A local community of farmers and producers in Ireland have joined forces to sell their produce through a community-owned software platform. It is specifically built by the Open Food Network for selling food.
A ‘hub’ on the platform sells items (to the public or other businesses) from more than one supplier. It is the equivalent of a physical farmers market where you might have food grown and supplied by different local farmers, baked goods, crafts and even produce imported by local wholesalers available.
Producers upload the details of the products they have available to the web platform, where they can manage their listings and stock levels.
Consumers purchase through the website with the platform enabling payment to be made online. The platform automatically makes the % contribution to the hub from each sale.
As the platform has been built for buying and selling food, it can handle the different weights and measures used for different types of food products – for example, selling eggs by ‘the dozen’, parsley in ‘bunches’ or whole chickens by ‘weight’.
Each local hub can follow its own model. For example, it could be an existing farmers market, community group or food co-op that facilitates the set-up of the local virtual market. Each hub contributes 2% of its market turnover to the national Open Food Network.
To find out more about this Smart Rural Solution see here
