Food inflation is predicted to continue rising around the world.
This is not news, but the possibility that this rise is unnecessary, is.
Is it necessary?
For instance, only 8% of the fuel used to transport our food is used to ship the food, 82% is used to move the trucks around (Ref. 2). Combine this with imbalances in the supply system which often leaves healthy food to waste in our fields and factories.
‘This waste has to stop,’ claims Rob Ward, food campaigner and entrepreneur who has invented a novel system to help food business overcome wasted resources.
Highlighting a key example of inefficiency that exists in the supply from producer to consumer. Add to this is an increasing drop in worker productivity as a result of information overload.
The world’s digital data is doubling every 18 months (487 Billion Gigabytes of new data in the next 18 months, Ref. 3). This is causing 62% of office workers to admit that it’s difficult to maintain their focus on the task in hand, getting distracted by the constant flow of emails and other information.
Alarmingly, 73% admit to disregarding or deleting business emails without fully reading them (Ref.1). ‘Information overload is getting out of control,’ claims Rob Ward, ‘and it’s starting to reduce our productivity.’
Information overload is officially reducing productivity in business and the food market is no exception.
Too much time is given away to constant interruptions, dealing with the wrong suppliers and trying to find new customers. ‘Finding out who is the ideal business to trade with is getting harder,’ claims Rob Ward. He believes this is wasting time and money and making our food cost more than it should.
This why he believes a solution is urgently necessary. An antidote is needed to counteract these challenging issues for the food industry.
Rob Ward has created a system that helps small and large food businesses by matching the ideal businesses together, making their supply system and work scheduling more efficient.
‘We have built the worlds first online dating site, for food businesses,’ he explains. They have created the same style of online system as the familiar dating, relationship finding websites, which has then been combined with a trading format, similar to eBay.
This is a completely new trading platform for food business to connect and trade together. Its purpose is to match food businesses on their relevance and reputation. This service intends to reduce wasted time and spare capacity to make the food industry more efficient.
How do you know who is the best to trade with?
His plan is to create a process that records businesses reputation, using their innovative Reputation Badge system, businesses can publish their records of their customer feed back in all their communications. It is regarded as very difficult to clearly define the truth behind testimonial claims companies make, this system provides an independent record that represents a real scenario of what other businesses think about them.
This international online business, called MyFoodTrader is the brain child of Rob Ward, originally a farmer and farm shop owner from Shropshire, UK.
‘Over 5,000 businesses have registered from more than 62 countries around the world,’ claims Rob Ward, ‘and that’s only in the first few weeks. We expect this to jump rapidly into the tens of thousands very quickly.’
MyFoodTrader.com could be a breakthrough for small businesses, often not able to compete with mass advertising budgets of big businesses – but often these smaller businesses have excellent reputations.
Now, these businesses can be found simply and easily using this new system. ‘What I have created is a simple system that is focused on helping food businesses that have the best reputation to win business,’ Rob Ward says.
Whether he is right or not, the case is clear, food inflation is a problem for all of us, the more food businesses can do to help reduce this growth the better for all of us.
References:
Ref 1: LexisNexis International Productivity Survey Ref 2: Inefficient supply chain report: Noelhodson.com ‘foodtubes project’ Ref 3: Infoniac.com Digital Data growth report
Rob Ward, Originally a Farmer and Farm Shop business owner – has worked for over 20 years in food production, distribution and retailing. He now works internationally with food businesses to help grow their businesses.
Following an international tour (sponsored by HSBC Bank) he discovered a great deal about local, regional and specialty food markets across the world. During that tour, what struck him was there were far more similarities than differences in food businesses around the world.
From this experience, he then went onto create an international network of food businesses, call Food Marketing Network. This network shares ideas and experiences together to help make sure good ideas are know about.
The purpose of MyFoodTrader.com is to provide a local and international trading platform for food businesses to connect and trade together.
Creating a completely original system, based on a combination of dating software and online trading, MyFoodTrader.com matches food businesses together based on relevance and reputation.
He has considerable experience working in media and is available for more information:
Please contact: rob@foodmarketingnetwork.com
MyFoodTrader.com UK Tel: 08456432060Â Skype: ‘robwardskype’Â International Tel: 00448456432060
key words:
food producer, food business, food retailer, food buyer, food supply chain, food marketing, food trading, farm business, restaurant business, food distribution
