KEDAI BALITAKU or KEBAL (My Child's Cafe) : The Healthy Street Food Project
This entry has been selected as a finalist in the
Leveraging Business for Social Change: Building the Field of Social Business competition.
This project aims to reduce malnutrition among children under five by providing access to healthy, nutritious and affordable food options for children under five and a stable income for urban poor entrepreneurs in poor urban communities.
Resolving the pervasive malnutrition problems in Indonesia's urban areas is critical to addressing poverty.
About You
Section 1: About You
Section 2: About Your Organization
Is your initiative connected to an established organization?
Yes
Organization Name
Mercy Corps
Organization Website
Organization Phone
+62 21 719.4948
Organization Address
Jl Kemang Selatan I No 3
Organization Country
Indonesia
Is your organization a
Non‐profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
How long has this organization been operating?
More than 5 years
Your idea
Name Your Project
KEDAI BALITAKU or KEBAL (My Child's Cafe) : The Healthy Street Food Project
Describe your Social Enterprise
This project aims to reduce malnutrition among children under five by providing access to healthy, nutritious and affordable food options for children under five and a stable income for urban poor entrepreneurs in poor urban communities.
Resolving the pervasive malnutrition problems in Indonesia's urban areas is critical to addressing poverty.
Country your work focuses on
Indonesia, JK
Innovation
What makes your innovation unique?
The food vending sector is thriving in urban Jakarta. Myriad options ranging from fresh to processed food are available to satisfy almost all urban appetites. However, there is a gap in both the healthy food and child-appropriate food segments. Most meals are tailored to an adult taste and few street foods have balanced nutrition or texture appropriate for the unique needs of infants and young children. Local baby food tends to be high in carbohydrate and lack micro-nutrients thus contributing to rate of wasting and stunting. The Healthy Street Foods business was developed to fill this niche.
The pilot project proved that:
1. Healthy street food that is high in micro nutrients, locally produced, and without preservatives or additives, can be both attractive to consumers and competitive within the existing street food market;
2. Micro-entrepreneurs have the potential to earn a greater profit selling healthy street food rather than unhealthy street food;
3. Healthy street food businesses can both make a profit and promote other social goods, such as hygiene promotion (hand washing, garbage disposal)
Do you have a patent for this idea?
Yes
Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
Tell us about the social impact of your innovation. Please include both numbers and stories as evidence of this impact
Seven vendors were recruited for the pilot project. Using the profits generated from selling healthy food they now can afford household necessities and pay school fees for their children. Currently, the profit earned is from $140 USD/month to $240USD/month. The average profit margin per month is 36%, with a range from 25%-51% profit per vendor per month. And more than 800 children under five have access to this healthy food.
“I used the money to pay my children’s school fees. I couldn’t do this if I didn’t sell food as part of the Kedai Balitaku (My Child's Cafe) . This is my only hope for right now. I’m so grateful for this.”
- Ibu Sarifah KeBAL vendor; she is a 50 years old, a widow with 3 children; 1 has graduated from senior high school and two are still in senior high school. She used to be a tailor but since most people prefer to buy ready cloths with more reasonable price and quality, she didn't have anadequate income for her family. She is responsible for all family needs, most importantly to pay school fees.
His name is Gunanto, a 32 year old man with 2 children at school age. His wife is 30 years old, working as a laundry worker for her neighbor and earns Rp 15USD/month. Riding his pedicab for 2,5 years and earned around Rp 3USD -4USD per day working from 7am until 10 pm, he no longer felt secure as there is a city regulation prohibiting pedicabs in the community. He was then recruited by the Kelurahan (local sub-district office) to work as security for 2 years. He had to leave his security position since he didn’t have adequate level of education to pass the test. He then rode his pedicab again for another 1 year then he was recommended by the Head of Village and local midwife, who noticed him as a hard worker to join Kedai Balitaku as another vendor to sell the healthy food from the first vendor, who only focus on cooking. He passed the selection process for vendors and was then trained by the team on how to maintain the hygiene and nutrition standards of Kedai Balitaku foods, book keeping, marketing, also how to perform good services to customers. Gun earns at least Rp 50.000 to Rp 70.000 per day as his net profit. Gunanto enjoys the recognition from people, they see him differently now. He looks more cheerful, confident and he greets people he meets even when he’s not vending. He teaches children to wash their hands with water and soap he has in the cart before eating the food and plays with them while vending. Gun likes to call out the mothers and children with his own voice,Bubur,Bubur…meaning Porridge, Porridge, as the main breakfast for CU5. "Even rain and floods do not stop me to feed CU5, I have to deliver the healthy food for them or I will feel bad to them, and to my family if I don’t bring cash home"
Problem: Describe the primary problem(s) that your innovation is addressing
The poor urban diet is highly dependent on ready-to-eat foods sold from roadside carts. Besides curbing hunger, snacking is also about fun, socializing and being popular. Children copy what parents and older siblings do. Mothers spend up to 20,000 RP (USD$2) per day on street foods for each child but dole it out in small amounts. Mothers buy from vendors in the morning when they are busiest.
