What about food? Here is what Christian Kreutz said in January 2011: 
Nutrition is another interesting sector to use open data, which I discovered lately. A last 
example for food is the whole potential behind bar code scanning - you take your 
mobile phone to the supermarket and scan products to get the information behind the 
fair trade certificate or behind the company. In the recent dioxin scandal in Germany, 
the company Barcoo took information from the ministry of agriculture in Germany, of 
which farms have intoxicated eggs and offer the info in their app. So, you can check in 
the supermarket the eggs that are fine and not with your mobile phone. 
Food in supermarkets is only one of thousands cases of "Public Data" from a strategic sector of the  
economy that is huge, essential for creation of local jobs and in deep crisis in many countries in this  
period: traditional, brick and mortar retail and service businesses. 
Consider this explanation by venture capital firm Greylock about why they Invested in Groupon:  
The Power of Data 
Groupon is targeting a market that is huge and broken. Local advertising is a $100 
billion annual business in the U.S. and consumers spend something like 80% of their 
disposable income within a couple miles of their homes. Many local businesses still try 
to attract new customers through that heavy yellow book that gets dropped on your front 
doorstep until it rots or gets tossed in the recycling bin. 
We think the technologies visible to consumers will be increasingly commoditized, 
while the data used to understand consumers better will become increasingly proprietary 
and valuable. 
Offers to consumers can be intelligently served up based on a person's demographics, 
buying history and location. The merchant side of the equation is just as interesting. 
Local businesses need to be able to do more than just run a sale once or twice a year. 
The theater on Main Street or the children's museum across town should have the ability 
to revenue optimize, like United Airlines or Hilton, by appropriately pricing and 
marketing unsold capacity. We started really leaning forward in our chairs when the 
discussion turned to strategy, including the ways to use data to power Groupon's future 
consumer- and merchant-facing products. 
We believe Groupon is the break-out leader in the massive local commerce space and its 
investment in data will be a critical ingredient in its long term march to build a 
meaningful and foundational company. 
Groupon is the clear market leader in the local deals market in 2011. However, complaints from  
merchants  about  the  money  they  can  loss by offering  deals via  Groupon  already  exist. Now,  
couldn't all the "local deals" raw information be considered as Public Data that merchants could (be  
trained  to)  directly  publish  themselves  online,  in  ways  that  would  allow  everybody,  not  just 
Groupon, to present the deals to customers in ways more profitable for merchants? The point is,  
how many merchants, merchant associations and majors (whose budgets always and immediately  
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Copyright  2011 LEM, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna. This work is released under a Creative Commons attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)