The startup Produce Ratings recently released their new beta website at ProduceRatings.com, which allows consumers to find and rate produce in their local communities. This Minnesota-based firm has been flying under the radar while their concepts emerge into a product that provides real utility.
While they are in a prelaunch phase, they do have the fledglings of a product. Founder Colin Tuggle was kind enough to give me the backdrop on his firm and where they are headed. He explained that “ProduceRatings is an online community that helps users find and rate produce in their local communities.”
Tuggle went on about the origins of ProduceRatings, “It started out in the summer of 2010 as a conversation between brother-in- laws over a few pieces of Minnesota peak season sweet corn. Both wanted to figure out when and where to get peak season corn without having to try every stand in the Twin Cities. A few beers later, ProduceRatings.com was born. Our sites ratings differ from others in that our ratings are time-sensitive. We have a rolling window for ‘what’s good now’ versus other sites that aggregate years of ratings in their current rating. We also differ in that we rate products, not sellers/locations. What we want to answer is ‘Where can I get the best sweet corn right now?’ Of course, you can substitute sweet corn for your favorite produce in that sentence.”
The beta site is starting out on a very small scale, focusing only on local Minnesota produce. Their basic algorithms for determining produce ratings are therefore operating against a minimal data set, which is currently a function of user data and produce attributes. Over the next year, they anticipate providing over a thousand ratings for only a few hundred users. As they scale up over the next year, they intend to increase both consumer and business usage while also improving their analytical capabilities. The technologies that they utilize like PHP and MySQL, combined with commodity storage and processing architecture, is expected to easily support the Big Data challenges ahead. By incorporating more mature data mining techniques and additional data, they can provide rather interesting insights for researchers, produce sellers, growers, distributors, and restaurants.
The results of the produce ratings will be fed back to users through an alerting mechanism. Real- time feedback in the form of e-mail, SMS, and mobile applications are all part of their product roadmap. Through these alerts, this system can provide time-sensitive and granular product information to both businesses and consumers.
In addition to alerts, they plan to provide analytical reports. According to Colin, “We want to provide businesses with interesting and actionable analytics that can make them more competitive in the produce market, better understand consumer preferences, source better, make marketing decisions, etc. We intend to do this through prepackaged and custom reporting”.
Produce Ratings is committed to being a leader in discovering high-quality produce. Through sophisticated technology and by collaborating with local sellers, farmers, distributors, and researchers, they hope to accomplish this goal.