LogRegio - Regional products for the city
The project was completed at the end of 2025. The profile provides an overview of the goals, progress, and results of the project.
The demand for regional food in this country is increasing. Not only end consumers, but also out-of-home caterers, especially company and municipal canteens and the gastronomy sector, want to buy more regionally, but the challenges are still manifold: goods are rarely bundled, established and thus competitive supply chains are lacking, and the standardised quality of the products is not yet comparable with conventional counterparts. Hessen's farms are relatively small, with an average size of 51 hectares.
LogRegio - Strengthening direct marketing of regional organic products
Together with BIONALES e.V.- Bürger für regionale Ernährung und Landwirtschaft (Citizens for Regional Food and Agriculture), the HFD research association at HOLM University of Applied Sciences Fulda would like to strengthen the direct marketing of small and micro farms, especially for the Frankfurt/Main area.
To this end, the centre's team, Master's students and student employees, together with BIONALES e.V., are looking at which farmers in the surrounding area of up to 150 km produce which foods and how they can sell them. The collected data is analysed in order to develop standardised processes in the long term and to improve logistics and marketing together with all those involved - producers, processors, community kitchens, retailers and end customers, but also politicians and contacts with a multiplier effect (e.g. eco-model regions).
For many end customers, the procurement of regional organic food is difficult, unless they are members of a solidarity-based agriculture or recipients of a regional box. On the other hand, it is not possible for producers - especially those who do not sell on the market - to take care of the marketing of their own products due to lack of time or missing/inefficient logistics. By bundling and standardising the multifaceted processes in food logistics, sales can be secured for regional producers and availability guaranteed for metropolitan citizens. For this, the next step is basic research that answers questions such as:
- How high is the actual supply of regional products within a radius of 150km around Frankfurt; how high is the potential to grow which products?
- How high is the demand from community kitchens and retailers?
- What demands do potential customers have on producers and products?
A special focus will be on the question of customer needs and behaviour. With the help of game theories and gamification, we want to make realistic and valid statements about whether customers are willing to pay a higher price for regional organic products and what the maximum price should be. Only if customers also pay a higher price does it make sense for community kitchens and small retailers to procure regionally and organically produced food and thus participate in the development of regional supply chains.
A master's thesis has already been completed for the LogRegio project and has been very well evaluated. Anyone who would like to see the thesis is welcome to write to us. Two other Master's students are currently working out how the costs and emissions of regional organic products (in this case eggs, meat and milk) differ from conventional products, and why. Until the beginning of 2021, other Master's students will be looking at how potential so-called FoodHubs need to be set up in order to survive on the market in the long term. The development of a FoodHub is an overarching project goal on which we are working with other partners, in particular BIONALES e.V..
Photo: LogRegio team September 2020 from left to right: Yousif Munther, Marita Böhringer, Samuel Fast, Anna-Mara Schön
