There is a shop=convenience in the neighborhood that focuses on “organic” and “regional” products. The tag for organic is clear: organic=yes or organic=only, depending on the case. However, I cannot find a definitive proposal for the focus on regional products.
Regional products generally encompass both foodstuffs and, often, artisan-made goods. This regional aspect is of interest to tourists as well as to people who prefer locally sourced food.
Drawing on established keys like organic and fair_trade, I could envision simply using regional=no/yes/only. Other conceivable options - such as product=regional or origin=regional (similar to the existing cuisine=regional) - seem more cumbersome to me. Under current definitions, both product and origin require a specific value and do not provide for a generic =regional setting; even if that were permitted, the useful no/yes/only gradation would be missing. Wouldn’t a
regional=no/yes/only
key, therefore, be not only the most obvious choice but also the best solution?
I think we must be careful not to parrot marketing labels in OSM. Where I live - in Baden-Württemberg in Germany - I frequently see “anything produced in Baden-Württemberg” advertised as “regional” even though this can easily mean apples being transported for > 250km. Is “this shop claims to have regional stuff” really something we want to map when the definition of “regional” is so weak? Plus, with practically every major supermarket brand now having some products marketed as “regional”, would this not mean that regional=yes would be applied to practically everything? And then, what would the value of it be?
cuisine=* is already in use and documented on the wiki for shops that sell ethnic food products, so adding cuisine=regional to shops that sell regional food products seems logical.
Basically I’m with you on that. But on second thought, aren’t organic and fair_trade also just marketing “promises”? Would you lump them together with “regional”?
Even brands we tag to amenities or shops are also part of advertising strategies.
Eventually nobody is really checking if the advertized Indian cuisine is really authentic.
I share your doubts but think also, there are already a couple of such parrots screeching around in OSM.