Love is…..a revolutionary new dating service for food businesses

A new dating service for food businesses will go live on Valentines Day in a bid to create new markets for buyers and sellers, cut food waste and reduce spiralling transport costs.

A cross between an online dating agency and eBay, MyFoodTrader.com puts the reputation of the business in the spotlight and then finds perfect matches within a specified geographical area.

Already more than 1,000 businesses from 60 countries have signed up.

MyFoodTrader.com is the brainchild of food campaigner Rob Ward, the man behind the Honest Labelling campaign and a fierce champion of regional food.

Rob hopes to create a vast new marketplace for the food industry to do business while also creating a level playing field for the army of independent and artisan producers.

Everyone wants to save time and money but many businesses cant see the wood for the trees because they are being bombarded with vast quantities of information on a daily basis, said Rob. Life needs to be simpler and more effective, not more involved and complicated.

What I have created is a trading platform which enables everyone in the food chain, whether its buyers, sellers, growers, packaging suppliers or logistics companies, to talk to each other and do business.

At the moment the process is chaotic at best with half-empty lorries trekking up and down the country and millions of pounds of food going to waste. I want to match businesses in terms of suitability so they communicate better, save time and trade more effectively.

MyFoodTrader.com incorporates an instant alert system which enables last-minute orders to be taken and spare haulage space to be snapped up at a fraction of the cost.

Explained Rob: You could have a restaurant sending out an alert looking for strawberries within a 50-mile radius or a grower sending out an alert looking for a customer to snap up their excess stock, either way

MyFoodTrader gives buyers and sellers the opportunity to reach a huge audience at the touch of a button.

Primarily it saves time but it can also prevent huge amounts of waste in everything from excess stock to fuel costs.

The site will give scores on reputational information such as trading terms, value for money and whether companies met a match’s expectations which Ward said would make the platform a more credible decision-making resource for potential business partners than companies’ own websites or a random search of the internet. 

Feedback will be compiled from an anonymous voluntary questionnaire that will be sent out to successfully matched companies.

Said Rob: There has been an explosion in independent and regional producers and the British public have really bought into this. However, like every other sector, there will be a small minority of businesses which care more about the profit line than they do about the consumer. MyFoodTrader will celebrate the reputation of everyone in the food chain, from the grower to the packer to the distributor to the seller, allowing each and every business to check out the others reputation before deciding whether to do business with them.

Rob has already been in talks with Frances food federation to see if the project can be rolled out across the Channel.

For years the French have actively promoted their independent and artisan retailers and they want to protect that network by enabling them to compete in an increasingly competitive market.

Information relating to each business will be displayed on users’ profile pages in a similar way to eBay and users will be able to display it via a widget with a live feed on their own websites. 

Registered users create a profile, and alerts containing limited information on a business that matches their needs and its reputation score will be sent to them when the software provides a match. 

Users must then subscribe to receive the contact details of the prospective partner with whom they have been matched.

Rob Ward is one of the UKs foremost experts in food provenance in a career spanning more than 20 years in farming and food.

He grew up on a Shropshire farm and quickly transformed its entire operation, eventually supplying soft fruit to Marks & Spencer, Waitrose and Tesco.

Opening his own farm shop at the age of 20, Rob has since gone on to develop a string of successful businesses centred on the same theme – producing food that people want to buy.
He has a specialist knowledge of regional food and has been employed by businesses throughout Europe and North America to help improve the way they communicate with their customers.

The founder of the FoodMarketingNetwork.com, Rob has thousands of food businesses and professionals connected to his website, providing a unique resource to unite people in this dynamic market.

He is a regular on TV and radio, working with the BBC and Channel 4 on a number of ratings-winning programmes.