next steps are to get more ingredients for the muffins we will bake tomorrow. We are starting at Mantakoh Street Bakery and making 125 muffins (5 trays). This bigger batch will give us a more realistic sense of whether or not the product will sell in the market. In addition, we have made plans to go back to Momoh Street Bakery at 2:00 pm tomorrow to bake another 5 trays that they will also try to sell. The majority of the profits from these sales will go back towards the bakery, however, our team needs to discuss with both bakeries what percentage of profits will go back to our team. Since we are a non-profit organization, any profits we will receive will go towards purchasing the micronutrients in the U.S. and any costs our team will incur locally in Sierra Leone. 

August 14 2023

This morning, we went back to Mantakoh Street bakery to make 4 trays of 24 muffins for a total of 96 muffins. Two of the trays were sold by the bakery for 2 Leones each and the other two trays are to be brought to the educational seminar we will be holding at MEWODA tomorrow for the potential saleswomen. In these batches of muffins, we added more sugar and baking powder as suggested by the customer feedback we received yesterday. Instead of the NewTrition team making the muffins, the bakery staff made the muffins with the guidance of the NewTrition team. Giving the bakers the opportunity to make the muffins on their own allowed us to assess how well they understood our instructions from yesterday and correct any of their mistakes during the process so that going forward they can produce the muffins without our presence.

During this visit, we also provided them with a printed-out document of the recipe to make 24 muffins (one tray) for the SuperCakes, the instructions for making the muffins, and a brief overview of the micronutrients in the recipe and their respective benefits. The link to the document we gave to them is included below. 

Recipe and Micronutrient Overview

Next, our team headed back to World Hope to regroup before we met with Momoh Street Bakery, a bakery we had previously visited and expressed interest in our product. Unfortunately, the owner of the bakery did not have time to purchase more firewood before we arrived, so they were not able to make a fire to start the oven. Instead of making the muffins with the bakers at Momoh Street Bakery, we simply walked them through the process of making the muffins. After our seminar at MEWODA tomorrow, we will go back to this bakery and make the muffins. Although we have only had a few interactions with Momoh Street Bakery, we see a promising business opportunity with them and are looking forward to meeting with them again tomorrow. If this bakery follows through and the muffins are successful in the markets of Sierra Leone, our products will continue to be mass-produced once we are not in-country. 

The next step our team will take is preparing our educational seminar for the 20 saleswomen at MEWODA tomorrow. The purpose of this seminar is also to get in direct contact with our potential saleswomen. We want to build a relationship with them since they will be buying our products in bulk and reselling them in the markets. Additionally, lack of education is one of the main causes of malnutrition which is why they will not only be selling nutritional products, but providing nutritional information as well. Therefore, our seminar will include an introduction to what malnutrition is and the negative health effects that can develop from being malnourished, the benefits of micronutrients that are deficient in Sierra Leone, and examples of foods that have low levels of them and high levels of them, and finally, an overview of what our products are and what sets them apart from other cakes, muffins, breads, etc. in the market. It is very important that these women understand the value of our products and the benefits that they deliver. The women will also be given a financial seminar by MEWODA to teach them how to open a bank account, save their money, keep their money separate from their husbands, etc. We will be providing them all with a sample of both the ginger SuperCake and the mango-flavored SuperSip. We want them to like our products before they buy and sell them. 

After the seminar, our team will head back to Momoh Street Bakery to teach the bakers how to make our muffins and give them a tray to give out to the locals and get more feedback on the product.

August 13 2023

To start the day, the NewTrition team headed to Mantakoh Street Bakery to teach their bakers how to make the ginger-flavored SuperCakes. We brought them some of our swag and taught them how to make a batch of 24 muffins (equivalent to 1 tray) using our recipe.

