Help me food hub!

July 5, 2015 9:05 AM

I'm the co-founder of a developing food hub - any MeFites with experience or involvement with a food hub care to offer their thoughts or advice on best practices?

I'm lucky enough to have a job that is awesome and allows me to be involved in the local food movement in all sorts of rad ways.

One of the projects in currently involved in, as a co-founder and stakeholder, is a local food hub. Right now we're in the planning and development stages but we've got funding lined up so things need to be fleshed out as soon as we can manage.

I'm looking for advice, thoughts, and best practices from fellow MeFites who have been involved in a food hub - it really doesn't matter to me if you run one, but from one, or are a producer working with one, I'd like to hear as much as I can!

I've read up on the current research, studies, and statistics in the form of USDA guides and things from universities and the like but I'd like more personal thoughts, if anyone has any to offer.

Thanks in advance!

posted by youandiandaflame to Food & Drink (2 answers total)

Wow! This sounds amazing. Where are you? There are several food hub business plans online, all of which essentially lay out the business prospects for this for charities, business owners, and business improvement districts.

I would suggest you do some kind of community day to seek input about equipment and to gather proposals for partnerships/tenants/fellows as appropriate. You need to decide if your goal is standing order, catering, retail, packaged goods, etc.
I also suggest a term limit for fellows, even those who pay rent, so that eventually to make room for new members you'll be able to fairly remove unproductive businesses or groups. Groups should be able to 'graduate' a course of some kind. Finding funding is not a reason to graduate; learning Sage 50 and how to negotiate insurance could be.

Do you envision these groups paying rent, paying for services, utilities? I found a lot of these business plans do not accurately prepare for being hubs because they are more concerned about populating excess infrastructure. So I recommend deciding now how the group will contend with equity offers.

Setting up a hub inevitably draws people who invest. Handling deal flow is tricky and I don't think food hubs are adequately prepared to handle the eventuality of early exits by promising groups. You need to examine your group's will to seek terms with groups and be prepared to assist in flight by examining facilities with fellows on a regular basis and assisting those who want to leave or will have to leave at some point.

Finally, what amounts to local food that must be included? Knowing this could create rifts with established groups is a great opportunity to build a funder-mentor network on your own terms and really use the hub to build a wheel of development initiatives in your multicounty region.
posted by parmanparman at 10:28 AM on July 5, 2015

You may have already stumbled on this, but Michigan State University is doing great work to pull together resources for emerging food hubs. The site includes a listing for the individual contacts for each of their regional hubs. Good luck!
posted by hessie at 6:07 AM on July 6, 2015