The Nerdiest Place on Earth

Before today, the Food Near You search worked like this: you could enter your address or ZIP code and it would find local food sellers for you. It was okay, but if you wanted to find Bob’s Farm or find places close to you that sold eggs, you were out of luck. But now you can search in exciting new ways!

If you’re unfamiliar with Food Near You, you might want to read this.

Let’s say you’d like to find places that sell eggs near 49505. You can do this:

Since FNY is only keeping track of what produce is offered by farms and farmers markets right now (not restaurants or grocers yet), those are the only types of results you’ll see when you search this way.

And you can go ahead and get crazy with the ingredients. You can list as many as you want:

And if it’s more important to you to find everything in one place than it is to find the closest possible places, you can leave out the location and search for products only:

Want to find a farm by name? You can do that. (Right now, this only works with farms. Eventually you’ll be able to do this with any kind of seller.)

And of course, you can still search by just location and see everything near you.

Visit Food Near You to see the search in action!

What do you think of the new search? What else would you like to see from Food Near You? I would really appreciate any feedback. If you’d like to tell me what you think, you can leave a comment here or use the Food Near You contact form.

Around the end of April 2010, I launched my latest project, Food Near You.

About Food Near You

What is Food Near You? Like it says on the website’s about page, Food Near You is a tool to help you find:

• Farmers markets
• Farms
• Restaurants that serve locally-grown food
• Grocers that sell local produce in their stores

Right now you can find all those things on Food Near You, with an emphasis on farms and farmers markets. Aren’t there already sites that do this? Yes, but none of them meet all these criteria:

• The site is easy to use
• The site is filled with high-quality data including pictures
• The site covers the entire United States

I still have a ways to go with the quality of my data but I’m working on it. I definitely don’t have data for all of the United States yet but I’m starting where I live and working my way out. Ease of use is something I’ve planned in from the very beginning and that’s where I believe I have the real leg up. Sites like Local Harvest and the Eat Well Guide have similar goals to Food Near You but they’re frustrating to use. If Food Near You has better data, it covers all the same areas as the competitors and it’s easier to use, why would people use anything other than Food Near You?

Why Eat Locally?

Why would people go out of their way to purchase locally-grown food? Entire books have been written on the topic, but in a nutshell:

• Locally-grown food travels a shorter distance from farm to plate, burning less fuel in transportation.
• Because it doesn’t have to embark on a long journey, locally-grown food can be grown for flavor and nutrition rather than durability.
• Locally-grown food is typically fresher than food you would buy at a supermarket.
• If you know the sources from which you’re buying, you know whether you’re buying food that was grown in a way with which you agree. (For example, is the produce organic or was it grown with pesticides? Is the beef grass-fed or grain-fed?)

Focusing on West Michigan First

Right now I’m focusing on West Michigan, especially the Grand Rapids, Michigan area. I can get the highest-quality data if I can actually go visit the farms, talk to the farmers and take pictures myself. Local Harvest has a lot of data, but it’s not all very good. I’d rather have a Michigan-only site with awesome data than have a country-wide site with just-okay data.

What’s New With Food Near You

I’ve been spending a lot of my free time on Food Near You, both on the programming and on collecting data on local food sellers. I’m also getting a lot of great help and advice from my girlfriend and my friend Zach. Without them, it wouldn’t be possible for Food Near You to be what it is. In the beginning (which was a few weeks ago), you could search for local food sellers by typing in your zip code or address and Food Near You would give you a list. Each seller’s page would have a blurb talking about that particular seller, the seller’s address, phone number, website and hours (but not every seller has all those things – for example, most farms don’t have hours).

In the last week or so, I’ve added:

• Tons of new local food sellers, especially farms and farmers markets
• A contact page (feedback is greatly appreciated!)
• Farms: I’ve added a list of what the farm produces and which farmers markets carry their produce (see Trillium Haven Farm in Jenison for a good example)
• Farmers Markets: I’ve added a list of farmers who bring produce to the farmers market (see Fulton Street Farmers Market in Grand Rapids for a good example)

I have a long list of features I plan on adding but I’d rather talk about things I’ve already done than things I plan on doing. When there’s more news, I’ll let you know. For now, why not hop on Food Near You and see what’s in your area?

Visit Food Near You