Commercial model · working hypothesis
Who pays
for trust?
The organisation carrying recurring label, evidence and reputational risk should fund the early service.
Consumers create reach and accountability. Professional customers buy workflow and monitoring—never a verdict.
Prices and scenarios are interview hypotheses, not forecasts.The economic truth
Servers are inexpensive.
Defensible conclusions are not.
A retailer or manufacturer manages repeated pack changes, supplier questions, approvals and corrections. That recurring portfolio problem is worth more than a single barcode result.
Human review, specialist advice, corrections, insurance, support and occasional laboratory work are expected to dominate raw infrastructure cost.
Proposed customer order
Sell the repeated job—not the thumb.
Price by product portfolio, workflow and service level. The public status remains outside the commercial contract.
Manufacturers and importers
£3,000–£8,000 / yearPrivate pre-launch claim checks, pack-version monitoring and correction-ready evidence records.
Likely owner · Technical, quality, regulatory or NPD leadRetailers and private-label teams
£12,000–£30,000 / yearMonitor claims, supplier evidence, pack changes and official alerts across many products.
Likely owner · Technical, category, quality or regulatory teamAdvisers, laboratories and auditors
£6,000–£30,000 / yearAssemble traceable client evidence, exports and alerts without pretending software replaces judgement.
Likely owner · Technical director, food-law lead or audit practiceInsurers, publishers and researchers
£30,000–£75,000 / yearScreen portfolios, monitor exposure and analyse claim patterns with visible provenance.
Likely owner · Recall risk, research, product intelligence or editorial leadAdjacent spend already exists
Businesses already buy parts of this job.
That validates the buyer category—not HonourFood's price or demand. The opportunity is to connect public pack evidence, official alerts and corrections to systems teams already use.
Label and claims workflowNibblr
Public Scale pricing reaches £3,828 a year for retail-facing food teams.
Official vendor page ↗Small-business benchmarkNutriticsPublic recipe, allergen, claim and label tooling starts from £80 per quarter.
Official vendor page ↗Specification workflowFoods ConnectedReports 500+ food businesses using specification and NPD workflow.
Official vendor page ↗Enterprise precedentOracle RetailRetail specifications already connect ingredients, pack copy and claim-substantiation evidence.
Official product documentation ↗Illustrative annual operating model
What would have to be true.
These figures expose the commercial test. They contain no observed HonourFood conversion, churn, acquisition cost, contract or case-throughput data.
- Revenue
- £35,000
- Operating cost
- £90,000
- Contribution
- −£55,000
- Contribution margin
- Validation deficit
Five £5,000 design partners and 1,000 £10 members. Deliberately validation-led, not profitable.
- Revenue
- £410,000
- Operating cost
- £360,000
- Contribution
- +£50,000
- Contribution margin
- 12.2%
Twenty £12,000 professional contracts, four £30,000 enterprise contracts and 5,000 £10 members.
- Revenue
- £700,000
- Operating cost
- £430,000
- Contribution
- +£270,000
- Contribution margin
- 38.6%
A larger mixed portfolio of professional, enterprise, member and commissioned evidence work.
Rounded consumer pricing
£10 a year.
Not £9.99.
Keep public evidence and safety information free. A £10 membership can add watchlists, history, advanced search and preferences. A separate £20 founder contribution may be tested without turning it into an app access fee.
At £5, approximately 32,000–35,000 paying users are needed merely to produce £150,000 before VAT, support, churn and acquisition. At £10, the equivalent falls to roughly 15,500–17,600.
Respectful Shop may later earn disclosed affiliate commission from authorised retailer links. None is included in these scenarios: programme approval, coverage and conversion are unproven, and switching monetisation off must leave evidence eligibility and natural ordering unchanged.
Check the current payment benchmark ↗Commercial firewall
Money may buy service.
It cannot buy truth.
- 01
Right of reply, factual correction and appeal remain free.
- 02
No customer can purchase a status, ranking, removal, faster correction or favourable wording.
- 03
Private pre-launch work cannot secretly determine the public editorial record.
- 04
Material commercial relationships are disclosed on the relevant evidence receipt.
- 05
A future certification mark requires independent criteria, audit, conflicts rules and appeal.
The next commercial experiment
Five paid design partners.
Start with UK manufacturers, importers and specialist advisers. Measure avoided work, reviewer hours, buying ownership and willingness to renew before hiring against a scale scenario.