A new app gives the people of Aarhus a chance to save money and reduce waste

A new app is ready to conquer Aarhus. With YourLocal you get the opportunity to buy products to reduced prices, if you can do it with short notice. The reason for this app is that there is way too much food, which gets thrown into the trash.

YourLocal can be mistaken for a deal site, but it isn’t. The significant difference is that YourLocal don’t interfere with either prices or payment. Deal sites snatch a small part of the profit, which is something YourLocal doesn’t do.

YourLocal doesn’t sell bibs and bobs. They sell exclusively products, services, or experiences, that need to be disposed of the same day, perhaps within an hour if shouldn’t go to waste. All the offers are hyper present, which is a requirement. Due to this, clothes and products without a near expiry date are not accepted.

“As a business ,you create yourself on the app and then you can begin with sending offers out to the consumers. A precondition is that it’s here and now offers, which are only valid the actual day. If a bakery at the end of the day has leftovers, they can send a message to the consumers that if they can come before closing time they can buy the bread with a discount” says Katrine Phil-Andersen, Project manager, YourLocal.

Katrine Phil-Andersen has been a part of launching YourLocal in Copenhagen. She is from Aarhus originally, and is thrilled that the app is entering her hometown. Besides food stores YourLocal also includes Cafes, hairdressers, practitioners, The Theater “Svalegangen” and the cinema “Øst for Paradis” in Aarhus. In addition to reduce the waste of food and other resources, and providing the consumers with an option for great offers, YourLocal is also going to strengthen the local sales.

Entrepreneur competition winner

YourLocal won the entrepreneur competition, SEED Discovery Day, and the price money, 500.000 DKK, finances them. Currently the main workforce are volunteers, but they are searching for more funding to continue when the price money is spend. The app is supposed to be free and they founders wants to keep it that way.

Local based and increasing sustainability

YourLocal is local based, because it knows the consumers location by GPS. It is smart, because the consumers are granted access to all the offers that is close by. The advantage with the app is among other things that it creates push messages, so the consumers receives a direct message. You will receive this when the store you have chosen to follow makes an offer.

Aarhus is a city with high focus on sustainability. Simultaneously, Aarhus has a great study environment, with a lot of young people, which fits YourLocal’s primary target group. Younger demographics such as students are often more interested in saving money. Most of them have flexible weekdays so that they can use the immediate offers and of course they are more used to apps than the older generation.

An international dream

YourLocal’s overall goal is to become an international project. They want to pop up in a lot of Danish cities, but they don’t have the resources to make an active effort everywhere. Therefore, they have chosen Aarhus and Copenhagen as their starting point of the project due to pragmatic reasons.

There has been a really positive response to the app in Aarhus, even though it has only been operational for two days. YourLocal has a bright future ahead of them filled with possibilities.