Our processes included:

1. Peeling the ginger and grating it into the wet ingredient bowl

2. Added sugar and oil to the wet ingredient bowl

3. Mixing the flour, ferrous fumarate, zinc citrate, and baking soda in a separate dry ingredient bowl

4. Pouring the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and folding to mix

5. Adding water to the mixture to improve the batters’ consistency

6. Scooping the muffin batter into the tins 

This was a positive experience for us because we got exposure to another bakery. This bakery was much bigger than Mantakoh and has the ability to produce around 200 loaves of bread during the day. However, when we shared this information with Khanjan, our advisor, he agreed that it is great to have exposure to other bakeries, but it is not smart to be working with bakeries in such close proximity. Doing so has the potential to foster unhealthy relationships amongst the bakeries and we certainly do not want to be responsible for any feud or competition.  

The bake time for the muffins in the oven we used was about 10 minutes. They were nicely browned with a crisp top and had the moist consistency/texture of a muffin on the inside. We were happy with the moist consistency because we had been getting very dry muffin results in the past. This time around, we added one more banana and doubled the amount of baking soda from ¼ of a tablespoon to ½ of a tablespoon which might have also contributed to the light and airy, and moist consistency of the muffins. 

After all of our baking was complete, we kindly asked the owner of the bakery to distribute our muffins at no cost but to get feedback from customers about the flavor, taste, and texture. We decided that it was important for the people at the bakery to do this as opposed to the NewTrition team asking other members of Lehigh’s Global Social Impact Fellowship because ultimately the local people in Makeni will be consuming the product from saleswomen who are also from Sierra Leone. Therefore, the preview of our muffins will become associated with the bakery and not with students from America that are visiting for 3 weeks. 

Our next step with the muffins and Mantakoh bakery is to obtain more ingredients from the market to make 2 trays of muffins with a recipe that is adjusted based on the feedback and suggestions we received. We will communicate with the bakery that they should sell the muffins for 2 Leones and for now, keep the profit until we have a business model and agreement. 

After this, our team went over to MEWODA to have a formal conversation with our team, with the advice of Khanjan, and Abass (founder of MEWODA). Thus far, we have had brief conversations between him and our team discussing how we could work together, but we had yet to make a plan to move forward. Our team needed a more formal conversation before moving on to the next aspects of our venture. 

The goal of the meeting was to have a better understanding of who the women they can recruit are, what their experience in the marketplace is, and what they were told their role would be to help us with our sales. We learned that Abass has not told the woman anything about our project, but has simply informed them that he has a business opportunity available for them and he thinks they would fit the role. Therefore, it is imperative that we hold a seminar to meet with the women to pitch our project’s mission and goals before they begin to sell. We will need to ensure that the women understand the beneficial difference between our SuperCakes and the other cakes sold in the market. 

The biggest difficulty we are having is that the women that Abass has connected with are from numerous villages and communities. This makes it difficult for the NewTrition team to find a bakery that is of reasonable distance from the women’s homes, especially when most of them do not have proper transportation to travel far. This is another reason we will be speaking to the women before we make any final decisions or promises. MEWODA and the NewTrition team have decided that it is going to be the responsibility of the women to get themselves to whichever bakery we decide to mass produce our products in. If the location we choose to bake the muffins at is too far from the homes of the women, we can not expect them to buy the muffins every day, rather they would buy the muffins once a week or once every couple of days. They also may be willing to sell our SuperSip product if they like the idea and are in proximity to Bakar's Daily Fresh Water Sachet Factory. We will have a better sense of where most of the women live when we meet with them. We are looking forward to the meeting with the women during our scheduled meeting for Tuesday morning. 

Here are some of the key things we hope to accomplish during this meeting:

1. The women try both our products, the SuperSip and the SuperCake to get their feedback and see if they would be willing to sell these products. 

2. We will conduct an educational seminar to not only teach the women about what products are and their components, but the benefit of each micronutrient included in the recipe as well. 

3. MEWODA will conduct a financial seminar to teach the women how to open a bank account and the importance of saving their money which will ultimately support their role as businesswomen. 

