Open Food Network - Information, alternatives and choices

[George Mochrie]

In considering a software platform to use for the online food hub the Open Food Network is the current front runner. Several delegates have spoken highly of it, it seems a highly polished and capable piece of software that would meet almost all of our needs.

The Open Food Network is a worldwide group developing an open source online platform that provides an online marketplace for food producers and distributors. It's very much focussed on supporting independent local farms and allows food hubs to act as umbrella entities for individual producers. The software itself is available on GitHub and the user guide is available here.

There is an existing deployment of OFN serving the UK: Open Food Network UK. There are already people in the Highlands using this platform, including Elphin Green Bowl and Roots, Fruits and Leaves.

This introductory video gives an overview of the platform.


Dylan shared this more in depth discussion (thanks Dylan).


Ana shared this feature list (thanks Ana).

Basic requirements
Customer can place orders through the veg box's website
Invoicing is automated based on placed orders
Secure payment
Product catalogue is easy to update
Once the sell-cycle's stock is sold-out, the shop indicates so and stops sales
It is easy include other products to the website and sales, out with the standard veg boxes (for example, if they have sausages available at certain times of year)
Technical support during working hours
All information can be downloaded to excel spreadsheets or other reports
Increasing managed volumes is easy
Different sales cycle management
Aesthetically pleasing
Part of the offer is a branded site for each veg box
Customer management
Different customer profiles (individual, wholesale, restaurants)
Customer dashboard where they can check their new/active/cancelled orders, lifetime sales details, contact information, payment information, etc).
Customer can copy previous orders / re-order
Customers can have a "wallet" for upfront payments (refunds are added as available money in the account unless refund requested)
Holiday / cancellation dates
Customer can easily provide feedback
Customized rewards / coupon builders / loyalty programmes
Customer software support
Customer database
Manager board
Sales Dashboard with information about new/active/cancelled orders, lifetime sales details, etc.
Sales report
Interface with accounting system
Cash balance between wallets and orders
Print orders per categories/products
Print labels in order of delivery
Delivery routes
Links with veg box social media
Push notifications
Product trends analysis
Other analytics?

They are also working on harvest lists soon....

Thanks also to Helen OKeefe from Elphin Green Bowl who's been a wealth of useful advice and information (we may want to pick your brains more later ).

Alternatives

• Several people have mentioned NeighbourFood.
• Dylan (thanks again) shared Local Food Nodes.
• Thanks to Donna who has had a very positive experience with Big Barn,. Big Barn are UK based and have more local suppliers registered than OFN do. They aren't open source, but it seems they are willing to facilitate our project. They take 6% of the sale price (excluding delivery) plus 45p to cover card processing.

When the conference started I didn't know about OFN, and was considering using a CMS to work on something very like it in my spare time. I don't really have the time or skills to do something like that properly so it's great that something so capable already exists. To develop something along these lines in a non fanatical-hobbyist sort of a way is a lot of work, very expensive, and possibly crazy.

Choices

I expect we need more information before we can make a firm decision on software, and our choice of software may well influence the other aspects of the project. OFN seems like the front-runner, but Big Barn may well be a worth alternative. We probably need to talk to both organisations to find out how they feel our idea fits with their platforms?

Regarding OFN...

I hope to set the software up on a test server so we can evaluate it properly in a non-live environment. Any decision relating to what follows should probably wait until that happens.

Unnecessary technical detail...

► Show Spoiler

I actually spent some hours trying to set OFN up on a little ARM box last weekend. It has some pretty specific requirements, it uses the Ruby on Rails framework and needs specific versions of the software within that ecosystem. This makes it difficult to set up on shared web hosts such as the one running this forum. It all went fine on my local server until I discovered one of the dependencies doesn't support the aarch64 architecture. Almost all my boxes are ARM based, all my servers are, but I'll set up an old x86 box and give it another try when I have time.

As far as I know OFN doesn't currently support the hub-of-hubs model we are thinking of. There are a few ways around this...

• We could use OFN-UK as a platform and act as advocates, facilitators, enablers and a communication nexus for local hubs, producers and similar entities. This is the simplest and easiest option, which may well make it the most sensible. It subordinates us to a UK wide entity when our focus is on the Highlands, and the individual hubs would be required to pay OFN-UK's (albeit very reasonable) fees. It's outwith the scope of this discussion, but Scotland may or may not remain a part of the UK in the longer term, what would happen in relation to OFN-UK in such and eventuality is unclear.
• We could ask for the hub-of-hubs feature to be implemented (or since it's open source we could implement it ourselves if anyone has the skills). Depending on how the software is written it may not be particularly involved, or it may be completely impractical.
• We could run the OFN software on our own server and administer it ourselves. That would take some work, exactly how much I'm not sure until the software is running on a server I can play with. On the other hand we wouldn't be paying OFN-UK for the use of their platform. Essentially we would be doing the same as OFN-UK, but with a specific Highland focus, the platform itself would be the uber-hub. This may have implications for existing hubs and producers using OFN (but I expect nothing insurmountable, it's the same software after all).
• Something else I've not thought of.

