Naked market making

Topics: market making, partnership, procurement, children, health, education

Every once in a while a colleague mentions the topic of market making, supporting and developing markets. It's about understanding the demand in your community for a service, assessing whether demand is being met and then helping ensure there is adequate provision - if necessary by creating a market.

Now, I do have an MA in Economics, but I never really got my head around this. What exactly would this look like? The other night, watching tv on my sofa at home, I saw a brilliant example - only it's taken me until now to figure it out what I'd been watching.

I'm sure you remember the Naked Chef's aka Jamie Oliver's Feed Me Better Campaign. The guy set out to change a school, make a tv programme and has ended up changing national schools' policy. Fantastic. His programme is back on air (here's more on Channel 4) for some new policy-changing initiatives now and I watched it Monday night. Jamie didn't just make school dinners on the show; he made a market.

How did it work? Well, in Lincolnshire a lot of schools, particularly primary schools no longer (or never did) have on site kitchens. So there's no practicable way that someone could make hot meals on campus.

1. There was demand for hot school dinners, better meals
2. Demand wasn't being met
3. It's time to make a market.

Pubs are just about everywhere, and these days many do food. So there's a kitchen close to a school. Is it possible to cook the school dinners? Yes. Was the pub willing to try? Maybe. A bit of work had to be done to persuade the pub meet demand and arrangements had to be made between the school and the pub. There were hiccups. (Jamie had to give the pub a little lesson in wholesale procurement of fresh veg and initially the pub wasn't making quite enough money). Jamie didn't just work with one pub, he held an invent that put food producers, wholesale suppliers and hopsitality businesses in touch with schools. He made a market.

Of course, in public policy, this isn't just about the "output" of hot, nutritious school meals. This is about ensuring that children are adequately nourished to do well in school. They pay better attention, they learn more, there are fewer behavioural problems when kids are well fed and aren't on a diet of junk. The real outcomes are better educational attainment, better life chances for these kids, and eventually this contributes to a more skilled work force and a more vibrant economy. All by making a market. As Jamie would say - Happy Day.



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