Our next steps are to prepare our presentation for the educational seminar to effectively show the women why we are doing this and how it can help. We will also need to bake 2 trays of muffins in order to have samples of our products for the women. Furthermore, we will be filling Bakar’s 5-gallon water jug with our SuperSip product to provide samples of the flavored drink to the women.

August 12 2023

This morning we went back to Mantakoh bakery to clarify our business plans and establish the forthcoming measures our team must take. This meeting was conducted with the main owner of the bakery. We briefly explained our product and its taste as well as what differentiates it from the cakes currently sold in the market. We told the owner we could provide the ingredients, the muffin tins, and the equipment needed to bake our muffins if he would kindly let us use his oven and teach his employees how to make the muffins so they are sold in the market after we return to the United States. He is aware that our team would like to use the sales profit towards buying ingredients to make more muffins as opposed to keeping it for personal gain. He is very interested in working with us and will find a time to have all of his employees come at once to learn how to make the muffins.We will distribute the cakes we make with the bakers for no cost, but to gain feedback about the flavor, taste, texture, and ultimately, the muffin overall. This will give us a better understanding as to whether or not the women would be interested in buying the product in bulk to resell into the market. We hope that these steps will greatly advance the development and advertisement of our product.

Our next steps with the bakery are to set up a time to teach them how to make our SuperCakes. If that is successful, we will bring Khanjan with us to speak to them about a business model approach. 

  After we visited Mantakoh bakery, we went back to the Daily Fresh Water Factory to make a prototype for our SuperSip product with Bakar. We began by making our SuperSip product in a 5 gallon jug that Bakar provided. There were 35 450 ml Daily Fresh water packets, 2 packets of mango flavoring, 35 servings of Zinc Citrate which was equal to 1.4 grams and 35 servings of Ferrous Fumarate which was equal to 2.8 grams. We had Bakar taste the drink to approve of the flavor and taste before sealing it in the plastic bags. When we connected the SuperSip to Bakar’s equipment, the water was passed through a UV light to eliminate any extra contaminants before being packaged. We wound up with 25 successful bags of our product. This was a huge accomplishment for our team. The reason why the other 10 bags were not successful is because they became extremely diluted by water that had been already in the filters beforehand. Additionally, when the jug of SuperSip was fully taken into the machine, we had to run clean water through the machine to flush out the remainder of the mango flavor so they could return to their normal processes. This also diluted some of our product and contributed to the 10 lost bags. Though our team and Bakar’s team were very happy with the first successful production trial of our SuperSip product, there are still some concerns about the business perspective that we will have to sit down to address. 

For example:

1. The light yellow color from the mango flavor in the product might be mistaken for dirty water and could be unappealing to customers. 

2. Bakar and his team will be investing a lot more money into the project than we will, and he is slightly concerned but seems to be willing to take the risk if the product is successful. 

3. Bakar thinks that we should be making a coconut flavor as well and we have yet to find coconut flavoring powder. 

4. It takes the factory a lot of time to rearrange their equipment settings appropriately for the SuperSip product so it does not contaminate their clean water. 

5. We cannot be exactly sure that the nutrients are being evenly distributed amongst the packets. 

6. The Ferrous Fumarate did not dissolve easily in the mango-flavored water. We are thinking that in the future, it might be better to use Ferrous Chloride instead.

Overall, this was a great step in the right direction for our team. Going forward, we will be handing out our SuperSip product to the market to get feedback about the taste and flavor of our new product. It is unclear whether or not the members of the NewTrition team will be doing this, or if they will have a local Sierra Leonean do this for us. The risk we run with handing our product out ourselves in the market is two-fold: 1) Sierra Leoneons are very nice to people from other countries and it is not guaranteed that they will give us honest feedback about the SuperSip, and 2) if we want to make the product sustainable we should be using people who live here as a measure of whether or not they will be able to sell it when we are gone. If people in Sierra Leone see Americans selling colorful products, they are more inclined to buy the product. However, this is not an accurate measure of whether or not SuperSip will be successful in the market because we are only here for two weeks and are trying to sell the product beyond our time in-country. Additionally, we will seek advice and biochemical expertise from our faculty advisor, Dr. Lori Herz, to understand why the Ferrous Fumarate is having a tough time dissolving and what we could use as a supplement that still provides a strong nutritional benefit. 

