Our latest news, blogs, ideas, tips and opinion pieces
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...
UK Hack Weekend – May 4-5 London
Are you an experienced coder, tester or designer that wants to contribute your skills to a socially and ecologically transformative project? Are you new to software and want to join a project that will help you develop your skills? Do you hate a series of vague...
Learning as a Community
Announcing OFNs free group coaching programme for food hubs. The OFN community is rich with experience in creating values-driven food systems. OFN members work with local authorities to deliver on strategic health outcomes. They coordinate with local food banks to...
5 things you might not know OFN can do…
1. Print all your invoices in one click. This brand new feature is a huge time saver. Instead of clicking through each customer one by one, you can simply select all of the invoices for an order cycle or date range and generate a single PDF that includes them all....
Coming to ORFC? Explore how OFN could work for you and pre-order your sail-freighted olives, oil and nuts.
For those of you who will be at the Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC) on 4th January we hope that you will join the session hosted by OFN's Lynne Davis. We will be asking four of our users to talk briefly and answer questions about how they are using OFN to...
A trip to Cultivate, Powys as part of the Procurement For Good project
The Procurement For Good project team visited Cultivate in Newtown and other inspiring community food hubs in Powys, celebrating local sustainable food initiatives, new grower schemes, and the future of public sector food procurement. On a sunny Wednesday in April,...
Visit to Better Food Shed with Procurement For Good
Continuing our series of hub visits as part of the Procurement For Good project, in April we travelled to London to visit the Better Food Shed
Flower Grower Collective: Collaboration. Community. Creativity.
We are very pleased that The Flower Grower Collective (FGC) has been awarded funding through the prestigious Farming Innovation Programme.
Visit to Propagate & Galloway Food Hub
At the end of January the Procurement For Good (P4G) project team travelled to Dumfries for the first of four hub visits.
The Open Food Network has been invited to be an ambassador of the EU Proximity and Social Economy Platform
The Open Food Network is now an ambassador for the EU Proximity and Social Economy Platform! Diesis is a global network of social entrepreneurs supporting the development of the social economy, social entrepreneurship and social innovation. The Network aims to...
Manda Scott joins OFN UK as an ambassador
We are very pleased to welcome Manda Scott as an ambassador. This is what she said about the OFN: "You're being the change we need to see. At a core level, we need total systemic change and shifting our food/farming system to something based in co-operation and...
Procurement For Good project begins
We are extremely excited to announce that we have started work on the Procurement For Good (P4G) project as of the beginning of October 2024. Procurement for Good (P4G) is a £1.9m research project led by Coventry University’s Centre for Agroecology, Water and...
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...
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...