Edible-Alpha® Podcast

The heart of Kitchen Table Consultants' work is one-on-one coaching with food and farm clients, but as their work has grown they have started helping other organizations provide better technical assistance. Rather than just make plans or recommendations for clients, it is critically important to their firm’s mission and values that they “roll up their sleeves” alongside the clients to help them implement their recommendations.

The farm isn’t just a physical location that grows produce - it is part of a commitment by the hospital system to extend healthcare and wellness beyond the hospital campus and empower the community to lead healthier lives. They operate a CSA, a farmers market, community events and a Product To Patients program.

The Livingston Food Resource Center is a nonprofit food pantry and service provider serving a county of 17,000 people in rural Montana with a food acquisition model to purchase directly from area farmers and ranchers. Kitchen rental, value-added processing, community room rental and catering all provide earned income for their operations.

Great Falls is seeking to leverage its reputation as the “Golden Triangle” to grow its larger scale producers (as opposed to smaller scale, cottage food industry producers) for larger domestic markets. Consumer demand is suggesting the best path lays in fulfilling a plant forward diet.

The auction focuses on getting smaller producers in the area to the scale to where they can sell and get attention for their products. Last year the auction grossed over $300,000, with the auction taking a 16% commission for all vegetables sold.

Since the snack category is crowded, Evolve Brands has focused their efforts on sales and marketing to build and continually support a strong distribution footprint of around 2,500 independent, natural and co-op grocery stores. From there, they can pursue a larger go-to-market strategy.

Seeded with a 2012 challenge grant of $3.75 million, the Fair Food Fund, the impact investing arm of Fair Food Network, has attracted a total of $6.4+ million in grants and program related investments from more than 20 funders. Since then, the Fund has provided more than $3.6 million in financing and business assistance to over 80 enterprises across 9 states.

Golden Angels Investors advise entrepreneurs to focus on building their sales and getting as much customer feedback as they can before they risk too much with the business. This, as well as the identification of competitors, helps validate that the business has some traction in the marketplace in the eyes of investors.

There is a disconnect between perceptions of available money for food business and the sheer volume of individuals/funds looking to invest at various stages. And, natural food investors are starting to look at even earlier stage companies now that there is so much competition at the product, retail and investment levels of the food business ecosystem.

A trip to Expo West in 2010 validated the demand and uniqueness of RP's gluten-free SKUs, generating demand that spawned rapid growth of the brand on a more national level, which can be challenging to manage the customer relationships and the right equipment setup/space to match production with demand.