August 11 2023

We started off our fifth day of fieldwork by finishing up the prototypes of both our muffins and our drink products. Abby began by peeling and grating all of our ginger into one bowl while Olivia sifted the flour and baking soda and Angelina measured out the micronutrients into a separate bowl. Angelina then added the oil, sugar, water, and bananas to the ginger and Abby mixed together all the wet ingredients until they were smooth. After folding in all the dry ingredients we filled up the muffin tins so that each was halfway full and baked them at around 175 degrees celsius for 15 to 20 minutes, until the tops began to brown. We made several adjustments from the recipe we used yesterday to help get us closer to the desired texture. First, we switched from using baking powder to using baking soda since it is much more powerful and would have more of an impact on the rising of our muffins. Next, we took out two bananas in the hopes that this would make the muffins less wet and dense than the previous batch. We also added 2 tablespoons of water per batch of 12 muffins because the batter was looking a bit too dry. With all of these adjustments combined we were able to get the texture to be more like that of a bread or a scone, just as we were hoping for. We will continue to move forward with this recipe in the future and plan to bake a trial batch of 100 muffins to give to the saleswomen and sell.

We also used this time to work on the prototype for our nutritious drinks. We added the different drink powders we purchased yesterday to the water and mixed in our micronutrients. We were particularly pleased with the fact that the powders were colored and gave the water a yellow and orange color for the mango and orange flavor, respectively. This means we will not have to add any additional dyes to our SuperSip. This process worked very well and we were able to make nutritious mango and orange-flavored drinks. We brought this recipe to Bakar and his employees at the water factory later in the day to have them try our drink and provide feedback. Hopefully, we will be able to sell these sachets and collect data on how popular a drink like this would be in the long term.

Once we returned to the World Hope office, we sat down with Moses Mark, a current World Hope employee, to interview him as a potential translator candidate. Moses mentioned that he would be able to help with translating our questions for saleswomen and bakers in the marketplace and village, and could also pick up ingredients from the markets for us to help save time.  The NewTrition team has recognized the value of having Moses on board and is in the process of drafting a contract to formalize our collaboration during our time in Sierra Leone. 

Contract with Moses 

After deciding to bring Moses along on our journey, we went with both him and Jawara to visit some more local bakeries to gauge whether or not they would be open to incorporating SuperCakes into their production line. Some of the questions we asked included:

1. What products do you make in this bakery?

2. How many products can you produce a day? 

3. How much do your products cost?

4. How much money do you typically make in a day?

5. How many employees do you have? 

6. How much do you pay your employees every day?

7. What hours/days do you typically work?

8. Do you sell to individual customers or to wholesalers who end up selling the products in the market?

9. If we came in to teach you how to make our products would you be willing to incorporate it into your daily operations in the future?

