Sample Analysis from the FoodTrails platform
Sample view of the FoodTrails user interface
Food on the move at a Massachusetts-based food distribution warehouse
FoodTrails is a web-based platform designed to track local, regional, and domestic food purchases easily and accurately. KK&P led the research team that resulted in FoodTrails and remains a partner with FoodTrails, Inc., the software development firm, in the platform's iterative development, growth, strategy, and day-to-day operations.
The project began when the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE), in order to inform farm to school program strategy, retained KK&P to define the parameters of a technological solution to make local food procurement tracking less time consuming and more accurate. The research revealed the extent to which school districts were struggling to engage their vendors to get origin information on their purchases — information was not flowing with food through the supply chain. It also revealed the extent to which manual origin tracking processes were prohibitively time-intensive, confusing for school districts and their vendors, and prone to error.
KK&P and partners translated these research findings into the platform FoodTrails. FoodTrails automates the tracking of food purchases by origin, enabling users to upload spreadsheet purchasing reports from their suppliers containing the best available data the supply chain can offer. The platform then aggregates, categorizes, standardizes, and measures origin data against a range of definitions and criteria.
The platform was piloted by 4 RI districts in 2024, expanded its user base into Massachusetts (with a new client, the MA Executive Office of Education and Department of Elementary and Secondary Education) in 2025, and as of mid 2026 is used by over 100 school districts across those states.