Region Roots is One Year Old!
Posted June 1, 2022
Hello food hub loyalists and soon-to-be patrons!
Our little pilot project-that-could – Region Roots Local Farm and Food Hub – is one year old today! We want to thank all the farmers who have worked with us for many years to make this a reality and to the chefs who never lost their enthusiasm and have ordered every week. We appreciate you so much and we want to make you proud. We’d love to take a moment to tell you how far we’ve come and where we’re headed.
While it has long been a vision of the NWI Food Council to support the launch of a local-only food hub, a few fortuitous things happened to finally make this distant dream a reality. In 2018, the NWI Food Council was awarded a small grant to hire Virginia Pleasant as a part-time value-chain coordinator. Virginia set out to build on many of our longstanding relationships and to cultivate new market channels for farmers. Less than a year into her position, the pandemic struck, supply chains collapsed, and so many original plans were no longer useful or realistic as “pivoting” became the theme of the year. Virginia quickly adjusted by supporting farmers, market managers, restaurants and more- helping them to strategize to survive and thrive through 2020 while navigating fast-moving public health guidelines.
Meanwhile, market farmers across NW Indiana came together to build a strong network of support. Mentoring each other, sharing equipment and brainstorming ways to make the tough work of farming a little easier by working together. When the pandemic happened, many farmers shifted their market outlets and leaned on each other to fill gaps and feed our communities as the fallout from Covid left many people without access to food and put restaurants in a lengthy survival mode. From ecommerce to farm stands, our local food businesses and farms demonstrated their ability to come together to feed our community.
In this moment, the NWI Food Council leaned into its mission, wanting to find a way to empower farmers and support their viability; to alleviate supply chain issues; and overall, take a big step toward cultivating regional resilience by creating infrastructure that hasn’t existed for small farmers. Our team of volunteers spent months researching, writing a business plan, pursuing grants upon grants, developing policies and manuals and, as always, building trust and relationships. In 2021, all the proverbial spaghetti we threw at the wall finally stuck, and grant funds came through to officially launch the Region Roots Local Farm and Food Hub.
It’s no secret that margins in the food industry are abysmal and certainly not supportive of farm viability. Costs also create incredible challenges for restaurants, schools and hospitals who are all working within tight budgets. To stay true to our mission to cultivate a new food system for our region, Region Roots is structured as a non-profit and is farmer-focused. Farmers set their prices and the hub’s markups merely offset some of our costs. To those with a pure business mindset, this may appear tenuous. But the research shows that food hubs require a different investment approach. Food hubs that serve small and midscale farmers are a relatively new model. The National Good Food Network lists only 230 hubs across the country and over 60% of the hubs are less than 5 years old. This is new, novel work. And we’re doing all we can to be nimble and develop in ways that support a triple bottom line (economic, environmental, and community sustainability).
For the last twelve months (the hub’s first year of operation) we’ve kept things small and manageable, since we’ve been working with one very part time employee, a driver and a few dedicated volunteers. We’ve offered delivery on Thursdays every week, with the majority of orders being harvested to order by farmers on Wednesdays. This level of quality and freshness is far beyond the capabilities of food distributors that rely on imported products from thousands of miles away. In our first year, we supported over $45,000 in farm sales through the hub, moving over 20,000 pounds of fresh, local produce, meat, cheese and grains. It is our goal to see that number double this year. But we are quietly optimistic we’ll blow our own goal out of the water.
We’re thrilled to share that we’ve received additional grant funds to retain and hire more staff! This means the year ahead will be full of growth and a much greater capacity to support more purchases and expand delivery offerings to better serve chefs, schools and hospitals. Just this past month, we hired Anna Martinez, who is a successful local food entrepreneur and a powerhouse of local food knowledge. Anna is our new Local Food Coordinator - Chef Liaison and will be working with chefs and wholesale food buyers to grow the hub in the coming months. Anna will be helping us add a delivery day to get local products to chefs earlier in the week and get more local food on more menus!
We have been awarded and are waiting for grant funds to come through later this summer which will allow us to lease/purchase a refrigerated truck and cover the costs of basic staff needs for the next 5 years. Five years! This is incredibly exciting because it continues to allow us to focus on keeping costs low for our farmers and buyers and develop a long range plan for growth that maintains our values.
We have also heard from you that you’d like more opportunities to connect with each other, to share samples and build community. You’ll see a plan from us this summer as we develop sample distribution weeks, networking opportunities for the offseason and restaurant staff local food education programs. We know the hub must prove itself as a reliable option for farmers first, but we hope as we establish this trust over time, we can move toward collaborative crop planning that provides additional security for farmers and unique, custom product options for chefs.
Lastly, our web platform—Local Line–has been working on a 2.0 version and expects to transition food hubs over later this year. The 2.0 version will have even more functionality, be more user friendly for variable weight products and have an even easier to navigate customer experience. Also, expect to see the launch of a Region Roots retail catalog very soon as we work to curate more locally produced value-added and shelf-stable products.
We’re here for the long haul to transform the food system and develop fair and transparent market opportunities. We believe food systems change begins with farmers and for that reason, you’ll always see us working hard to build programs and projects with growers at the center. We are beyond excited to see where this season takes Region Roots and look forward to enjoying delicious local food grown by farmers and featured at farm stands, farmers markets, on menus, in school cafeterias and in grocery stores!
In addition to selling and buying through the hub, you can help us grow by:
Spreading the word! We are always grateful for referrals and are looking to connect with more farmers, food producers, chefs, and buyers!
Do you have refrigeration? We are looking for a refrigerated vehicle to use until our grant funding comes through and will be looking to lease or purchase one this summer.
Do you have a great idea? Please share your feedback, questions, and ideas- it’s how we all grow together!
To infinity and beyond,
Anne Massie
NWI Food Council President
We’d like to also thank Shane Hansen, Annette McKeown and Shannon Wood for initial planning and coordination of our food hub concept. And to Emily Scott Long, our treasurer, who has made sure operations run as smoothly as possible and everyone is paid and happy.
Region Roots Team:
Anne Massie | NWI Food Council President
Dr. Virginia Pleasant | Community Food Network Director
Anna Martinez | Local Food Coordinator - Chef Liaison
Emily Scott Long | Operations Manager
NWI Food Council Region Roots Working Group