Soon after the first meeting we had with MEWODA on August 8, they were able to recruit a sales team of 20 women for our product. Today, we met with MEWODA, again, to get a better understanding of the process by which they recruited this team. Abass, of MEWODA, informed us that the women were selected from the Village and Savings Loan Associations (VSLA), whose mission is to “empower participants to increase access and control over resources and use collective power to overcome social and financial barriers” (Care International). With the help of MEWODA’s investment programs, these women have been able to start their own businesses selling products in the market from products bought wholesale and homegrown. MEWODA mentioned that these women also have strong connections to the schools, which would be helpful in trying to sustain our product in the market long-term. They usually work 3-4 hours a day in the villages and the market. Depending on how much product they have left over, some of them sell their products during the nighttime near their houses. MEWODA guarantees that their training has provided these women with the knowledge skill and capacity to support our venture. The biggest issue that we, the NewTrition team, will have to address is transportation. These women come from a variety of villages and are not in the same place. MEWODA mentioned that, by law, they are required to provide transportation and food when they hold life skills seminars in their facilities. This will be beneficial when we host our SuperCake seminar in conjunction with MEWODAs seminar about financial management. As a side note, we were extremely impressed by their seminar room. It can hold a lot of people, is in very good condition and they are even in the processed of building bathrooms inside of them. Pictures are included below. However, we will need to piece together the logistics of getting the women to the bakeries, if possible, before they sell SuperCakes in the marketplace. Khanjan will be meeting with MEWODA in the near future to ask final questions before we decide whether or not it will be beneficial to partner with them. Additionally, the NewTrition team will be meeting the sales team in person to help make this decision. 

After our meeting with MEWODA we headed back to the Daily Fresh Water Sachet Factory to have the owner, Bakar, try the flavors of our prototypes for the SuperSip. We had him taste both of the prototypes, the orange flavor, and the mango flavor. He also asked some of his team members as well as children and adults to taste it. 

*Note: this prototype did not include the micronutrients because it was simply for the owner to taste the different flavors and the amount of micronutrients in this product is so minuscule it will not affect the overall flavor.*

Bakar gave us honest feedback and corrected our ratio between water and the packet flavoring to make sure the taste and the flavor were acceptable. Once we perfected the ratio to make sure the drink was not too sweet, his teammates and the children next door tried the drink and enjoyed it. After trying both flavors, he advised us to only use the mango flavor since it is a more popular flavor in Sierra Leone. He also told us to develop a coconut-flavored nutritious drink which our team has begun working on. With the approval from Bakar, we are going back to the factory and filling a smaller jug to be connected to the water filtration system to have our product put into the plastic sachet. Bakar wants to produce around 5 bags which contain 20 water sachets. We will either be taking the bags to the market and selling them there or having the company’s water truck sell them to various infrastructures. 

August 10 2023

This morning, the NewTrition team went into town to buy bananas, ginger, a ginger grater, and more sugar to experiment with a successful recipe from last year. We were able to find these products relatively cheap from vendors we have previously bought from. 

Before we returned to the hotel kitchen to bake a ginger muffin trial batch, we visited the Daily Fresh Water Sachet Factory to meet with the owner, Bakar. From this conversation, we gained a lot of insight into the process of starting a business and selling products, as well as a start to adding SuperSip into the markets of Makeni.

Important takeaways:

1. The water is collected from a local river through a pipe that feeds underground to the factory. Then, a purification machine is employed to treat the water, using a comprehensive purification system and a storage tank. The water then undergoes filtration through large pumps placed at intervals and a final cleaning stage. There is also a UV lamp if needed to check for any bacteria that still may remain and they also use reverse osmosis. 

2. The Water Sachets' shelf life is up to a year when kept in the correct conditions. The sachets should not be kept in dusty or smelly areas as smell/particles can leak through the plastic and contaminate the water.

3. The plastic they use to package their products is imported from Freetown. It is custom designed to have the logo of the factory along with instructions on where to store it. 

4. The factory is able to produce up to 2,000 liters of water per hour.

5. The sachets are normally sold in bulk or by subscription to markets, restaurants, and individual people.

6. A bag of 20 sachets of water is sold for 6,000 Leones.

7. Most of the employees are students and can make anywhere between 25-35 Leones per day. They are also provided lunch and transportation if they have to commute long distances, though the factory tries to mostly hire locals to avoid this extra cost.