Thoughts?

[Peter Moffatt]

What we need from OFN, or any other system, software or service provider

Customers need to be able to go to a single website, relating to a hub which is near enough for them to be able to collect orders, or which will co-ordinate deliveries to them, from any or all of the producers selling on the hub. Ideally customers would be able to make a single payment for an order made up of goods from several producers. Separate payments to different producers would be less convenient for the customer, though presumably simpler for the producers and organisers. The local hub, within collection and delivery distance of customers, will be the key to the whole operation.

Green Bowl at Elphin seems to be just such a local hub on a small scale, with a single order and payment for goods from several producers. Does the OFN software handle the allocation of payments to the different producers?

The Green Bowl website is a model of clarity and simplicity. Does the website design come with OFN, or have Green Bowl created or commissioned it themselves?

Green Bowl definitely seems to be the model we should be pursuing. I was not impressed by Big Barn.

Scope
We should probably not try to set up all across the Highlands in one swoop. Local hubs on the Green Bowl model could be set up where and when there is producer and customer support and they can be seen as likely to succeed.

Funding
Any system we are able to set up will require funding. Do we have any ideas about what funding sources might be available?

Peter.

[George Mochrie]

I've spent the past couple of days trying to get an OFN server installed so we can have a play with it. I think that's important so we can play with setting up hubs, producers, products and so on without impacting on a live environment. I also wanted to have it done before opening a dialogue with the OFN people so I could have some hands-on knowledge going into that conversation.

Short answer: it's not gone well. I'll keep at it, there are other things I can investigate and try, and I'll ask for some pointers from the OFN team. There are other non software related things I need to do, so it unlikely to happen this coming week. I have however learned a number of things about the software and the OFN paradigm in the process. I did manage to get a development server running (designed to be a test platform for the people writing the software), but it seems to have several quirks that make it unsuitable for the kind of testing and evaluation I was hoping for.

I'll begin by saying that this is a project created by more experienced, more highly skilled people than me with the intention of making the world a better place. It seems to be the most capable available platform for running an online food network. OFN may have solutions/answers to everything written below, I'll know when I start talking with them. Some of my criticisms may be a result of my lack of knowledge and familiarity with the tools used, misunderstandings on my part, and some are certainly due to my own (Free Software influenced) ideology.

None of this is me saying that OFN shouldn't be used, though it reinforces the argument that we shouldn't run our own instance of it (good advice, thanks Dylan). As I said, many of the issues are likely due to my lack of understanding or my ideology. Mostly I want to explain why the evaluation server isn't ready when I said it would be and share what I discovered in the process.

OFN requires very specific software to run on, and will only run on x86 hardware. It needs a particular type of Linux: Ubuntu recommended, the installation scripts won't work unless it's a Debian derived OS. In addition it doesn't work with the most recent version of those operating systems, the recommended version is six years old. This is restrictive but understandable and not altogether uncommon for server software, a platform is chosen so that everyone's systems are similar and the developers don't have to spend their time chasing bugs that are a result of subtle differences between the underlying operating systems it's running on. This isn't like installing a desktop application, OFN uses several different software components, much of the magic is in the way these components are configured to work together. It's very clear that OFN is not designed to be portable or widely replicated, instead they offer personal help and support to the people that do decide to set up an OFN server. I will say that I have been using Ubuntu 16.04 on x86 as recommended.

In addition to the OS requirements OFN requires specific outdated versions of required software packages, many of which are no longer receiving updates and bugfixes, some of which are no longer available. The installation instructions and scripts are out of date, I suspect due to them not having been updated since the last time someone set up a national-level OFN deployment. For instance, if one follows the instructions to set up a development server the installation script will complain that the version of ruby that the instructions specified is no longer used, and a more recent (though still out of date) version is required instead. In the case of setting up a production server this issue is even more apparent, much of the time I've spent on this has involved editing the installer scripts to use versions of the software that are available and installing missing software the scripts assumed would be present.

OFN's focus on having national-level deployments (in our case that is OFN-UK) is built into the software itself. Setting up a server that is targeted at an area that doesn't have a country code, such as the Highlands or even Scotland is not how it was designed. This isn't to say that it's not possible to set up a sub-national deployment, but it clearly wasn't part of the plan when designing the software. This outlook is evident on their website, if you scroll down to the page footer there is a section entitled "OFN Local", which lists countries. Their conception of "Local" is clearly far removed from my own. I can see arguments for organising in accordance with national boundaries, perhaps it's just my extreme localism and anti-statism that causes their outlook to irk me.

