Authors: Krzysztof Görlich, Jan Mrowca, Rafał Serafin
A major challenge for sustainable digitalisation research is moving beyond technology adoption metrics towards understanding how digitalisation influences economic, environmental and organisational outcomes. The APPETIT Living Lab has addressed this challenge through the development of the APPETIT System Appraisal Mapping, a methodology that links data from the operational platform powered by the APPETIT platform with the CODECS Sustainable Digitalisation framework. Rather than measuring marketplace performance alone, the framework enables evaluation of the digitalisation processes that shape local food systems.
The APPETIT System Appraisal Framework
The APPETIT System Appraisal provides a structured approach for evaluating local food systems using data generated through everyday use of APPETIT software. At its core are 19 indicators covering market performance, producer economics, local economic impacts, logistics, resource efficiency and environmental performance. These indicators make it possible to assess not only how local food markets perform, but also how digitalisation influences that performance.
The framework extends beyond conventional monitoring. It is based on the premise that every digital interaction recorded by APPETIT can provide evidence about broader processes of digital transformation. Platform activities such as producer onboarding, order management, logistics coordination and service delivery are therefore treated as indicators of ecosystem development, organisational change and sustainability outcomes, not merely operational transactions and outputs.
Box 1. APPETIT Local Food System Appraisal Framework
Economic Performance
| Dimension | Indicators |
| Market Scale | Turnover; Active Producers |
| Producer Economics | Price Premium; Producer Share; Chain Value Added; Distribution Cost; Labour Productivity |
| Local Economic Impact | Local Procurement; Local Re-spending (LM3) |
Environmental Performance
| Dimension | Indicators |
| Logistics | Product Food Miles; Consumer Food Miles; Load Factor; Transport Energy; Transport CO₂e |
| Resource Efficiency | Cold-Chain Energy; Packaging; Reusable Packaging; Food Waste |
| Life Cycle Assessment | Global Warming Potential (GWP) |
Detailed definitions are available in APPETIT System Appraisal Mapping v1.1.
From Digital Data Sets to Real-time Monitoring and Appraisal
The key innovation of APPETIT lies in connecting these indicators to the three analytical layers of the CODECS Sustainable Digitalisation framework: business process transformation, digital ecosystem development and socio-ecological outcomes. Platform data therefore become a basis for understanding not only what is happening within a local food market, but also why it is happening and how digitalisation contributes to intended and unintended organisational changes.
Integrating the Systems Appraisal module into APPETIT software, allows the technology to move beyond static impact assessment to monitoring and evaluation of digitalisation processes in real time: the systematic study of how technology adoption, organisational adaptation and digital ecosystem development interact over time.
The APPETIT Systems Appraisal module quantifies the evolving reality of a local food market in a way that allows researchers to investigate impacts of the digitalisation process per se. This is in line with the CODECS contribution to the Digitising Local Food Systems: Illusion or Breakthrough conference hosted in Krakow (Poland) on 13th May 2026.
The Living Lab Contribution
The APPETIT System Appraisal Framework emerged from three years of experimentation in four local food markets participating in the APPETIT Living Lab. Initially introduced as a software platform supporting ordering, payments, logistics and intermediary services, APPETIT evolved into a research infrastructure capable of capturing the dynamics of digitalisation itself. The Living Lab demonstrated that successful digitalisation depends not only on technology functionality but also on user capabilities, governance arrangements, collaborative practices and ecosystem conditions.
The resulting APPETIT System Appraisal Framework therefore addresses real-world digitalisation journeys, moving beyond a focus on digitisation which appears to limit organisational innovation. This is in line with the CODECS message
Towards a New Research Agenda
For researchers concerned with sustainable digitalisation, the significance of APPETIT extends beyond local food market management. The platform demonstrates how users of digital systems can become contributors to the evaluation of sustainable digitalisation, opening up new opportunities for organisational innovation. Through their everyday activities, producers, consumers, market organisers and service providers generate data that support continuous analysis of digital transformation processes and their outcomes.
This opens a new area of research on the digitalisation of local food systems based on empirical data. APPETIT provides a foundation for studying how digital ecosystems evolve, how organisational readiness influences adoption, how sustainability outcomes emerge, and how digitalisation can be monitored in real time.
We invite CODECS partners, researchers and practitioners to collaborate with us on digitalising the Krakow food ecosystem as an opportunity to further the emerging research agenda on IT-enabled organisational innovation and expand the evidence base for sustainable digitalisation across Europe
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