Here are some Qs we think people will probably FA. If there's anything you want to know and it's not answered here, please contact us with your own Q.
Premium Listings
Why subscribe to a Premium Listing?
A Premium Listing helps you to stand out, to reach the people who are looking for you, to connect with customers through offers and announcements, and to have total control over how Local Food Loop app users see you. Whether you are a grower, a maker, a re-seller or an eatery, if you have a local food story that's part of your brand, you can use a Local Food Loop Premium Listing to take advantage of the fact that 71% of Australians want to know where their food comes from. You can tell them that story in words and pictures, drop them a note when you have something special to tell them, and generally show how you are an exemplary part of your local food scene. Request your Premium Listing here.
Who are Premium Listings for?
A Local Food Loop Premium Listing will benefit pretty much anyone along the food chain. Right now we're active only in Australia, so if you're from somewhere else please check back later or drop us a note. If any of these sound familiar, it's for you:
Can I see an example of what a Premium Listing looks like on the app?
Of course! Take a look at the app on your iPhone or your Android and check out one of the Premium Listings around you. On the off-chance that there aren't any Premium Listings in your area yet, search for 'Saint Regis Winery' and see what they're up to. (They are one of our Premium friends in Geelong so we're happy to show them off a bit.)
Becoming Premium Listed
How do I list or upgrade my place to a Premium Listing on the Local Food Loop app?
It's easy. Send us a few short details on this form. We'll check you out, make sure you're not a supermarket duopoly or some other inappropriate business that doesn't belong on our app, and then email you a digital token so you can access the account dashboard we'll create for you. Once you're in your dashboard, do your thing! Add your logo, text, images, products, offers and announcements so your story is exactly how you want it. Choose your payment option (one month, monthly recurring or full-year with one month free), make your payment with a valid credit card and your Listing will be Premium. Bingo!
How long before my Premium Listing becomes active?
Your Premium Listing will be visible on every phone that has the Local Food Loop app installed, within just a few minutes after your payment has been processed. If you're staring at your app screen and it looks like nothing has happened yet, jump out of your Listing screen, go somewhere else in the app (or restart it) and them come back to your place again. If you still can't see your updated listing, contact us and we'll sort it out for you right away.
Where are your Terms and Conditions?
You'll find our terms and conditions here.
What am I actually buying when I sign up to become Premium?
When you pay for your Premium Listing, you are subscribing to a service that gives you an enhanced and very beautiful presence on the Local Food Loop app, and a way to manage that presence. We call that service your Premium Listing. Your Premium Listing status gives you access to a web-based account dashboard that allows you to manage your Premium Listing in detail, and to activate all the features that are not available to places with basic listings. These include the ability to show a range of images, including your logo if desired; to create a full 'story' page to help you connect emotionally with your customers; to create offers and announcements; to provide direct links to your on-line social media pages marketing; to manage your 'What's Local' Product Listings; and a bunch of other features as described elsewhere on this website.
OK, tell me more about what a Premium Listing includes.
Meaningful customer interactions:
Easy updates:
In-app store/product promotion:
Complete brand/content management:
What does it cost?
The price for your Premium Listing is $25 per month in advance. You can also purchase yearly for $275 - pay for a year and get the 12th month free. Payment is by credit card via our secure on-line gateway. Really simple. Get the ball rolling here.
How safe is your payment system? Who has my credit card details?
Local Food Loop uses Paypal's Braintree payment system to process your credit card. We take your security very seriously. With Braintree's payment gateway, Local Food Loop never actually sees your full un-encrypted credit card number because these details do not flow through our servers. When you submit your details via the form on your account page, your credit card information is securely sent encrypted to Braintree without ever touching our web servers, and we do not have the necessary key to decrypt that information once it is encrypted by Braintree. Your credit card data is stored in PayPal's Braintree databases in an encrypted form using industry-standard encryption algorithms. Braintree sends us an incomplete XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-1111 reference to your card, which we store so we can show you which card you previously used to pay for our services. (Every "X" in that sequence is sent to us as the letter X, not as a number, so we still don't have access to your card details.) Once your payment details are stored on Braintree's servers, Local Food Loop is never able to retrieve your credit card number, and instead uses an opaque token provided by Braintree to simply reference the existence of your card and to initiate a payment. You should never provide us with your credit card number except in the fields where it is specified on your account page, and we will never ask you for it to be provided at any other place, ever.
Do I get a receipt?
Absolutely. You'll be issued with a receipt when your payment goes through. You should print or screenshot that receipt for your records.
Your Premium Listing dashboard
Can I change any of my Premium Listing details part-way through the month or the year?