8. The water filter machine is around 5,000 USD.

9. The plastic waste from the empty water sachets is collected and sent to factories that can melt and recycle it. If Bakar had the opportunity to recycle the plastic on his own, it would increase his initiative to collect as many plastic wrappers as possible. 

10. The benefits of consuming purified water are not understood among the people of Sierra Leone which creates the assumption that there is no difference between purified water and regular water.

Bakar is willing to take the risk of selling 100 sachets of our SuperSip prototype using his equipment and production line. We will provide him with our nutrient-dense powder, and he will use his purified water and packaging machines to create the sachets. However, we were challenged with finding the correct flavoring agents and coloring in Sierra Leone, particularly because we had not completely finished the prototype with resources from the United States. 

Abby and Olivia went to the supermarket to pick up a few ingredients we needed. First, they got baking soda since the recipe we used last year called for baking soda instead of baking powder. Next, they bought ingredients for our nutritious powder, the SuperSip. These ingredients are to be used temporarily for the duration of our fieldwork as we continue to develop our own flavoring agents and coloring. However, it is safe to use the products sold in the supermarket because they have been approved by the government to be sold in stores and are easily accessible in Sierra Leone until the prototype for NewTrition’s product is fully developed. They bought orange and mango-flavored powder as well as pineapple, rose, and banana-flavored syrup. We will be experimenting with various levels of each ingredient to see what tastes good or not.

When we returned to the hotel, three of the NewTrition team members created a trial of the ginger muffins. Since this was the first time creating this recipe we decided to only bake 10 to preserve our time and ingredients. The recipe we followed originally made 40 muffins so we divided all the measurements by 4 to get the proper measurements for 10 muffins. The recipe for 10 muffins is as follows: 

• 2 cups of flour

• 5 bananas 

• 1.25 roots of ginger

• 1.25 tbsp of sugar

• 1 tbsp of oil 

• 0.125 tbsp of baking soda 

• 43.44 mg of Ferrous Fumarate

• 18.99mg of Zinc Citrate 

To start, Abby rinsed the ginger and peeled the skin off so that Angelina could grate it into tiny shreds. Angelina sifted the flour and added it to a bowl before Olivia weighed the micronutrients and baking powder. It is important to note that 0.125 tablespoons of baking powder was used instead of 0.125 tablespoons of baking soda which did not give the muffins the rise we need. Next, Angelina mashed the bananas and added the ginger shreds to make a wet ingredient mixture. The wet and dry ingredients were combined and made a light-yellow colored muffin like batter. We then baked the muffins for around 50 minutes. They did not quite reach the desired color, but instead, stayed relatively light throughout the bake. We believe that this is because the oven was set to “grill” instead of “bake” for the majority of the cooking time, so head was only being released from the top instead of all around. After letting the muffins cool we discovered that the texture was still too dense and wet causing extremely heavy muffins. However, the color was a little bit more brown, and less grey.

After another unsuccessful trial, we decided to reach out to our faculty advisor, Dr. Lori Herz, to discuss the next steps and come up with a plan for our next bake. She recommended we begin by switching the baking powder to baking soda, which is three times more powerful and should give our muffins the desired rise and fluffiness. Additionally, we will decrease the amount of bananas that we use in the bake, to help decrease the wetness of the muffins after baking. 

Once we finished baking we headed back to World Hope International to prepare for our interview with our translator. Our team has decided that we would benefit from a translator since we collect data from the women who work in the markets, conduct several business meetings, and need someone to get ingredients from the market at reasonable rates. We also need a translator who is willing to work on a day-to-day basis instead of a weekly basis. With all these things in mind, Abdulai Jalloh seems like a good match. He worked with the NewTrition Team last year, he can provide his own form of transportation and is willing to work with all of our terms. However, his English was not the best and he had difficulty understanding what we were saying and meant. This is a huge factor in hiring a translator so we will continue to search for one. 

