MEET THE FARMER ON AISLE 4
Ministerio de Agricultura de Perú · FMCG
Challenge
Consideration — Urban middle-class Peruvians aged 25-45, predominantly in Lima, who buy imported or industrially processed staples out of habit and convenience, but who hold deep cultural pride in Peru's gastronomic heritage and would consider local alternatives if they felt emotionally connected to them
Insight
Peru celebrates its cuisine as a source of national identity, yet the raw indigenous ingredients behind iconic dishes — ancestral grains, native potatoes, regional chilis — are virtually invisible on supermarket shelves in Lima, hidden in unmarked bulk bins or absent entirely. Peruvians revere the finished plate but have no relationship with the farmer or the ingredient before it becomes a dish, creating a paradox where national food pride coexists with daily purchasing habits that ignore the very crops that make it possible.
Idea
Create 'La Tienda Invisible' — AI-powered pop-up market stalls placed inside major Lima supermarkets that used augmented reality and real-time generative storytelling to make each native ingredient reveal the face, voice, and story of the actual smallholder farmer who grew it, turning an anonymous bulk grain into a named, narrated, personally traceable product at the exact moment of purchase decision.
Execution
Physical pop-up stalls were designed to mimic the aesthetic of traditional Andean market stands but embedded with AI-driven screens. When a shopper picked up a product — a bag of quinua negra, a bundle of ají panca, a sack of native purple corn — a camera triggered a generative AI system that composited a real-time video portrait of the specific farmer, narrating in their own regional accent how the crop was grown. The AI translated Quechua and Aymara speech into Spanish subtitles live. Each product carried a QR code linking to a mini-documentary page auto-generated from the farmer's submitted footage. The stalls appeared unannounced in six major supermarket chains across Lima over three weekends, designed to feel like the ingredients themselves had 'shown up uninvited' to demand recognition — hence 'La Tienda Invisible,' the store that was always there but no one could see.