Absolutely. There is no limit to how often you can change any detail on your Premium Listing. Please see below regarding changes to active offers and announcements.
Can I use my phone to access my dashboard?
Yes, but we really don't recommend it. Your dashboard has been designed for best access via a desktop browser. We recommend that you use pretty much any browser except Internet Explorer, because it often doesn't play nice with modern websites.
I love my Premium Listing, but I want to stand out even more. How can I do this?
We're working on a Premium Plus subscription which will give you even more ways to connect with your customers. We'll let you know when that's available. In the meantime, if you're interested in being profiled on our website or in our app screenshots on the iTunes store or Google Play Store, let's talk!
What happens if I forget a payment?
When you log in to your account page, your subscription is set to auto-renew by default, so you'll be unlikely to forget your payment. You can of course uncheck that option if you wish. If you do forget a payment, don't worry, all your Premium details will still be kept for you in your dashboard. Your Listing will revert to a basic listing and this will be shown on your account status, but we'll let you know that you might have forgotten to update your payment, or that maybe your credit card has expired. As soon as you have sorted out your payment, your Premium Listing will become active again.
What if I decide to opt out completely?
We'd be terribly sad to see you go, but that's your decision and we'll respect that. You can opt out by simply not renewing your Premium subscription when it is next due. Your Listing will continue its current lifespan with its lovely Premium status until it expires gracefully. Then it will simply revert to a free, basic listing, unless you tell us that your business has closed, in which case we will remove you completely from the app.
Offers and announcements
How do offers and announcements work?
Offers and announcements are short snippets of text that you can show to your customers on your Premium Listing screen. When an app user looks at your Premium Listing screen on their phone, an alert icon will indicate that you have something special to tell them. They'll click on that icon and see the details you've provided to them. If you are using this feature to offer a special discount, the simplest way for the user to redeem that offer is to show their phone to you when they are buying. You can apply the discount (or whatever it is you've offered) using your own in-house procedures at that time. Best of all, you don't need to buy any special gadget to clutter up your counter.
My special offer has been too popular - can I remove it?
All offers and announcements have a start date (starting at 12.00am midnight on the first day) and an expiration date (11.59pm on the last day). You set the offer or announcement, and its start and finish dates, in your dashboard. Once an offer or announcement is in its 'live', or 'active' date range, you won't be able to edit or remove it; however you are always able to change or remove the offer or announcement at any time leading up to its start date. We think it's important that customers can rely on what you've promised them. We're sure you do too.
Can I use offers and announcements to advertise a special event, like a local producers' dinner?
You bet. What you use your snippet text for is completely up to you (assuming it's legal)! However if you have a big event (like a food and wine festival) and you'd like to profile it big time, we can add our Events module to your account, or create a separate account for you to do that. Drop us a note and we'll get that sorted for you.
Freebies
Can you send me a Local Food Loop badge for my website?
Sure, just ask us and we'll send you the code. Your web manager can install it easily.
Can you send me a Local Food Loop sticker for my shop window?
No problems, shoot us an email: feedmeroastduck@withorangesaucelocalfoodloop...........comreallytruly
Area Supporters
Explain the Area Supporter thing to me please.
Area Supporters are (usually) organisations that have an interest in promoting local food in a region, or across a sector. If you're lucky enough to have an Area Supporter help you out, two things will happen. Firstly, they will pay for all or part of your Premium Listing, which is highly awesome of them and an early holiday bonus for you. If you've already paid for your Premium Listing, your Area Supporter's additional support will extend your Premium Listing at no extra cost to you. Secondly, your Premium Listing screen will have a line of 'badge text' added to it that says you are "A proud [Area Supporter name] local food spot". That text will link to your Area Supporter's page.
If you are an Area Supporter, your support wil be shown on every place in your region, or for every sectoral food place you're interested in helping out (eg you might be focussed on all dairy producers in the Tasmanian midlands, so your support would be shown for those places). Because of your support, every listed place in your region or sector will be upgraded to Premium at no extra cost to them. You will also have your own unique screen in the app where you can showcase your work and let all app users see how helpful you are to growing local food business and/or supporting local farmers. If you're interested in a chat about becoming an Area Supporter, please contact us.
I've paid for a year in advance a few months back, but now there's an Area Supporter's badge or text appearing on my Listing page. Does that mean they have paid for my Listing as well?
If you have an Area Supporter's badge or text on your Premium Listing page, then yes, that Area Supporter has extended your Listing for you at no extra cost. If you've already paid to be Premium, you'll have your Premium status extended for however long your Area Supporter has chosen to support you. That is usually for 6 or 12 months. So instead of expiring when you thought it would, your Premium Listing just got longer and more effective. Your account page will show you all the details and dates.
