How we built the Bietenradar (and why)
Every autumn Groningen has one unmistakable season: the beet campaign. For weeks the smell of the sugar factory hangs over the city, one neighbourhood worse than the next. We turned it into a playful stunt: the Bietenradar at bietenradar.nl. A site that predicts, per neighbourhood, how strong the beet smell is, based on weather data and reports from residents. From faintly sweet to windows shut.
From office joke to bietenradar.nl
It started as a joke at the office. A few days later there was a real, working site: a map of Groningen, the wind direction from the factory and an odour plume per neighbourhood, on a scale from 0 (you smell nothing) to 4 (windows shut). Not a big project, but something that actually runs.
How it works
The radar combines the wind direction and strength from the sugar factory with reports from people around the city. Smell it? One tap and you report it for your own neighbourhood. That way the prediction gets a little sharper every day. A bit like a rain radar, but for beets.
“Not a rain radar, but a beet radar.”
Why we build this
We build AI solutions for SMEs every day. The Bietenradar is a playful shop window for that: from idea to a working, live tool in a few days, with AI doing the heavy lifting and a human making the calls. Exactly what we do for clients, only far less smelly.
And then it took off
Within a day NPO Radio 1, RTV Noord, Dagblad van het Noorden, Sikkom, OOG Groningen and even TikTok picked it up. Great to see a small, local idea travel that far. Which is exactly what a good playful stunt is for.
How it showed up in the media
From national radio to the regional newspaper and TikTok: below you can see how the Bietenradar turned up everywhere. Click an image to open the original article or broadcast.
Marc builds with AI every day and helps companies turn ideas into working tools fast.
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