Our latest news, blogs, ideas, tips and opinion pieces
Can we make you love accounting?
Many small food businesses start with passion. Maybe as a maker you start out selling to friends and family and soon realise that there is a demand for what you make. Maybe you start out with a vision to make healthy food more accessible in your area. Keeping good...
Big Improvements to your Shopfront
The latest release of the Open Food Network was deployed this week. Although it doesn’t look different we’ve made some big changes to improve the performance of your shopfront behind the scenes. Shopfronts with up to 10,000 products will load within 2 seconds. This...
In support of Extinction Rebellion
Several people in the Open Food Network (OFN) have been drawn to support the Extinction Rebellion (XR) in recent days. They are joining thousands of ordinary people from all walks of life who are taking the extraordinary (for them) step of taking to the streets and...
Win a Marketing Support Package for your Shop!
At the Open Food Network, our primary mission is to help food enterprises to thrive! So we're offering two of our food enterprises the chance to WIN bespoke marketing support to help promote and build your enterprise in the lead up to Christmas and beyond. Two...
Welcome to a faster, more efficient OFN!
Over the years we’ve been running OFN we’ve been working tirelessly to build the tools that food enterprises need to succeed. With our tiny, part time development team working remotely in the UK, Australia, Catalonia, Portugal, Philippines and France and people...
Olivier De Schutter – OFN Ambassador
Olivier De Schutter says "I was for six years UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food. I have been working on food issues for about ten years and I came to impose myself, finally, three rules. The first is to consume local as much as possible and I am a member...
Can Food Hubs Help Stop Climate Change?
A nationwide study to better understand how food hubs can contribute to a more sustainable food system. Open Food Network are teaming up with researchers at the University of East Anglia as part of a nationwide study to explore how food hubs like ours contribute to...
How possible is plastic free?
In the last 12-18 months the devastating consequences of single-use plastic pollution has come to the forefront of public debate and made many of us question our shopping and lifestyle habits. Many attribute the heart breaking scenes of plastic packaging found in...
Linking OFN to your accounting package
For most people, one of the most tedious aspects of running a local food business is keeping the accounts. After all, we're in this to build communities, to support producers, to make great food more accessible... Not because we love spreadsheets, receipts and...
Celebrating our First DevHack!
Our very first Dev Hack was a success! Thank you to everyone that made it possible! We spent two very productive days coding, testing and working on real issues for the global open source project. It was a great opportunity to expand our exciting community, bring...
Celebrating nature and following its rhythms
Can you hear the birds chirping outside your window? This is the sound of Spring! The days are getting longer - finally! We will soon be leaving the dark half of the year and embracing the early spring rays of the Sun! Soon, it will be time to celebrate the Spring...
How to evade the Hungry Gap: an ethical guide for eaters and sellers
The hungry gap is a time when seeds that you’ve sown aren’t ready and whatever you stored in the winter isn’t good to eat anymore. In this blog post, we’ll look at what the hungry gap is in more detail. We’ll explore the gap’s origins, why we should embrace it and...
Open Food Network wins the award for digital innovation in the European Social Economy Awards
There were more than 500 nominations for this award from all over Europe. Open Food Network Europe gets the prize in the section about social economy initiatives operating in the digital economy or with an important focus on technological innovation and/or working...
Hybiau Caffael Bwyd Cynaliadwy yng Nghymru
Dros y flwyddyn ddiwethaf, mae'r Open Food Network UK wedi bod yn gweithio ar gynllun peilot arloesol i ddangos dichonoldeb cyflenwi bwyd lleol ar blât cyhoeddus Cymru. Gan weithio gyda phartneriaid o Ffermydd a Gerddi Cymdeithasol, Cultivate, Cymdeithas...
Sustainable Food Procurement Hubs in Wales
Over the past year, the Open Food Network (OFN) has been working on a groundbreaking pilot to demonstrate the feasibility of supplying local food onto the Welsh public plate. Working with partners from Social Farms & Gardens, Cultivate, Development Trusts...
In response to the Food Research Collaboration’s discussion paper
Natalie Neumann and Rosalind Sharpe from the Food Research Collaboration have created a Food Research Collaboration Discussion Paper titled “Sustainable food hubs and food system resilience: Plugging gaps or forging the way ahead?”This is the last report in the...
Open source tech: why you should care and how you can contribute
Open source is an integral part of who we are at the Open Food Network: our platform, the way we work and much more. It’s even in our name! So, let’s talk about it. In today’s society, open source software exists as an antithesis to the systems we have grown...
Women in Food and Farming
From farmers and food hub coordinations to home cooks and food tech developers, women are central to our food systems world wide. But other systems, like the patriarchy, undermine their contribution. At the Open Food Network, we try to counteract the impact of...
Starting the year at the Oxford Real Farming Conference
It was a great opportunity for us to share with our community some of the great work we have been doing and connect with like-minded people in an environment like the ORFC. And, we left Oxford full of hope and energy after meeting, hearing, and witnessing amazing speakers from all over the world.
The Open Food Network team goes to Hereford
Let’s try to picture the mycelium, billions of intricate connections building nature’s very own communication network. This, for us, is what we see the Open Food Network becoming. A network that connects people to each other to help build inter-connected communities.
As a fully remote team, connecting online can be easy with all the technology at our disposal. But connecting on a deeper level is harder, the same way it is harder for each of us individually to relate to each other and ourselves when we spend a lot of our time behind a screen.