Hosted by Nick Weir, Open Food Network, with Woodlea small-holding and Bowhouse Link.

The pandemic has made it even clearer that we need to build more resilient food systems. Systems that enable farmers and growers to have multiple, local, short supply chains enabling them to get their produce to the eaters and the buyers through many different channels that can be quickly adapted to suit changing circumstances.

This session started with brief screen-sharing presentations from a producer and a distributor who have used the Open Food Network to quickly build an online shopfront to enable shoppers and buyers to browse products from multiple local producers, order and pay online and then either collect from pick-up points (with social distancing) or have home delivery.

Participants were then be able to discuss how they are distributing produce and share ideas on distribution, collaborating with neighbouring producers and options for online shopfronts.

Speakers/hosts:

Rosie Jack manages Bowhouse Link an online market place for local food and drink producers and traders in the East Neuk of Fife. The Bowhouse Link is an online market place to continue the connection between producers with customers. Shoppers and buyers use our online shopfront to access to local, fresh and seasonal produce from our Bowhouse traders. During the Covid-19 outbreak all orders will be delivered but looking to the future when we can all get out and about again we will also offer a free collection service at Bowhouse and other mini-hubs in our East Neuk community.

Liane Cumming is part of the team running Woodlea Stables – a smallholding in West Fife. They sell eggs from our small flocks of free range hens and bread from an on site artisan bakery. During the lockdown she had to quickly set up an online shopfront to sell our eggs and bread.

Nick Weir is a part-time grower on a CSA project. He also helps to run an online food hub which is a co-op of 85 producer members and 350 shopper members. He is part of a team supporting farmers, growers and community food enterprises to build resilient, secure local food distribution systems by linking producers to eaters using open source, not-for-profit online shopfronts.

You can read a blog post about the session outcomes here.