I am a little uncomfortable with the (admittedly normal and pragmatic) casual acceptance of global corporate cloud services. Their team seems to communicate both with each other and with others using Slack, which is just the kind of social media platform people concerned with digital freedom would rather avoid. The map uses Google Maps and requires that entities deploying OFN have a billing account with Google. It would be nice to have an option to use OpenStreetMap, but as far as I know no such option currently exists. The installation instructions assume one has a GitHub (owned by Microsoft) account. It so happens I do have a GitHub account, but I'd like to be free not to have one. To me it seems as if the means are somewhat at odds with the ends, which unsettles me.

Lastly, while editing the installation scripts I notice that they will inform the OFN people every time OFN is deployed on a server. This is weird and intrusive, and was not apparent until I stumbled upon it when looking for something else. Do we really live in a world where people have grown so used to automated surveillance that it is considered normal and acceptable?

[George Mochrie]

Customers need to be able to go to a single website, relating to a hub which is near enough for them to be able to collect orders, or which will co-ordinate deliveries to them, from any or all of the producers selling on the hub. Ideally customers would be able to make a single payment for an order made up of goods from several producers.

Agreed.

Separate payments to different producers would be less convenient for the customer, though presumably simpler for the producers and organisers. The local hub, within collection and delivery distance of customers, will be the key to the whole operation.

Green Bowl at Elphin seems to be just such a local hub on a small scale, with a single order and payment for goods from several producers. Does the OFN software handle the allocation of payments to the different producers?

I believe that's how it works, it's just the kind of thing I was hoping to play with on a running server. I'll be reading the user documentation in more depth tonight and hopefully be able to give a definitive answer. If anyone else here knows then please share

The Green Bowl website is a model of clarity and simplicity. Does the website design come with OFN, or have Green Bowl created or commissioned it themselves?

That's part of OFN, with some user-customisation possible.

Green Bowl definitely seems to be the model we should be pursuing. I was not impressed by Big Barn.

It's worth differentiating between the individual hubs and the platform they choose to use. It may well be that we don't run a system ourselves, and instead advocate for and support the establishment of local hubs who will use one of the existing systems we have identified (or one we haven't) directly. This is more or less the first approach I outline in my initial post.

Scope
We should probably not try to set up all across the Highlands in one swoop. Local hubs on the Green Bowl model could be set up where and when there is producer and customer support and they can be seen as likely to succeed.

Agreed. Perhaps I should try to set up a hub here so I can learn what the heck I'm talking about. I'm very conscious that currently I'm just a layman with good intentions and a lot of words

It's clear we still need more information. We should talk to Green Bowl again, perhaps to other similar organisations, and also to OFN. I would suggest talking to Big Barn too, to see what they say, even if they aren't the current first choice.

[Martin]

There's quite a lot of experience of different platforms around. TBI has been looking at using Neighbourfoods for a Black Isle Food Hub, and there were two attempts around here to set up hubs after the Food Assembly platform was pulled from the UK market. Emma ran one, using software developed by a guy in Culbokie. I'm not sure which platform the other one used, but we could find out quite easily. Poor functionality was part of the reason both hubs failed. The most important thing is going to be finding a platform that works well. It would be nice if that also turned out to be open source, but it must be better to have something corporate that works than to have something open source that doesn't!

[George Mochrie]

The most important thing is going to be finding a platform that works well. It would be nice if that also turned out to be open source, but it must be better to have something corporate that works than to have something open source that doesn't!

Agreed. I should clarify that some of the specific requirements and all the technical problems I mentioned with OFN relate to the installer, not the OFN software itself which clearly works well.

[Peter Moffatt]

I have been looking at the OFN website, and have collected some links and copied information from some of the pages. If you haven't all seen it already, you may be interested in the stuff about groups.

I hope you will be able to follow the links from the attached document.

Peter.

Get on the open Food Network.doc

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[George Mochrie]

If you haven't all seen it already, you may be interested in the stuff about groups.

Great find, thanks Peter! I was aware that we could set up a profile, but the groups feature is just what we want

[Glentruim]

Hi everyone

Delighted with the momentum that seems to be building to move forward. I like the idea of building hub by hub so that lessons learnt can be implemented easily for new hubs. Count me in for moving forward, and I'll submit the one page summary to Emma to meet her deadline. Ian

[Peter Moffatt]

Information from Elphin Green bowl

Helen has very kindly sent me some information about setting up and Running Elphin Green Bowl, using the Open Food Network.

Her email, and a summary of correspondence between George and Nick Weir of Open Food Network UK, are attached.

This is the most useful OFN link I have come across so far.
https://about.openfoodnetwork.org.uk/st ... n-journey/

Peter.

GM - Nick Weir correspondence Feb 2021.doc

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210214 Elphin Green Bowl.doc

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