Hello everyone, thanks for reading 👋🏼
Welcome to another edition of the Open Food Network Software Newsletter (you can also subscribe to our regular email here).
Did you know that the Open Food Network has now been running for over 10 years?
In the last year alone, our software platform has connected $12M USD of local food from 2,528 producers to 38,839 eaters!
It is a huge milestone, and we couldn't have made it without our community of food hubs, farmers, producers, restaurants, drivers, workshop participants, and the Open Food Network team.
On to the software updates.
In this edition, we'll be covering:
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$100,000 of development funding received from Sustainable Table
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We are thrilled to announce that we have been successful in our application for funding from the first round of the Sustainable Table Fund.
Over the next few months, the Open Food Network will receive more than $100,000 to develop new features and functionality for our open source software platform.
What does this mean for you?
New Features Made Possible by the Customer Endpoint API
The first part of the funding will be used to develop a new customer endpoint API. This will make it possible for customer details stored in Open Food Network platform to be securely shared with other platforms. This has massive potential for things like:
- Customer notifications and alerts (email and SMS) for events such as the store being open, orders being ready, delivery notifications, payment reminders and order cycles being about to close.
- Bulk application/ removal of discount codes making it possible to run targeted marketing campaigns.
- Customer analytics to make it easier to see your regular customers and who has not purchased anything in awhile.
We will let you know when this functionality is available through this newsletter.
Take part in our Pulse Check
We want to ensure that we are developing the features and functionality that you need. To help us do this, we are inviting farmers, food hubs and food producers to share their needs in our Pulse Check.
If you would like to participate, please get in contact with us.
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The Open Food Network software platform is updated frequently, in fact there have been over 15 releases since our last software newsletter.
Here are four key changes that we have released since then:
1.) Customer Notifications
The Shipping confirmation email that is automatically sent to customers has been improved to display each item ordered on it’s own line.
2.) Automatic producer notifications when order cycles close
It is now possible to automatically notify producers when an order cycle closes by ticking the Automatic Notifications checkbox in Edit Order Cycle > Advanced Settings.
3.) Improved sorting functionality
Orders can now be sorted via order email or order name (via last name). This will generate a PDF file of the invoices sorted in the same order in the Orders back office.
4.) Improved cloning order cycle functionality
When cloning an order cycle, the schedule from the original order cycle will be included in the cloned one too.
These are just some of the updates, patches and bug fixes that we've releases recently.
You can always view our most up to date release notes here.
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Help us fund new features
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We have a long list of development needs at the Open Food Network, and are always looking for additional funding to help us build the features and functionality that you need to manage your business.
🪴FUNDED - Control shipping and payment methods in an order cycle.
The UK platform users have funded the 'Control shipping and payment methods in an Order Cycle' feature development and it will be released soon.
This has a number of benefits for all platform users:
- You can select a ‘national courier’ delivery option for an order cycle with non perishable items and a ‘local delivery’ option on an order cycle with all products.
- You can opt to take cash payments only for orders that will be collected from a physical location like a store.
- You can allow for multiple collection days each week.
- It is much easier to create a multi-tiered relationships such as ‘daughter’ hubs that have different product ranges and shipping methods from their parent hub.
- It is much easier to setup wholesale and retail options for hubs, or ‘daughter’ enterprises that have different product ranges and shipping methods than their parent store or hub.
- It is easier to set up pre-order cycles by limiting the shipping methods on these order cycles. This is is attractive for sales, holidays and religious festivals.
🪴FUNDED & RELEASED - Item sorting functionality on invoices
A huge thank you to the team over at Strathbogie Local who have funded a development for item sorting functionality on invoices.
Enterprises now have the choice of sorting items in their invoices by either product name (default) or supplier name, which will help Food Hubs to pack and sort orders.
To do this go to Enterprises > Business Details > Invoice Item Sorting in the back office and click on the ‘Enable’ button to ‘Sort items by supplier name’. When you go to print invoices you will see that items are sorted by supplier as shown in the example below.
🌱FUNDING NEEDED - Direct links to product pages for marketing and promotion
The next feature that we are raising funds for is direct links to product pages for marketing and promotion. This is a really important feature for anyone who wants to grow their business through online marketing. When developed, users will be able to share links to individual products that they have listed on the Open Food Network platform on social media, in email newsletters and on their website.
We need to raise £4,500 to build this feature and the sooner we can raise the funds, the sooner it will be developed.
Find out more here.
Please share the link and contribute so we can build our shared online infrastructure.
🌱YOUR INPUT NEEDED - Discounts, Vouchers and Credits functionality
We understand there is a need for Discounts, Vouchers and Credits functionality and we are scoping them and experimenting with integrations to immediately enhance our offering around this. If you are interested please let us know by emailing hello@openfoodnetwork.org.au
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Upcoming Webinar - Growing a Food Hub
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Have you ever thought about starting a Food Hub?
Maybe you are already involved with one and want to figure out how you can level up your operations.
If either of these statements apply to you, then you need to join us for a free webinar where we will share information, frameworks and resources that you can use when planning to start a new Food Hub or expand the operations of an existing one.
Date: 27th April
Time: 12 PM
Length: Approximately one hour
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Can't make it - register anyway and we will send you a copy of the recording.
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We wish to advise that our customer support hours are now 9 AM - 3 PM Monday to Friday, excluding public holidays.
For help, support and assistance please get in contact with us by emailing hello@openfoodnetwork.org.au
We will respond to all enquiries as soon as possible.
URGENT INQUIRIES:
We understand that our customers are often juggling work on their Open Food Network profile in the limited time they have available between the farm/business, family and life.
If you have an urgent software inquiry and require immediate support, please send an email to hello@openfoodnetwork.org.au with the subject line: URGENT
This will prompt a notification to be sent to a team member on-call during out of office hours. We will try to get to a computer to help you as soon as we can.
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SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER
Our mission is to create a fairer, more sustainable and more transparent food system, and along with our software platform, we are also constantly creating resources, undertaking research and facilitating networking opportunities for farmers, producers, food hubs and other collaborators in the food system.
If you’d like to stay up to date with everything that’s happening in Australia at the Open Food Network you can subscribe to our monthly newsletter here.
Or click here to read our most recent edition.
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We're always here to help
If you'd like more help with setting up a new feature, or you have a question, you can contact us at hello@openfoodnetwork.org.au
Did you know we have a Facebook Group? The Australian Community Food Enterprise Network, we invite you to join and discuss any questions you might have with the other members.
If you think something has broken because of this release, please let us know ASAP! We can only investigate the bugs we know about, and the sooner we hear about them the easier it is to pin down their source.
We've also really appreciated those of you who have touched base with us to ask if we can help improve a process or add a feature. We can't always change things immediately, but often we can help! We also use your feedback to prioritise which features get built - if you don't tell us you need it, we don't know to build it!
If you'd like someone else on your team to receive this email, please invite them to subscribe here.
As always, thanks for being part of the Open Food Network community. You're one of 17,000+ people around the world using the Open Food Network and we're so glad you're part of it!
Cheers,
The Open Food Network Australia team
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