Street foods are of low nutritional quality and are often tainted with non-food grade coloring and additives such as formaldehyde. Moreover, street foods are highly susceptible to contamination due to unhygienic food handling practices and polluted water. This is dangerous for children under five who already malnourished and whose diets are already in adequate. This causes a high rate of malnutrition among children under five. Even though urban slum dwelling mothers are well informed about healthier food, their options are limited since they often do not have a kitchen, lack time to cook and access to healthy options is limited. Street food is convenient and cheap and thus suits their needs.
My Child’s Café (the Healthy Street Food Project) was proposed as an important innovative solution, ensuring that mothers and children have sustained access to healthy food options appropriate to their environment and needs.
Following the economic crises of 1997 and 2008, many people in Jakarta's urban poor neighbourhoods lost their jobs, exacerbating the existing problems of urban poverty. One of the most common coping mechanisms for the unemployed is to set up street food businesses. However, these vendors often lack the skills, such as book-keeping, entrepreneurship, food-handling and capital necessary to ensure their businesses are profitable and properly run. The My Child's Cafe program provides a solution to this problem, while simultaneously addressing the issue of urban malnutrition.
Actions: Describe the steps that you are taking to make your innovation a success. Include a description of the business model. What might prevent that success?
Developing a new business with the goal of providing both a healthy product and a healthy profit for poor residents requires careful preparation. The process for this development is described below.
The first phase: Sector Analysis,Product Development and Vendors Training
We did the consumer research to develop both the healthy meals and snacks and the food vending cart. The research included 13 hour-observations of families with children under five and current food vendors.
Menus were then developed to meet nutrition standards where Kebal’s meals are designed to provide 1/3 of the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) of calories, protein, iron, vitamin C and zinc for children under five. Snacks include 1/6 of the RDA for these same nutrients.
Carts were designed with form and function in mind. Besides being colorful, musical and mobile, carts display food in clear attractive cases where children can easily see and select their favorite foods. There is also a hand washing facility and garbage can to facilitate good hygiene habits. The carts are completed with a catchy jingle which announces the presence of the cart in the neighborhood. Four characters representing the four food groups adorn the cart and vendor’s uniform to educate families about balanced nutrition and inspire children to eat the healthy foods so they will be tall, lively, smart and strong.
Vendors were trained in menu preparation, book keeping and hygiene standards and participated in revising the cart design and menu testing before they started to sell the healthy food in their communities.
The second phase: Piloting : Sales and Quality Control
A celebration kicked off the grand opening of KeBAL during which local leaders and health center staff praised the effort of bringing healthy alternatives to their communities. Families received a sample of free food and education about the importance of making healthy food choices. Following the opening ceremony, vendors began selling the food and continue to do so because the businesses are profitable. The Mercy Corps team has visited regularly to do quality control.
The third phase: Commercial Expansion
Kebal has achieved great successes helping to address malnutrition, introducing unique (nutritious/ affordable) products people like to buy, providing profitable entrepreneurial opportunities and have high loyalty rate. There remain challenges to growth which include low economies of scale and low menu variety. We are currently developing the business model and plan that will enable both scale up and self sustaining of this micro enterprise. There will be 3 levels in the improved business model developed-- Kebal's HQ ---COOKING CENTER---Vendors.
Results: Describe the expected results of these actions over the next three years. Please address each year separately, if possible
In the first pilot phase (2009)this project has been implemented in 4 RW's (hamlets)with 7 vendors and targeted 1000 families with children under five.
The Cooking Center has been selected as the best business model to scale up and to ensure Kebal becomes self sustaining and independent from outside funding. The cooking center business model will address many of the limitations and challenges faced during the pilot. There will be 3 levels of business structure--KEDAI BALITAKU HQ---COOKING CENTER--VENDORS--applied in this business model. Each level will have responsibilities in order to become self sustaining. The Kedai Balitaku HQ will be responsible for marketing and R&D, developing the business strategy, conducting quality control and owning the branding. The Cooking Centers will be owned and operated by Kedai Balitaku HQ with hired operational team member. The food will be cooked in these Cooking Centers. The vendors will buy the food from each Cooking Center. Team members in the Cooking Center and all the vendors will be selected from local people who live in poor urban communities.
