Regional Food Hub

1. Regional Food Hub A Generate Sturgis Business Idea Presentation Jeff Wenzel

2. Who is this Jeff Wenzel? I am married to my wife of 21 years, Kendra. We have four children: Paige, Sydney, