Lovefre.sh: A location-based, food app with real life rewards
February 7, 2011 - By Justin E. Gehrke
Any geek or techie will tell you that smartphones are great. They allow us to remain connected 24/7 to our Twitter and Facebook accounts, email inboxes, and our beloved internet. To be honest, though, among the bird-throwing, zombie-killing, and vuvuzela-blowing apps there are very few that actually bring any redeeming value in our physical lives.
This is something that Mark Spofforth and the UK-based team at Lovefre.sh hope to change. Spofforth and his co-founder, Geoff Tidey, teamed up last year to develop the Lovefre.sh app. Their goal? To change the face of location based apps. Yes, Lovefre.sh involves the check-ins that have become synonymous with apps like Foursquare. Instead of badges and mayorships, though, users will be able to chart and find locally and organically grown produce. While it may not seem like a revolutionary idea at first glance, Lovefre.sh has the potential to bring people and their virtual and physical worlds closer together.
The Lovefre.sh vision
I had the privilege to interview Spofforth last week. He is a charismatic fellow who holds a degree in Psychology and spent 16 years as a fierce negotiator in London, before deciding to give it all up to move to the country and lead a more laid-back and self-sufficient lifestyle. (Note: No, he is not a hippy, and he did not start a commune.) Upon making his move, he spent a great deal of time trying to find local places where he could buy locally and organically grown produce and meats. The difficulty of his search eventually became the catalyst that led to Lovefre.sh becoming a reality.
As a certified geek who has spent more than a decade developing and running online gaming communities, he wondered if his technical skills could be leveraged to create something virtual that could potentially better the health and welfare of both local food producers and the customers seeking to buy good, fresh food. When asked to describe the “why” behind the Lovefre.sh concept, he answered that it involved, in part, “…a desire for a little bit of that feeling you got as kids, buying food in a market from people you actually knew.”
To this end, Spofforth is quick to point out that Lovefre.sh is not founded in political ideology. Moreover, it is founded in a social ideology and with the idea that Lovefre.sh could serve as a starting point at which an increasingly disconnected society of virtual citizens can begin to come back together, as they did in years gone by in their local produce market or town square. During the course of our interview, I asked him what exactly he hoped to achieve through the Lovefre.sh app. To this, Spofforth said, “Fundamentally, it’s about finding eating real, good food and being able to tell our friends about it.”
Spofforth says that apps like Foodspotting for iPhone allow people to upload and review photos of nearby restaurants but really do little to communicate their quality and source of their ingredients. To this end, he feels that a food-based app should let people know not just where it can be found but also give people the assurance that it comes from a healthy producer.
The tech behind Lovefre.sh
The app, itself, is a model of simplicity and functionality. Smartphone users can the HTML5 web app, via their phone’s browser. The design is a product of a collaborative effort between Spofforth, Tidey, and three other team members. Spofforth credits Tidey, whom he describes as an “uber-coder”, with teaching himself Ruby on Rails and Objective C in the short span of several months, in order to ensure Lovefre.sh was built on a solid foundation with unlimited potential for future expansion and growth.
In addition to the HTML5 app that functions on virtually any smartphone, the team also created the Lovefre.sh iPhone app. According to Spofforth, both versions have performed well in beta testing. Additionally, the iPhone app is currently under review by Apple for addition to the App Store.
Lovefre.sh functions similarly to other location based apps. A smartphone user comes across a local produce vendor, butcher, etc. whose products are locally produced. They check-in by submitting a “What’s Fresh” status on their smartphone using the device’s location service. Users can include photographs, video, or audio clips that describe the product on which they’re reporting. For now, the audio functionality is limited to the iPhone app version, since HTML5 coding standards for audio have yet to be set by the industry. To ensure the feature is available sooner, rather than later, though, Lovefre.sh is working on establishing a partnership with Audioboo, which would result in the audio functionality being available in the HTML5 web app in the near future.
With each check-in, the data set will grow and make it easier for other users to find locally grown foods in their area. Within the next several updates, push notifications will also be integrated. These will be configurable by the user to specify a range in miles/kilometers. When they are within range of a local food vendor, they’ll be automatically notified and be able to quickly discern the name, location, and products available.
The Lovefre.sh app will be free for users to download and use. Spofforth is also quick to point out that there are no in-app advertisements or preferential referrals of specific local producers. By bootstrapping the entire Lovefre.sh product, Spofforth and his team have been able to complete the entire research and development process without any investor funding or other equities and, thereby, guarantee the integrity of the information it provides to users.
While the app may have been born and tested in the United Kingdom, its use is not limited to a single geographic area. Lovefre.sh will be useable in countries around the world. It’s growth and usefulness in a specific area depends upon the frequency with which users check-in. Currently, the app is available only in English, but work is underway to internationalize the app by adding support for German, French, Spanish, and Italian. The geographic independence of the app, coupled with future language upgrades, gives Lovefre.sh the potential to help users find fresh goods both where they live and anywhere else they may travel.
Bringing Lovefre.sh to the non-tech masses
Spofforth is the first to admit that not everyone has a smartphone or is necessarily savvy on its use, if they do have one. He says that, while there are many social media centers that target people who are already using them, Lovefre.sh will be something simple to use that will appeal to non-tech types who don’t necessarily want to socialize but do want to find things that they need. By providing both HTML5 and iPhone versions, Spofforth hopes to appeal directly to them.
Lovefre.sh also went to great lengths to provide an easy way for vendors of locally-grown and organic foods to share their product with the world. While many places will be added by virtue of customers checking-in, some sellers may want to add themselves to the Lovefre.sh database. They will be able to do so by claiming their own location, via smartphone. By providing basic information, such as their name, email address, etc., vendors can market their products and quickly designate local favorites with an asterisk (*).
The team plans to take this concept to the next level sometime around mid-year 2011 by offering a premium package to sellers. For around 10 GBP (about $16 US), producers will be able to create a basic web presence with minimal investment, in terms of time and money, and without requiring any real technical knowledge. Through the premium package, they will also be able to provide their own customer loyalty program, which will operate independently of the Lovefre.sh organization. This means that producers will decide what to offer and customers benefit, without the hassle of a technical or financial middle-man.
The official Lovefre.sh launch
As previously mentioned, the Lovefre.sh iPhone app has been submitted to Apple for approval. Spofforth and his team hope the approval will come in time for a February 14, 2011 launch. Since beta testing of both versions began in February of this year and has been an overwhelming success, it is now just a matter of waiting for Apple to bless Lovefre.sh and add it to the App Store. While GSL doesn’t normally endorse a particular app, we are hopeful that the concept behind Lovefre.sh is embraced by health-conscious smartphone users around the world. After all, it would be great to be able to point out at least one or two apps, among the hundreds of thousands, that provide us with functionality in our virtual world and a better quality of life in our real one.
As soon as the app officially launches, we will publish the details. We know our readers are among the smartest on the internet, so we have no doubt they will want to check out Lovefre.sh for themselves.
To learn more about and read the latest Lovefre.sh news, visit their official website at http://lovefre.sh
Authors note: GSL would like to express its gratitude to Mark Spofforth for agreeing to be interviewed about the Lovefre.sh app. No monetary, promotional, or other compensation was received in exchange for the writing of this article. GSL learned of its imminent release on Twitter and simply believes that the app holds a tremendous amount of potential to actually benefit people, in their real-world lives.
