Help Our Hospitality: Groundbreaking new app is set to make finding pop-up events and street food vendors easier

The founder of what is set to be a groundbreaking new app has shared her mission to make it easier to find Northampton-based pop-ups, events and street food vendors.

Indi Local has so far created an online calendar and map, which displays when and where businesses and events are going to be.

By submitting this information to the platform, more people can find and visit them.

Vanessa Anderson is the founder of Indi Local and has lived in Northampton for the past decade since she moved from Milton Keynes.

Indi was first launched online, with a calendar, map and Instagram page, in mid-June after Vanessa saw a gap in the market for an easier way to find local food events, pop-ups and street food trucks.

With a background in software development, she also saw the opportunity to develop an app to combine this into one – and work has been ongoing on that for the past two months.

Vanessa shared the story of how Indi Local was founded, on a day when she was feeling lazy and did not want to cook for herself.

She and her partner visited McDonalds and took their food to a local park, where a pizza truck was set up.

Vanessa wished she had known the pizza truck was there first, as she would much rather have had a freshly made pizza for dinner.

“I saw an opportunity,” she told this newspaper. “I thought ‘how can I help these pop-up events and food trucks?’ I wanted them to get discovered and encourage more people to try local food.”

Indi Local is a team effort, with the app under the beady eye of five developers and Vanessa has the help of her brother, cousin and friend running the Instagram page.

As they source, promote and visit food vendors and events for social media content, it is a full team affair.

Vanessa said: “I’m on a mission to get people out more, trying new things that are local to them.

“I want to encourage them to choose small over big brands, which we go to out of not knowing anything else.”

Vanessa shared that she believes her generation of young people have experienced a “post-Covid hangover” – with a realisation of just how important our towns and cities are, as well as the importance of supporting local.

“Indi is for people who want to find something new but don’t know how,” she said.

Vanessa speaks to a lot of business owners, many of whom find social media algorithms do not work in their favour and their events do not get the reach they deserve.

The platform founder said: “I want to give them a level playing field and make them more visible to those nearby.

“Many food trucks make a lot of food and it goes to waste if no one turns up, as people don’t know where to find them. It’s such a shame.

“The more I find out about people and businesses, the more I realise they just need a way to be seen.”

Vanessa has had an “incredible” response to Indi Local over the first three months – with many messages from businesses asking for the team to visit them and lots submitting their events through the website.

At a recent visit to Bite Street, Vanessa had a number of people recognise her from the Instagram page and expressed their love for the platform.

One food vendor she visited recently even told her their sales have increased by 50 percent because of the work of Indi Local.

“That’s the aim,” said Vanessa, who has even been contacted by other tech businesses wanting to collaborate and help them build the app.

When asked her views on Northampton’s hospitality scene, Vanessa says there is “so much on offer” across the town.

Describing herself as “pro-Northampton”, Vanessa says more people need to know about the variety available.

One event Vanessa is really fond of is Bite Street, who she believes has built a community of foodies because of their commitment to offering high quality.

“The organisers meticulously pick the businesses they have tried and tested,” she said. “I have a lot of respect for them.”

The Indi Local app has been worked on for two months, and will utilise each user's GPS location to allow them to find what is local to them.

Vanessa is currently funding the app herself and has the target of it being completed by November – when she will present it at a tech conference in front of others who may want to get involved.

By mid-to-late October, the app will be tested among focus groups with select businesses that want to get involved.

The app will be Northampton-focused to begin with, but Vanessa has already had interest from businesses in Leicester, Birmingham, Oxford and Bedford.

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