We're on a mission to make it easier than ever to find street food trucks and local pop-up events near you.
Hey! I'm Vanessa,
Founder of Indi Local
The idea behind the app came after long day at work when I found myself staring at the fridge with no motivation to cook (you know the feeling I'm talking about, right?).
My partner and I ended up at a drive-thru, but decided to take our food to a nearby park to at least "make a date night of it".
When we got there however, we came across a food truck making fresh, wood-fired pizzas! I was kicking myself because had I known he was there I would have much preferred to order from him!
This is when I realised there was a problem: there was no way to know where these pop-ups were happening.
Being a huge foodie with nearly a decade of software development experience, I decided I was going to do something about it.
The journey so far...
Community building begins
June '23
The journey starts with an Instagram account, intended to share all the pop-up events in the local area of Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes and build a community of local foodie enthusiasts.
We start going to every food truck pop-up, food festival and artisan market in the region to meet the people and businesses in the community...
July '23
A map is added to our website
We quickly gained the attention of food truck owners and event organisers so we started inviting them to add their own events to a map on our website.
This MVP (Minimum Viable Product) demonstrated early demand as people were visiting every day to see what was on.
In the background, more serious app development starts!
Gaining Traction
Aug & Sept '23
After being approached by a local newspaper, we had our first article printed.
Vanessa was invited to speak on a panel at Milton Keynes University, and we started receiving incredible feedback from vendors and foodies from both regions.
One vendor shared with us that they had gained 50% more sales from being featured - this is when we knew we were doing something right!
Nov '23
Web Summit
Taking our project to new audiences, we exhibited at Web Summit in Lisbon, the largest tech conference in Europe, gaining global attention and early signs of investor appetite.
It was clear that our proposal had potential much further afield.
Indi Local celebrates Christmas
Dec '23
To mark 6 months of community building, we invited local food truck owners, event organisers, artisan businesses, members of the press, local councils and tech friends to celebrate Christmas with us in the beautiful Duston Mill in Northampton.
It served as the perfect opportunity to formally introduce the Indi Local app and invite early-adopters to ask questions and share their thoughts.
The event was a success and many people came away with new business connections and pop-up opportunities.
Jan '24
Getting ready to launch
As we prepare to launch we have spent time solidifying our network to ensure our early-adopters will be equipped with the right tools and support from the very beginning.
Our app waitlist is open and we'll be soft launching initially in Milton Keynes and Northamptonshire in the spring.
We're live!
May '24
After several weeks of internal and closed beta testing, our very first version of the app is published on the Apple AppStore and later to Google Playstore in July!