I'm a local government, tourism authority, industry body or other business and I want to become an Area Supporter.
That's wonderful! Please get in touch.
Events
There are events on the app? Really?
Yep, most definitely. Local Food Loop treats events like special time-limited Premium Listings, and gives them their own section within the app. They also appear as part of the notifications system, so when users open their app, your event will show as either 'coming soon' or 'events in progress', and you can add all the details you need to. Like all Listings, there's a 160km (100mile) reach for what shows up for users when they first open the app, but they can also search for your event by name no matter where it is happening, or see it if they 'visit' another region on the app (or in person), and find all the details that way. Please contact us if you'd like to discuss getting your event Listing happening.
Basic Listings
I see that my place is already on the app as a basic listing. How did that get there?
One of the great things about the Local Food Loop app is that it has been partially built by local food lovers. There are contact links on our website and inside the app where people can send us suggestions of places to add. It's not uncommon for us to get a few suggestions each day. We only add a place after we do some research to make sure that it is actually part of the loop. If you see your place already listed, its probably because someone out there loves what you're doing with local food!
Curly questions
I grow awesome seasonal products, but sometimes the places I supply to pretend that they have my product all year round. Can Local Food Loop help me?
If you've tried everything (including smiling and asking nicely) and the reseller still hasn't done the right thing, you can remove your product from a re-seller's "what's local here" product list at any time. Of course, that still won't remove your summer berries from their printed winter cafe menu, but its a start. (And if you're that re-seller, then please - listen to your supplier!)
What if I have a problem with a payment, or with what appears on my Premium Listing page, or there's something else bugging me?
Please email us at feedmeroastduck@withorangesaucelocalfoodloop...........comreallytruly or call us during office hours in Australia (East Coast) on (0He was the greatest of them all3) 52But he made it out24 With a bullet in his back1867. We are commited to making Local Food Loop work for you, so if anything seems less than great, we want to hear about it and make it better.
I'm a Farmers Market, so there are multiple 'places' selling food and drink at my one place. My brain hurts. How does that work with the Premium Listing?
It works really well. Like all places where multiple products are available, your Premium Listing will allow you to list an unlimited number of products that people can find at your Farmers Market. Because products can be specifically named (eg Saint Regis 2013 Pinot) or simply be the name of the producer's or maker's business (eg Moriac Farmstead Dairy, La Madre Bakery), you can choose whichever format makes most sense for you (we're guessing it's the second example there). That way, your Premium Listing's "What's local here" list will simply show all the producers and artisans that people can expect to find at your market. For now, only those producers and artisans that are also on the Local Food Loop app can be shown, but they don't need to be Premium Listings. And if one of your stallholders isn't on yet, you can suggest them to us or tell them to get themselves listed too!
Do I have to be a physical place to be listed? Do I have to be open to the public with direct sales?
No, there are many on-line-only local produce stores and "grower-only" places listed on Local Food Loop. We will still need to be able to place you on a map, so we do need a location (address) for you, but we also have a special flag that tells app users that you're not open for direct sales. Thanks to some app magic, that same flag will suppress your address so users can't see any exact street location details. If you operate an on-line store, you can point people to that from a link on your Premium Listing screen. And if you supply your local product elsewhere, your product can be listed as a "What's local here' item on those places' Listings too.
I've been given a really bad review and I don't think the person ever visited my place! Help!
Please contact us and we'll review the review. We don't alter or edit people's reviews, but we can at our discretion remove any that are clearly outside the spirit of usage of the app (ie if they are abusive or ridiculously off-topic or spammy). However, reviews of all sorts do have a place in any socially driven platform - and great places most often have any negative reviews drowned out by all the glowing, positive reviews that surround them. (One of the features we are developing for a future version of the app will require users to have actually checked in at a place before they can review it, so do sit tight for that one.)
The Localometer
What is the Localometer?
It's a widget that appears on all Local Food Loop Listing screens, and it allows uers to give a really quick rating to any place. Think of it like a star rating system, but in this case users are rating your place's apparent commitment to local production or sourcing. It's the Local Food Loop app's instant visual guide to the best local places around.
Pricing
A Premium Listing in Local Food Loop costs as little per week as a good locally roasted coffee. But it does alot more for you.
One price: $25 per month, with a free month for yearly Listings. That’s it. Simple, safe and effective.
Join the growing community of growers, makers and sellers who all know the value of local food.
Improve your Listing and become Premium now.
