Are you in the food business? Or a part-timer (cook, gardener, processor)?

If your business is food, whether fresh, prepared, catering, restaurants or café and you feature at least some local food, we want to help local people to find you and to create an ongoing relationship that supports you and the entire local food sector.

Or, you may be a part-timer: someone who has occasional surplus in their garden, or who likes to cook for other people. (You may need to get a health and safety check, but this usually isn't onerous and can be helpful.)

How will the Diss Food Network work for providers?

The point of it is to create an ongoing relationship between providers and consumers. At the very least:

• Providers will have webspace to describe themselves, and can add offers and want, events, and more.
• They will be expected to provide regular 'special offers' to members: These may be discounts, but just as well could be advance notice of something special just in, something special reserved for them, ends of lines going cheaply, etc. Enough so that between all the providers there is a regular stream of offers to attract people.
• The special offers will be displayed on this website, but also sent by email to those people who prefer that, or even by post (but less frequently). With a little luck, we may have a local food page in the local newspapers.

Beyond that, we want to organise regular orders and deliveries. We may be able to get volunteers to do a regular delivery run, or we may be able to combine the deliveries already being made by some of the providers. Your contribution and ideas will help with this.

I'm interested. What do I do next?

Prepare a description of your business to go on the website. Answer the following questions and send them to Gary Alexander;

1. Your business name and location. (Include a postcode so we can put it on a map.)
2. A one sentence headline about your business.
3. Write brief answers to the questions in the following table, which will appear near the top of your page.

Localness	Describe how local your business is: Is it locally owned? What fraction of your income pays local people or buys local products? Other support for the local community?
Quality	How do you ensure that your products or services are as good as they can be?
Environment	How do you take environmental issues into account? Energy use? Waste? Appearance? Ethical sourcing?

3. A paragraph or two describing your business. Emphasize what is special about it. What are the qualities your customers most like?
4. How can members get your products or services? (Shop, market stall, from your farm, delivery, etc.)
4a. For the future, how can we improve access to your products? (Arrange deliveries, for example.)
5. What sorts of special offers will you make to the members of the Food Network?
6. Contact name, phone number, email address, website if you have one.