A great initiative to connect Croatia's local food producers to the tourism market.
Students Slaven Kopić and Marija Marojević are developing the app "NađiOPG", a mobile application whose goal is to locate the small family farms (OPG) in Croatia. Through the application, it will be easy to search for OPGs, see where they are located, find their contact details and get information about products and services they offer. Everything will be achieved in cooperation with the OPGs, and the application will contain just the information they allow to be used, reports Poslovni.hr on September 5, 2015.
The pair came to this idea after hearing about tourists who, during a visit to Baranja, tasted some local products and then wanted to buy them. The problem arose when the restaurateurs could not explain to them where to buy these products, since they did not know which OPGs sell which products. While they tried to make contact with OPGs, the tourists lost their interest. Marija and Slaven concluded that the advantages of family farms in Croatia are not sufficiently utilized.
"We believe that small producers are the lifeblood of our economy and they need to get more attention. The high quality products do exist, but they need to be made more accessible. Thinking about this problem, a mobile app seemed like a great solution", said Slaven and Marija. They say that the main goal of their application is to connect family farms with customers, tourists and all those who are interested in OPGs.
"NađiOPG" enables users to find and contact the manufacturers of selected products in just a few minutes. Putting the application on the Google Market and in the App Store would make it available worldwide, which means that the family farms would become a part of the global market. The application also seeks to increase the public awareness about the quality and benefits of local products and allows users to select the cheapest and nearest manufacturers of selected products.
There are other projects that offer similar services, but mainly with trade on their mind. These are mainly internet stores that already have a lot of competition. While their business depends on many factors, "NađiOPG" needs a very small investment and would be financed exclusively by downloading the application from the Google Market and the App Store. The biggest advantage of this application is that it allows manufacturers to connect with customers around Croatia and the world in a very affordable way.
