Why Food Needs an Open Protocol

There are over 500 food tech companies in the UK alone. Delivery platforms, inventory systems, POS software, supply chain trackers, food safety platforms, review aggregators, waste management tools, recipe databases. Each one solves a real problem. And none of them talk to each other.

This is the fragmentation problem. A restaurant might use one system for online orders, another for in-house POS, a third for supplier management, a fourth for food safety compliance, and a fifth for customer reviews. Data about the same dish -- its ingredients, its supplier, its price, its rating -- lives in five different places in five different formats with five different IDs.

We have seen this movie before. It played out in social media (before ActivityPub), in messaging (before Matrix), in identity (before OAuth). Every time, the pattern is the same: proprietary platforms lock in users, data becomes siloed, innovation slows down, and the people who need interoperability the most -- small businesses, non-profits, independent producers -- get left behind.

Food needs an open protocol. Here is why.

The fragmentation problem

Consider a farmer who grows organic tomatoes. Their data exists in at least a dozen systems: the farm management software that tracks planting and harvest, the organic certification body's database, the distributor's inventory system, the wholesale market's listing platform, the restaurant's ordering system, and eventually the consumer's review on Google or TripAdvisor.

None of these systems share a common identifier for the tomato. The farm calls it "Roma Organic Lot 2024-B". The distributor calls it SKU-TOM-ORG-500G. The restaurant's POS calls it ingredient #47. When a food safety issue arises, tracing a single batch from farm to plate requires phone calls, spreadsheets, and days of manual investigation.

The EU's General Food Law requires traceability "one step back, one step forward" -- knowing your immediate supplier and immediate customer. But even this minimal standard is hard to meet when every link in the chain uses a different system. Full provenance -- tracing a dish all the way back to the fields where its ingredients were grown -- is virtually impossible.

Why proprietary platforms fail

The obvious solution is to put everyone on the same platform. Build a giant food marketplace that handles everything: ordering, inventory, traceability, reviews, payments. Several companies have tried this. They all hit the same wall.

Proprietary platforms create winner-take-all dynamics. Once they reach critical mass, they raise prices. Commission rates climb from 15% to 20% to 30%. Small businesses that built their customer base on the platform have no choice but to pay. The platform captures the value; the businesses that create the value get squeezed.

Worse, proprietary platforms lock in data. Your customer relationships, your reviews, your sales history, your supplier connections -- all of it lives inside the platform. If you leave, you start from zero. This is not a hypothetical concern. It is the daily reality for hundreds of thousands of food businesses on delivery platforms right now.

And proprietary platforms cannot solve the interoperability problem by definition. The value of a platform comes from being the single source of truth. It has no incentive to make its data portable or compatible with competitors. So fragmentation persists, just at a higher level: instead of siloed restaurants, you get siloed platforms.

The power of content-addressing

FoodBlock takes a different approach. Instead of a central registry that assigns IDs, every piece of data gets an identity derived from its content. The SHA-256 hash of a FoodBlock's type, state, and refs IS its identity. Same content, same hash, no matter who created it or where.

This seemingly simple idea has profound implications:

• No central authority needed. Anyone can create FoodBlocks without registering or asking permission. The farmer in Kent and the restaurant in Shoreditch can reference the same tomato batch without coordinating through a central system.
• Deduplication is free. If two systems independently create a FoodBlock with the same content, they get the same hash. When they eventually sync, duplicates are eliminated automatically.
• Verification is universal. Anyone with a FoodBlock can verify its integrity by recomputing the hash. No API calls, no authentication, no trust assumptions. The math speaks for itself.
• Portability is inherent. FoodBlocks are just JSON. They can be stored anywhere, transmitted over any protocol, and processed by any system that understands the six base types. Your data is yours, always.

This is the same model that made Git the universal version control system and IPFS a viable distributed storage network. Content-addressing works because it decouples identity from location. A FoodBlock does not live "in" a platform. It exists wherever someone has a copy.

Network effects with open data

Open protocols create a different kind of network effect. With proprietary platforms, value accrues to the platform. With open protocols, value accrues to the network.

Every FoodBlock that anyone creates makes the network more valuable for everyone. A farmer publishing their harvest data makes supply chains more transparent. A restaurant sharing surplus makes food rescue more efficient. A customer leaving a review builds trust that benefits every business on the network. An AI agent learning supplier preferences generates knowledge that improves over time.

This is not altruism -- it is structural. Because FoodBlocks reference each other, the value of any individual block increases as the network grows. A product review is more valuable when it links to verified purchase data, which links to supplier provenance, which links to farm certifications. Each new connection strengthens the whole graph.

And because the protocol is open, anyone can build on it. A food safety startup can build inspection tools that create observe.certification blocks. A logistics company can build routing software that creates transfer.shipment blocks. A social platform can build a food-focused network where every post is an observe.review block. They all interoperate by default, because they all speak FoodBlock.

25% to charity: building a different kind of company

We believe the food system should serve everyone, not just those who can afford premium delivery. That is why FoodX commits 25% of all profits to charity, permanently. Not 1% of revenue. Not a marketing donation. Twenty-five percent of profits, every quarter, directed to organisations fighting food insecurity.

This commitment is structural, not aspirational. It is written into our operating agreements. As the FoodX network grows, the charity contribution grows with it. A network that connects food surplus to food banks, that enables AI agents to coordinate donations automatically, that gives every food business the tools to reduce waste -- that network generates enormous social value alongside its economic value.

An open protocol makes this possible in a way a proprietary platform never could. When the data layer is shared, surplus visibility is a natural byproduct of normal business operations. You do not need a separate "food waste" platform. You just need a network where businesses already publish their inventory, and agents that know how to match surplus to need.

A call to builders

If you are building in the food space -- whether that is supply chain, food safety, delivery, reviews, sustainability, or something we have not imagined yet -- we want to work with you. The FoodBlock protocol is open. The SDKs are available in JavaScript, Python, Go, and Swift. The MCP server lets any AI model create and query FoodBlocks through natural language.

We are not asking anyone to rip out their existing systems. FoodBlock is designed to be a layer underneath, a shared language that connects what already exists. Start by publishing your data as FoodBlocks. Start by consuming FoodBlocks from others. Start by letting an AI agent automate one workflow.

The food system is the oldest network in human civilization. It is time it had a protocol to match.

Read the protocol specification, explore the developer docs, or join us on Discord.