3. Methods
Survey: To measure awareness of food insecurity and
what Richmond and VCU’s role should be in addressing it
Interview: To gauge local businesses knowledge of food
insecurity and the willingness to be involved with
RamPantry’s mission
Content Analysis: To explore the conversation in the media
about food insecurity
4. Survey
● Survey Questions
● Target Audience
○ local business owners & students at Virginia
Commonwealth University
● Response Rate
○ 30 responses collected between Tuesday,
November 10th-Thursday, November 19th
7. Results
● Majority know what food insecurity is
● Local Richmond businesses should take part in VCU
programs
● More people are willing to get involved if local
businesses are involved
● The majority believe that Richmond as a whole should
help to raise awareness on food insecurity
8. Interviews
The Urban Farmhouse Market & Harrison Street Cafe
● We met with two separate representatives from local businesses that are on and around the VCU campus on
Thursday, November 19 and Monday, November 23
● Overall, the interview questions focused on whether the restaurant owners were familiar with the term “food
insecurity” and whether they have personally experienced or know someone who has experienced it.
● The questions also focused on their level of interest and participation with RamPantry.
9. Interview Cont.
What is Food Insecurity?
Interviewee one’s response (Harrison St.):
“Just being able to eat safely and food that isn’t going to cause illness. I’m assuming. I’ve never
heard that term before.”
Interviewee two’s response (UFM):
“Food insecurity, as far as we view it, are people who don’t have steady access to food they need to
survive.”
10. Interview Cont.
Motivation to be involved with RamPantry
Interviewee one’s response (Harrison St.):
“I don’t know. That’s something I would have to think about if the offer came.”
Interviewee two’s response (UFM):
“Particularly for us we just opened our newest location right by the VCU campus and we’re working
hard to become a part of the VCU community and this would be a great outreach program for us to get
involved with in that area.”
11. Content Analysis
● Focusing on a total of 4,052 articles, we sampled 36
● With specific searches involving food insecurity, using
Excel we coded these articles based on Events
Mentioned, Business Type and Partnership Mentioned
13. Recommendations
-From our findings:
- We found that almost everyone we met and spoke with agrees that local Richmond
businesses should be involved with raising awareness and treating food insecurity.
-Therefore we believe this is the time for Ram Pantry to continue reaching out,
and getting their message out there.
-We found that is most important that Ram Pantry -- can get one or two local
businesses/restaurants to be involved, then hoping to trigger others in our
area to join Ram Pantry as well.
14. Recommendations Continued
-Again we highly recommend that it would be to Ram Pantry’s best interest to
reach out to one specific local business and get them on board.
- Our team recommends reaching out to Urban Farmhouse. We believe that
they would be a great help to Ram Pantry, and almost act as a leader in the
external organizations.
-Overall, based on all our research and findings, we believe that Ram Pantry’s
external outreach is very important, and now is the time to get just one local
business part of their team, and from there it can increase the Richmond area’
s involvement.
