One year on from the launch of Help Our Hospitality: ‘Northampton is very quickly making its mark on the map’

It has been a year since the Chronicle & Echo launched its Help Our Hospitality campaign, to give a platform and voice to businesses across the town to share their unique stories.

47 stories later, the campaign is still going strong with a continued commitment to shouting about the amazing things going on among Northampton’s growing and thriving hospitality scene.

To mark the anniversary, we spoke to Vanessa Anderson – founder of a unique app that is set to make finding street food vendors and pop-up events easier. She is also an avid customer of independent businesses across the county.

2024 is set to be a big year for the groundbreaking Indi Local, as it will launch after months of hard work.

The app will feature a map that enables users to find out when and where businesses and events are going to be.

Through businesses submitting this information to the Indi Local team, more people can discover places and events they may have never heard of before.

Vanessa has lived in Northampton for the past decade and saw a gap in the market for an easier way to find local food events, pop-ups and street food trucks in June last year.

The online calendar, map and Instagram page have already proved a success and, with a background in software development, Vanessa saw the opportunity to create an app.

You can read more of Vanessa’s journey in her first story with the Chronicle & Echo back in September last year, as part of the Help Our Hospitality campaign.

With feedback from vendors, the team is now finalising the release of the app and its first features. More features will then be released in stages.

Vanessa has also started dipping her toe into the world of seed investment, as she knows she will need to raise money to push the app as far as she wants it to go.

The first vendors will be onboarded to the app from next week and Vanessa hopes it will soon be used to promote a spring and summer of events across the county and beyond.

As a founder and avid customer herself, Vanessa was asked why it is so important that everyone continues to champion local, independent food businesses.

“Northampton is very quickly making its mark on the map,” she said. “The more people who shout about the amazing businesses we have here, the more it attracts them and appeals to the people who live here.”

Vanessa praised the Help Our Hospitality campaign coverage for encouraging people to be “more conscious about sharing and supporting each other”.

She added: “Everyone is more collaborative. There’s still competition, but less. People realise we’re all in this together and working towards the same goal.”

Vanessa says it takes a certain type of person to throw themselves into entrepreneurship and put “so much on the line”.

“I admire the people who take the risk,” Vanessa added. “They want their community to be a better place and to bring smiles to people’s faces through food.”

Though the app founder believes there are still many challenges faced by independents, she says there has been benefits to sharing their struggles – in encouraging the community to come together and shop more consciously.

Vanessa would love to see more people giving businesses they have never tried a go, which you will be sure to discover through Indi Local.

For more information, visit Indi Local’s Instagram page here.