Continued from Users and Enterprise Types
Enterprises are all of the entities that contribute to the production, sale and distribution of food. Enterprises can be producers, producers with their own shops, food coops, wholesalers and independent food retailers etc. In contrast ‘users’ who are not ‘enterprise users’ include individuals and parties shopping on the OFN.
Enterprise Types affect the functionality available to that Enterprise on the OFN.
Super-Admin can manage Enterprise Types on the Enterprise Index page. Enterprise Type is determined by two variables:
- Is it a Producer or not
- What can it sell: none; own or any
NB. Unspecified is the default setting for a Basic User created enterprise, until they login and choose.
Producer Types
If the enterprise is a producer, there are three possible ways that it can use the OFN.
- Producer Profile (none): this enterprise has a profile page. It doesn’t have its own shopfront and cannot sell directly on the OFN. It may have products listed, which can be sold through other enterprises that are Hubs.
- Farm Store (own): this enterprise is a single producer, that sells its own products directly online through their OFN shopfront. The producer manages their own payment, shipping, ordering etc.
- Producer Hub (any): this enterprise is a Hub as well as a Producer, so it can sell both their own products and products from other enterprises. It can work in a network with other enterprises to conduct the payment, shipping, ordering etc.
Hub (Not Producer) Types
If the enterprise is not a producer, there are two options.
- Profile (none): this enterprise has a profile, containing information about the enterprise, however it does not sell products online through the OFN. The enterprise may have their own or online sales elsewhere, which can be linked through the profile.
- Hub (any): a hub is linked to producers on the OFN, and is aggregating and selling their products.
Other combinations are possible, and we will support their use for more diverse food enterprises later on.
On the Australian instance of the Open Food Network these different enterprise types relate to different payment requirements.