Enterprise Development
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Looking for distribution businesses- small farm to restaurant/grocery
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Looking for distribution businesses- small farm to restaurant/grocery
Help- I am looking for an assist here. I am doing a grant-funded study on distribution models that focus on aggregating and selling small farm products wholesale to larger buyers like restaurants and grocery stores. Where I live on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska, the farms are REALLY small, but there are many. We have the highest growth in beginning farms in the country. We do have a great little food hub, but it folows more of the online farmers market model, where farmers post what they would like to make available week by week. They don’t do the wholesale/broker thing. This study is meant to show what models are out there – non-profit models, for-profit models, co-op models, food hubs, others? We are interviewing folks from these different kinds of distribution business, talking about logistics and lessons learned/pitfalls to avoid, and also covering any Alaska-specific regulations or insurance compliance that needs to be followed. The end product is a resource for anyone who might wish to get into the business of being that middleman, because we all know that statring something like that up can be daunting. Digging through the regs, which business models are out there that you might try, how to get started can be overwhelmong. This study is meant to do some of that legwork and put it into a concise package.
So, what I need are more people to interview, more distributors who work with small farms and do that broker/wholesale aggregator role for sales with buyers like restaurants and grocery stores, who not only want larger quanitities than households do, but who also want to be able to order consistently.
Does anyone in this group have any leads for me?
Finding the right businesses to speak to is proving a little more challenging than I expected. It turns out that this niche market isn’t easily google-able.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Nicole
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3 Replies
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Hi Nicole
I’m the co-owner and CFO of 100km Foods Inc. – we’re based in Ontario Canada and we act as a wholesaler for a network of about 150 small and medium sized farms in the province and across the country and our primary customers are restaurants, hotels, boutique retailers, pro sports teams, and (since COVID) retail home-delivery customers as well. If you’re interested, I’m happy to chat.
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Absolutely, yes, I’d love to talk with you. My email is [email protected]. Please send me an email with a good phone numberto contact you by and we can set up a time to have a good chat.
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Hi Nicole, we are doing something like this in NW Indiana. We just concluded our pilot year and are diving head first into year two. You can find more info on our hybrid hub, Region Roots Local Farm and Food Hub here: https://www.regionroots.org/
If this is what you are thinking of, our team would be happy to talk with you. There have certainly been challenges and lessons learned in the first year, but it is a gap that needs to be filled.
Thanks!- Virginia
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