Why I built localFoddr in the first place

Real, local food changed me long before I ever thought about building anything.

Not the supermarket version of “real food”, wrapped in plastic and stamped with marketing claims. I’m talking about food that came straight from the hands of the person who raised it – meat from farmers who knew their animals, eggs from hens that saw the sun, seafood caught by someone whose name you actually knew.

Those moments were rare, but unforgettable. And every time I tasted food like that, one thing became painfully obvious: this is how it should be, and this is how far we’ve drifted.

Supermarkets kept their margins. Farmers paid the price. Small producers were pushed out, over-regulated, and buried by the very systems that claimed to “feed the world”. And the rest of us – the people who actually want to buy from our local farmers, ranchers, butchers, and fishers – had no way to find them.

I kept thinking: How can something so important be this hard?

The problem was simple – and everywhere

Whenever I talked to real-food people, the stories were the same:

• “I want to buy local beef, but I don’t know who sells it.”
• “My neighbour has eggs but doesn’t have a website.”
• “Our small-town butcher had to close.”
• “If I could buy directly, I would – but where do I start?”

And on the other side:

• Farmers struggling to get seen.
• Ranchers priced out by middlemen.
• Fishermen told to compete with imports that shouldn’t even be labeled “fresh”.
• Homesteaders who just wanted to feed their community.

Everyone cared. Everyone wanted connection. But every path between them was broken. So I built one.

localFoddr started as a simple idea

What if there was one place – one global directory – where people could:

• Find real meat, eggs, dairy, and seafood directly from the people who produce it
• Message suppliers without needing to give out a phone number
• Support small, local operations instead of corporations
• Make buying local the default, not the exception

Not an app owned by investors.
Not a marketplace that takes a cut.
Not another ad platform.

Just a clean, simple, independent tool that puts farmers and food seekers in direct contact.

No middlemen. No interference. No tricks.

But the real reason goes deeper

localFoddr exists because I believe something most people forgot:

Food is supposed to connect people – not corporations.

When a family farm disappears, a community loses more than food. It loses knowledge. Stewardship. Land care. Animals raised with respect. And slowly, the public loses the understanding of where food comes from at all.

I built localFoddr because the world needs local farmers more than ever – and they need us too.

I built it because I was tired of waiting for someone else to fix it

I’m not a corporation. I’m not funded. I’m one person with a belief that this matters enough to build from scratch.

localFoddr is free, global, growing, and built with intent:

• No “pay to be seen”.
• No ads crowding out small suppliers.
• No selling user data.
• No gatekeeping.

Just people finding people – the way food used to work.

And now it’s bigger than me

Every new supplier that joins proves something I’ve believed from the start.

There is a hunger for real, local food – everywhere.

Every new user searching for beef, eggs, raw milk, seafood, tallow, lamb, venison…

Every message sent from a food seeker to a local supplier…

Every story of someone buying direct for the first time…

It’s a reminder that this is worth building.

localFoddr wasn’t created as a startup idea or a business strategy. It was created because the alternative – doing nothing – wasn’t acceptable.

I built localFoddr because real food should stay local – and real

And because farmers, ranchers, butchers, homesteaders, and fishers deserve to be seen.

This is just the beginning. And it feels right that the very first article in this magazine starts with the why – the heart – behind all of it.