Brandonite develops app to help shoppers buy Canadian

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/02/2025 (219 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WINNIPEG — A Brandon IT professional’s latest creation aims to make life easier for Canadians looking to buy domestic goods.

Hashim Farooq is the architect of CanMade, a free app that allows users to scan barcodes via a smartphone and instantly find out if a food product is Canadian. The 22-year-old built the app in early February and uploaded it to Apple’s App Store on Feb. 6. Since then, it’s been downloaded more than 4,000 times.

Farooq was inspired by social media groups he saw forming that encouraged people to buy Canadian products following U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats. In his inaugural address last month, Trump pledged to “tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.”

“I just saw an opportunity (to) help Canadians,” Farooq said in an interview.

He built the app’s product database using an open source application programming interface that collects information from OpenFoodFacts.org, a free database of food from around the world.

When he’s not working his day job at Brandon University, Farooq combs grocery store websites so he can update the database. Because many websites have detection enabled that prohibits data scraping, he has to input the data manually.

He’s also working on a feature that will allow him to crowdsource data.

“People are very conscious of what they’re buying right now — very conscious,” he said. “It’s really important, to the best of my ability, to be able to build a very, very accurate database.”

The app features a disclaimer telling users while it strives for accuracy, product information may not always be up to date or correct. For now, Farooq is encouraging people to double-check the product before purchasing it.

CanMade focuses on identifying products labelled “Made in Canada” and “Product of Canada.”

Under the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, items labelled “Product of Canada” are at least 98 per cent Canadian; virtually all the materials, processing and packaging come from Canada.

Items labelled “Made in Canada” are at least 51 per cent Canadian. Up to 49 per cent of their content or direct manufacturing costs could be from American sources.

Since the app launched, users have scanned 9,000 products. The app includes a search function where users can find Canadian brands. The most popular searches are for coffee and cereal, respectively.

In response to the app, Farooq has received hundreds of emails. The majority are expressions of gratitude from consumers, while others are from companies wanting to make sure Farooq has up-to-date information about their products.

Roy Yoder, director of human resources and communications at La Cocina Foods in Ste. Anne, is one of the people who contacted Farooq.

“We had customers alert us to a couple of these recently built apps created to identify Canadian-made goods, one of which is CanMade,” Yoder told the Free Press in an email. “So, we reached out to them to let them know that La Cocina is a Canadian company.”

Born and raised in the Westman region, Farooq graduated from Brandon University with a computer science degree in October.

CanMade isn’t his first app. He currently has four other creations available, including SwiftRide, which helps Winnipeg Transit users navigate the Manitoba capital, and FlashIQ, a study tool that allows students to make their own flash cards.

“It’s all free,” Farooq said. “I just like building software that helps people.”

Farooq usually juggles four or five different software projects at a time. Right now, however, CanMade is getting all of his extra time and energy.

“It’s been the only thing on my mind for the last week,” he said. “I’ve worked on it constantly.”

Farooq welcomes suggestions from consumers and contact from businesses that wish to provide him with their barcodes. He hopes to develop an Android version of the app.

In addition to CanMade, there are a number of apps available that aim to help consumers purchase Canadian goods. They include O SCANada, I Buy Canadian, Buy Beaver, Maple Scan and Canly.

Shop Canadian, an app created by Edmonton software developers Matthew Suddaby and William Boytinck, also popped up recently.

“As long as people are using it, as long as we can help people shop Canadian, that’s the overall goal,” Boytinck told an Edmonton news outlet last week. “It doesn’t matter how many people end up downloading it.”

Farooq feels the same way. Whether people use CanMade or a different app, he just wants people to buy domestic products.

“Buying Canadian is more important than ever right now,” he said. “And it’s important for us all to be in this together and not be separated by political views.”

» Winnipeg Free Press