💡 End-of-Day Surplus Flash Sales & Food Rescue Coordination

[github-actions[bot]]

Summary

Near market close, vendors can one-tap mark items as "surplus available" at discounted prices. This triggers "last chance" push notifications to nearby customers and (in Phase 2) coordinates pickup with partner food banks. The feature reduces food waste, drives end-of-day vendor revenue, and generates food rescue impact data valuable for FMPP/LFPP grant reporting.

Market Signal

Too Good To Go has proven the "surprise bag" anti-waste model at scale for restaurants and bakeries, but no equivalent exists for farmers markets. Food waste at markets is a documented and recurring problem — vendors transport unsold produce home or discard it at day's end. The USDA's community food access mission directly supports surplus redistribution, and FMPP/LFPP grant applications are strengthened by food rescue impact metrics. No competitor (Seen Markets, Farmish, Localize, Marketspread) addresses end-of-day surplus coordination.

User Signal

The PRD's Rachel fallback journey (Journey 2) demonstrates the value of "turning a failed trip into a successful one." Surplus flash sales create a similar dynamic from the opposite direction: customers who weren't planning to visit get a late-day notification with surprise availability at reduced prices. This also connects to Discussion #433 (Community Food Access Map) by generating food rescue data that maps where surplus food is available. The feature serves price-sensitive shoppers — a segment that overlaps significantly with SNAP/EBT users.

Technical Opportunity

The architecture's exception status system (FR15: running late, sold out, not attending) already provides the exact UX pattern — "surplus available" is one more status option in the ExceptionStatusSelector bottom sheet (UX-DR8). The domain event bus (internal/events/) dispatches a notification to nearby followers via FCM, identical to check-in notifications. The vendor effort is the same as existing status updates: one tap. The vendor_status enum in the GraphQL schema gains one new value. Food bank coordination is Phase 2, requiring a new partner integration layer — but the core feature ships with zero new infrastructure.

Assessment

Dimension	Score	Rationale
Feasibility	high	Extends existing exception status architecture with one new enum value; no new infrastructure needed for Phase 1
Impact	high	Reduces food waste, drives end-of-day revenue for vendors, serves price-sensitive customers, generates grant-valuable impact data
Urgency	med	No external deadline, but the food waste problem is constant and the Too Good To Go model proves consumer demand exists

Adversarial Review

Strongest objection: Vendors are packing up at end of day and have zero interest in managing a digital surplus listing. The friction is too high at the worst possible moment.

Rebuttal: The implementation is literally one tap in the existing exception status bottom sheet — identical friction to marking "sold out" or "running late." The incentive is immediate and tangible: a push notification to nearby customers creates demand for surplus stock that vendors would otherwise haul home unsold. The feature also generates food rescue metrics valuable for FMPP/LFPP grant reporting, giving market managers an additional reason to encourage vendor adoption. The time-based trigger (30 min before market close) can proactively prompt vendors: "Market closes in 30 min — have surplus to share?"

Suggested Next Step

Add "surplus available" to the exception status enum in the GraphQL schema and the ExceptionStatusSelector component. Design the notification trigger: time-based prompt (30 min before market close via Cloud Scheduler) combined with vendor-initiated one-tap. Define the customer-facing "last chance deals" discovery surface on the market detail screen.