Agrifoodie

Small farms are a pillar of EU agriculture (49% of EU-27 farms are smaller than 2 ha). They play a key role in supporting rural development and providing important social, cultural and environmental services. Unfortunately, 70%-90% of the final price of food products depends on intermediate steps along the marketing chains. In this severe context, consumers attention for fresh, healthy and socially sustainable food products is constantly rising, and citizens are more and more choosing online stores for grocery shopping. The number of people using smartphones for online shopping increased by 64%.
This market trend represents an important business opportunity for all those farms too small to compete in major distribution channels and have poor online visibility and e-commerce capabilities, to directly address large consumers basins in urban-suburban areas (i.e. 72.4% of EU population).

In this context, AgriFoodie (AF) represent an innovative and highly scalable web/mobile e-commerce/educational platform conceived and designed to i) overcome the marketing barriers in local food networks, ii) increase the value chain of local food systems, and iii) close the gap between small farmers/food producers and people living in urban areas.
By putting in direct contact the local supply and demand through a B2B/B2C user-centric marketplace, AF empowers small farmers to directly manage their customizable “assisted” direct-selling online channel, and people living in urban areas to purchase food products of superior quality and freshness at fair prices.
The key element of AF consists in managing a widespread network of community-driven purchase units (AgriTeams) managed by a group leader (Agricoach) where consumers (Agriplayers) can pick-up their purchases. On farmer's side, grouping users allows to increase the size of each order, thus maximizing profit from every transaction and optimizing delivery logistics. Adopting a win-win-approach, AF offers meaningful advantages for both consumers (reliable, flexible and trusty source of healthy food close to their doors) and producers (a powerful web marketing tool for small farmers/food producers to increase over +20% both their business volumes and profitability).
The recent launch in real market conditions has collected promising metrics, but a huge work is still needed to increase the consumer trust/loyalty, scale up the platform at EU level and boost the business.