Tomorrow, we will make another trial of a small batch of muffins to finalize our recipe, design a prototype for the SuperSip, visit a few bakeries to introduce them to our product and find a translator. We hope that after tomorrow we will have decided on a bakery or organization that we will partner with for the duration of our fieldwork and beyond to begin making a positive impact on malnutrition in Sierra Leone.

August 9 2023 

The NewTrition team started the day off with a trip to the market. We brought one of SAF’s interns, Rose, to assist us in finding bananas, sweet potatoes, and baking equipment such as bowls, spoons, and towels. We brought the equipment back to SAF where we began preparing the muffin batter.  

Our goal is to create something light and fluffy with the texture of a muffin. We decided that eliminating the sweet potato because of the lack of availability of the orange-fleshed potatoes in particular and the thick consistency it's giving to the muffins might be our best option. We also discussed reviewing the recipe that the previous team used for the muffins because of their success in baking the muffins in Sierra Leone. That recipe is made with chili pepper and ginger for flavoring - two ingredients that are light, have a longer shelf life, and are more easily accessible than banana and sweet potato, specifically the ones with orange flesh. We have also decided to incorporate baking powder into the recipe due to Kelley’s success using it during Mountaintop and last year’s team's success using it as well. We hope that this will give the muffins a lighter and ‘airy’ feel. We went to the supermarket today to get baking powder and small measuring cups/spoons to help us measure it appropriately. 

Our plan going forward is to break down our recipe to identify which component is giving us these abnormalities. First, we will make 10 muffins using the banana and sweet potato recipe, but without just the sweet potato to test our hypothesis that the sweet potato is responsible for the dense consistency. Then, we will experiment with last year’s recipe and make 10 of the muffins with that recipe. We expect these steps to help solidify our recipe so we can move forward with confidence that our product is easily replicable. We will then present our product to bakeries in the town and see if we can catch interest. This will help us evaluate whether or not we would like to seal the deal with SAF, or if it might be a better idea to find a small bakery in town that will be able to keep our product relevant in Sierra Leone after fieldwork. 

August 8 2023

Our day started with a meeting with Menna Women’s Development Associates (MEWODA). They are a Non-Governmental Development Organization established in 2002 by women in Makeni, Bombali District, Northern Sierra Leone. 

Their mission statement is as follows: “To support rural women farmers by giving them the necessary tools, build their capacity in their efforts to meet their own needs and to support activities which promote peace, freedom, and social justice to be capable of transforming their realities and driving their own destinies (MEWODA).” 

Our team’s mission highly aligns with the missions of MEWODA as we are both seeking to help women get out of poverty by providing them with the necessary tools, teaching them the importance of individually supporting themselves, and overall improving their health and wellness. 

Here are some of the key factors we learned about their business:

1. They collect the earnings from the women with the intention of preserving said funds to help them invest and grow their earnings.

2. They help women get loans from the bank to start businesses within their community.

3. The Orange Flesh Sweet Potatoes are harvested in a three-month period.

4. The Sweet Potatoes are more likely to be sold straight from where they are harvested rather than the markets due to the cost of transportation.

5. They use all organic fertilizer.

6. The women share their earnings with one another.

7. They focus on improving the nutrition of these women to help their immune systems fight off diseases.

8. The shelf life of the Sweet Potatoes depend on where they are stored but they commonly increase the shelf life by drying out the Sweet Potatoes.

9. They choose the communities they are helping by community rankings and how vulnerable these communities are 

   1. Some of the vulnerability factors include how many infrastructures and the food insecurity of the individuals

      1. ex.) What do you eat? How many times a day do you eat? How many chickens do you eat a day? How many eggs do you eat a day? Etc.

   2. Along with choosing the community they must get permission from the chiefs of the community to get the mandate to work with their women.

10. They supply the women with the resources they need to successfully harvest Sweet Potatoes and they check on their progress weekly.

