Frequently Asked Questions

Genesis is a community trust platform for local food. We help you discover who makes your food, read honest reviews from real people, and find local makers at farmers markets near you. Search by name on our site, or scan a QR code at a market booth to pull up a maker's profile instantly.

Yes. Free for buyers, free for makers. No fees, no subscriptions, no premium tiers. We keep the lights on through grants and community support, not by charging the people who use it.

No. There are no accounts, no logins, no passwords. Browse maker profiles, read reviews, and leave your own — all without signing up for anything. We keep it simple on purpose.

Yes — every review uses your real first name, not anonymous usernames. This is a community platform, which means your neighbors can see who's leaving reviews. That social accountability keeps things honest. We're a small project right now, and that smallness is actually a strength — in a community this size, fake reviews don't last long.

Yes. A Genesis QR code is just a link to that maker's profile on our site. It opens in your normal browser, doesn't download anything, doesn't ask for personal info. You can also just type the URL printed underneath the code if you'd rather not scan.

Find the maker on genesislocal.org — search by name or scan their QR code at the market. Tap their profile, hit "Leave a Review," pick a star rating, and tell people what you bought and what you thought. Takes about 60 seconds. No account needed.

Right now, we're in early launch and adding makers personally through our local ambassadors. If you sell at a farmers market we're active in, an ambassador will visit your booth, explain what Genesis is, and set up your profile with you. No paperwork, no portal, no fees. As we grow, we'll add a self-service signup — but for now, the human touch is the whole point.

Genesis is free — for makers and for buyers. No listing fees, no commissions, no premium tiers. Ever. The goal is to help local food systems thrive, not to extract money from the people doing the work. We're pursuing grant funding and community support to keep it that way permanently.

Not yet — but it's on our roadmap. For now, if someone leaves a review you want to respond to, reach out to us and we'll help. We're a small operation and we handle things personally. As the platform grows, maker replies will be built in.

Honest feedback — even when it stings — is how trust gets built. But if you believe a review is fake or from someone who never actually bought from you, reach out to us directly. We're small enough right now that we can look into it personally. No automated system, no ticket queue — just real people sorting it out.

Genesis started as a one-person project born out of frustration with how broken the food system is. We're building it in the open, starting small with local farmers markets, and growing through community ambassadors who believe local food deserves better than Yelp. The platform serves the community, not shareholders.

Yelp and Google are built for everything, which means they're built for nothing in particular. Genesis has one rule: the person selling it is the person who made it. Every maker is real, every review uses a real name, and there are no corporate listings or paid placements. Just your neighbors telling you what's good.