Storybird is Coming to Life

Dear Producers Market Community,

StoryBird is coming to life and taking its first flight. It can now be found on the menu at TAPS Fish House & Brewery in Southern California. 

With five additional StoryBird value chains in the works and inquiries for many others, we are building a scalable model for point-of-sale storytelling.

When Dan McQuade from Raw Seafoods approached our team to work on this scallop storytelling campaign alongside IBM Food Trust, we told him that we weren't interested in seafood—at least not yet. We are, however, certainly into partnering with wildly visionary thinkers on a mission to communicate the true value of their products to end consumers through powerful stories.

As we learned more about key issues facing the seafood industry—including overfishing and seafood fraud—we came to realize how much transparency technologies could support these supply chains.

Customers at TAPS can now trace their scallops all the way to the source thanks to this collaboration, which also included Maris and Santa Monica Seafoods, a leading sustainable seafood distributor in the western US.

Our StoryBird application allows restaurant-goers to connect with the value chain story of the scallops on their plate. They can access videos, producer stories, and verified data on the IBM Food Trust blockchain, right from their cell phones via the menu on their table. This level of traceability equips consumers with the knowledge of exactly where their food came from, cultivating trust in the value chain.

Congratulations to all the people and organizations who collaborated to make this happen: Raw Seafoods, Producers Market, IBM Food Trust, Maris, Santa Monica Seafoods, TAPS Fish House & Brewery, and most importantly Captain Danny and the fishermen at Nordic. This launch marks promising progress and innovation.

Our vision for Producers Market and StoryBird is to help make product storytelling and blockchain traceability an industry standard. The seafood industry is quickly becoming an obvious first mover.

Our team is honored to be a part of this innovation as the industry transforms.

In gratitude,