This year (2010)this project is planned to build at least 3 Cooking Centers; each will employ 8 vendors and serve minimum at least 2,000 households with children under five.
by 2012 the project is expected to establish 6 more Cooking Center to reach approximately 18,000 households within and out side Jakarta city. In addition the project will give direct economic benefit at least to 72 vendors.
How many people will your project serve annually?
1001‐10,000
What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?
$50 - 100
Does your innovation seek to have an impact on public policy?
Yes
If your innovation seeks to impact public policy, how?
The project provides evidence that ensuring children foods meet nutrition standards is both feasible and economically viable, even in urban slums. More broadly, the project illustrates how issues beyond poverty, such as health and nutrition, can be tackled through social enterprise.
Sustainability
What stage is your Social Enterprise in?
Operating for 1‐5 years
Does your organization have a board of directors or an advisory board?
Yes
Does your organization have a non monetary partnerships with NGOs?
No
Does your organization have a non monetary partnerships with businesses?
No
Does your organization have a non monetary partnerships with government?
Yes
Please tell us more about how partnerships could be critical to the success of your Social Enterprise
Kebal is an integral part of Mercy Corps's larger urban programming. The project benefits from and supports, other Mercy Corps projects in the area such as financial literacy, health and nutrition and community building activities. Through this project and others, Mercy Corps has built relationships with local government, licensing agencies and private sector partners. Local government entities have supplied posters and banners promoting the program and purchased kebal food as part of its therapeutic feeding program for malnourished children. Local food companies have expressed interest in providing fortified, healthy foods to the carts.
We would like to learn more about how your initiative is financially supported. Please explain your business plan/revenue model
This project is financially supported by internal Mercy Corps funding.
The Story
What was the defining moment that led you to this innovation?
Jakarta has huge rate of malnutrition especially in poor urban families. I was working with Mercy Corps implementing health and nutrition programs to tackle the issue. With the other team members, I implemented a community based nutrition program to rehabilitate malnourished children along with behavior change interventions to promote healthy and hygienic behaviors including hand washing before meals and after defecation and eating healthy meals and snacks. As a result of these successful interventions, mothers were well informed about nutrition and better feeding for children under five. But most mothers failed to practice good nutrition behavior and went back to old patterns, giving unhealthy food to their children. I learned that most mothers were faced with many constraints. For example, most mothers are busiest in the morning taking care of other family members, they do not have enough space to cook, lack income and find it too expensive to cook healthy food by themselves.
I was aware that malnutrition has serious consequences for current and future health as well as productivity and future economic development and will both influence their own lives and productivity. Seeing weak & malnourished kids, suffering and uncertain of their future, I felt really bad. But, prohibiting mothers not to buy unhealthy food from street vendor was impossible. That was what was available and affordable for them while access to healthy options did no exist. Also, most mothers showed their love to children by offering food. Mothers were aware that many of the foods their children ate were not healthy but were embarrassed if their child cried and thus easily gave in when the child asked for a snack.
Considering all these facts, I was really enthusiastic to lead this micro enterprise development process, creating demand for healthy food addressing child malnutrition while creating sustainable incomes in urban poor communities.
Tell us about the person—the social innovator—behind this idea.
The nutrition team in Mercy Corps has found that the main barriers to healthy eating for the urban poor is not awareness but ACCESS. This project directly addresses that gap.
Vanessa Dickey is the person behind this innovative project. She was our health and nutrition adviser in Mercy Corps. she facilitated the process of collecting all lesson learned and led the discussion to develop new insights creating an innovative project which have nutrition impact to address malnutrition while also provide long term-sustainable income for poor urban communities.
How did you first hear about Changemakers?
Newsletter from Changemakers
If through another source, please provide the information
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Comments
Dear Usniatu, what a great project!
quick question. How many people in total do you think benefist from this in addition to direct participants?
cheers
Gaston
Dear Mr Gaston,
Thank you for your question
Actually My Child's Cafe have unlimited direct participants, means that it is depends on the area coverage of the entrepreneur. Currently one of our vendor can provide access for 2 or 3 neighborhood with the total of 200 to 400 children under five. But it is really depends on the distance from one neighborhood to another.
In the next 2 year from now, our vision is to provide more access to healthy food for children under five all over Jakarta (5 municipalities)and also targeted other urban area in Indonesia. This is also to provide more opportunity for poor entrepreneurs to sell healthy food and gets proper income for their family.
we are now in the preparation of expansion phase and plan to implement our new business model called Cooking Center as one of our viable business model to develop My Child's Cafe business.
Thank you and I am happy to share more information with you
Best,
Usye
A quick question - since your project is targeting children, does that mean ONLY children are eligible to purchase food from your cafe or they are a focus group with all community members also pitching in?
Thanks!
Congratulations for this initiative, Usniati!