11. They are currently working with 50 communities and around 2,000 women.

12. The groups of women also need a few men due to societal standards.

After we met with MEWODA, we headed to Sierra Agri Foods (SAF) which is one of the main organizations we seek to have a business partnership with. During our time with SAF, we learned more about their mission and their business model. SAF has two main products, regular bread and sweet potato bread which is made from the sweet potatoes they grow on-site or buy from Mewoda. We were able to tour their facility which includes several offices, and an outdoor “bakery” composed of an oven and tables for workspace. SAF informed us that they have not been able to bake any bread as of late due to issues with the property lease. However, on a normal day, they have 6 bakers working through the night for 120 Leones per 8-hour shift. They sell their bread locally and internationally. 

In terms of the partnership, the NewTrition team will provide a recipe for the nutrient-dense muffins and all of the necessary ingredients. SAF will hire bakers to make the muffins using their facility. The NewTrition team will be responsible for creating contracts for the bakers and paying them. As of now, the bakers will be paid using the amount of trays as a unit of analysis. The muffins will be given to saleswomen that Mewoda has recruited and SAF has connected us with. The NewTrition team is also planning on creating and presenting an educational seminar for the saleswoman to teach them about the product and its nutritional value. SAF plans to host and provide transportation for the women to the seminar, however, we have yet to decide whether or not the saleswomen will be picking up the muffins from SAF, or if the muffins will be delivered to the women in the marketplace. This is our biggest challenge thus far due to the high expenses for transportation. After our fieldwork, SAF has agreed to send regular progress reports on the number of muffins they sell and any other notable events. 

The plan is to have the saleswomen buy the muffins from SAF and the NewTrition team and then sell them out in the marketplace. This enables business opportunities for women and the availability of nutrient-dense products for an affordable price in the marketplace. In order to kickstart this plan, SAF and the NewTrition team discussed providing the saleswomen with the muffins for the first day at no cost. The cost of any muffins that are not sold will be let go. Once the product has exposure in the marketplace, the women will be charged for the muffins that they will resell back in the market. 

Lastly, our team made a batch of 48 muffins late at night. We were unable to find orange-fleshed sweet potatoes so we used white-fleshed sweet potatoes. To soften the potatoes, the students tried to microwave them but realized that there was not much progress. Instead, they boiled the potatoes in a pot of water. After the potatoes were softened, the students removed the peels from the potatoes because they noticed they appeared very dirty. This was a very time-consuming process, and going further would require a designated person in this position. The students believe that it might also be beneficial to peel the potatoes beforehand for a quicker boiling time and less residue on the potato. The bananas were visibly ripe, with a brown color, and easy to smash. The students did not have batteries for the microscale to weigh the micronutrients properly so they estimated based on other trials that have been done throughout the semester. The muffins were baked for a total of 30 minutes but looked very unappetizing. They were grey in color and appeared undercooked. Furthermore, it was obvious that some of the bananas and potatoes had not been smashed to completion as there were chunks inside the muffins. We assume that the discoloration is due to an overuse of iron in the batter. The total process of baking the muffins took a total of 2 hours with the help of 3 students. We will consider this time and labor going forward when we hire bakers and determine their wages. 

Tomorrow we have plans to revisit SAF and make a trial run of the muffins. Augustine will provide us with one of his team members to revisit the market to buy fresh bananas and sweet potatoes. We have all of the other ingredients left over from yesterday’s trial. We are hoping to accomplish making a successful batch of muffins and come to terms with an appropriate wage for the necessary amount of workers. As prices for ingredients have risen and remain unsteady, we are unable to say exactly how many muffins we will be able to make a day, however, we are aiming to make several hundred and will keep track, daily, of how many are made. We will also figure out how to give samples to a wide range of people to get feedback, find the best approach to selling our products (in terms of location and price), and solidify our partnership with SAF if that seems reasonable. 

It is important for our team to keep our partnering options available before we make a definitive decision. We plan on visiting other bakeries and introducing our product to them to see if any business opportunities arise.