Overview
Open Food Chain is a food tracking platform that lets brands, growers, and retailers prove where a product came from and how it was handled. A chocolate maker, a juice processor, or a farm cooperative can connect their existing records to a shared system and then show buyers and regulators a verified history of every batch. Think of it like a digital shipping label that travels with the product and gets stamped at every step.
The platform writes its data to Cardano, a public network that acts as a shared record book every party trusts equally, and is built by an Amsterdam-based team1. It ships as a set of industry-specific products: Open Cacao Chain for cacao, JuicyChain for juice, plus coffee and fish products in development. It is positioned as a practical layer for meeting the EU Deforestation Regulation, known as EUDR, which requires companies trading certain goods to prove they were not linked to deforested land2.
Key Features
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Prove origin claims, do not just promise them. Every origin or sustainability statement is captured with the submitter, date, and supporting evidence, then written to Cardano so brands can show buyers and regulators a verifiable record later1.
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Connect without ripping out existing tools. The platform plugs into the back-office software growers and processors already use, such as inventory systems, spreadsheets, and GS1 product barcodes, so partners can start sharing data without an IT overhaul3.
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Hand EU regulators a ready-made audit trail. Open Food Chain pulls plot-level supplier data into one time-stamped record and packages it as a checking trail businesses can hand to EU authorities under EUDR2.
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Cacao, juice, coffee, and fish covered separately. Each industry gets its own product tuned to that supply chain. Open Cacao Chain, for example, has been used to onboard small-scale farmer cooperatives in Peru and Colombia, where plot-level data was previously hard to capture4.
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Share what buyers need, keep pricing private. Sensitive details like pricing stay private to the parties involved, while origin, processing, and certification data is shown to the people who need it3.
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Research participation. The team contributes to the EU-funded TITAN project, which combines blockchain records with DNA-based product testing for olive oil so origin claims can be physically verified, not just paper-trailed5.
What to Expect
The Open Food Chain website is a marketing and demo experience, not a sign-up-and-go app. A curious visitor sees the case for blockchain-based tracking, the four supply-chain industries, the EUDR timeline, and a Book a Demo button. The product itself is sold and configured through the team rather than signed up for online.
For a brand or retailer, getting started begins with a conversation: the team maps the supply chain, identifies which data points need to be written to the chain, and connects existing systems before bringing suppliers on board. For a developer, public code is limited.
For a shopper, the eventual touchpoint is a QR code or digital product passport on a finished product. It is a digital record that travels with the product through the supply chain and links back to the verified history of where it came from1.