I would like to understand a bit more the business model: Are HQ, Cooking Center and Vendors different legal entities, or they all operate under the same umbrella? Ifso, you expect each unit to become self sustainable, or the idea is that each contributes so the whole model reaches self sustainability?
When are you estimating to reach break even of the model? Do you know how many vendors and how many sales you need to make to reach it. Which are the main challenges you envision to reach breakeven?
Thanks a lot!
Paula
Hi Paula, thank you for your question. This is a very good question!
For us Kedai Balitaku is an innovative business idea with the potential to be highly profitable for vendors, cooking center (owners/investors) and investors-while providing healthy foods to children under five.
Based on our business study (supported by 4 of MBA students from MIT University, USA), we selected Cooking Center Business model out of 3 others business models we developed. This Cooking Center model has 3 levels of business's structure which are: Kebal HQ, Cooking Centers and vendors. This will lead to a franchise business model. Ideally, Cooking Center owner/ investor brings talent and capital to the table and have a stake in the success of the business. Kebal HQ will ensures products and brand consistency, provides quality control and new product development, and recruits new investors.
Each level has unique set of responsibilities. Again, HQ will set up some strategic directions; activates brand, monitors profitability; maintains quality standard; provides training and develops new products. Cooking Centers will set up kitchens, hire cooks and vendors, purchase ingredients and prepare food and so on. While the vendors will be selected from communities who meet the criteria, and after that their responsibilities are to purchase food from cooking center and then sell it to customers. Kebal HQ will be the umbrella for this business model while we expect that each level will be self sustaining.
Based on our financial business projection, kebal HQ will be self sustaining within 2 years.A cooking center expects to recoup initial investment within a reasonable time period (18 months) and a vendor can expect to achieve a desirable net income (>2 million/ month or >200USD/month) within a reasonable time frame of 6 months. This scenario will be achieve with at least 1 cooking center operated per quarter; each cooking center will have at least 8 vendors and the daily sales is 40 portions for meals and 60 portion for snacks/ vendor. The daily unit sales growth is 20%.
Our main challenges;
1. people; finding a CEO with the business expertise (entrepreneurial mindset) to manage transition to for-profit business; aligned with social mission
2. funding; raising enough stars-up financing to keep the business going until it is self-sustaining.
Now we are in the step of running the cooking center business to prove this model.
Hope this is will answer all your question and i am open for further discussion.
thank you
Usye
Thank you so much for you answer, it was really clarifying for me. And congratulations on this great social business!
Hi,
Most kids would rather have fast food rather than something more wholesome. Especially if kids in lower income groups are not aware of the benefits of healthy food, they would prefer to go for the tastier fast food. Are there any educational programs, about the benefit of healthy food, being conducted for the children to switch to something healthier?
Hi Rachna, Thank you for the question!
10 years we are working in poor urban communities, we found that knowledge about benefit of healthy food is not the main issue. There are several education program implemented by the government and other health institution focusing around the issue.
Based on our lesson learned implemented nutrition intervention, we found that most mothers are well informed about proper feeding practice as well as the benefits of healthy food, but mothers faced some constraints and fail back to the option of giving unhealthy food to the children.
It is because, there is no affordable healthy food exist in their community, while they have no enough space to cooks, limited income and too expensive to cooks healthy food by them selves (need to buy raw material, transportation and fuel) and most mothers are busiest in the morning. this Kedai Balitaku is to provide the access to healthy, nutritious and affordable food for children in poor urban communities.
Although we know that the knowledge is not the main issue, but we combine our program with the education activities to raise the awareness and strengthen their capacities to choose the healthy food. We did educational activities in PAUD (pre-school), conducted the healthy snacking day and conducted some competition involving parent and children, local leaders, etc. We did story telling using our 4 characters representing 4 food groups (carbohydrate, protein, fruits and vegetables/vitamins and minerals), besides developed other promotional materials and a catchy jingle promoting our healthy food. Those we used as part of effort to faced the challenge on influencing the children to consume healthy food and also used as part of our marketing strategy.
hopefully my explanation will answer your question and I am open for any feedback and further discussion with you.
thank you
Usye
Hi Usye,
Thank you so much for the explanation. In this world of fast/junk food, encouraging healthier food options for children is very important. Michelle Obama has also been encouraging children in the US to switch over to healthy food.
For homes with working mothers especially, I can understand that fast food becomes a habit out of necessity rather than choice - not just for children, but all working adults as well face the same problem. So all the best for your initiative.
Hi Rachna,
Thanks so much for the very encouraging message. I'm thrilled to hear that Michelle Obama has the same interest like our project. It will be a life time dream that came true if one of these days she came and see our project.
Please I am open for more feedback and input from you.
Best
Usye
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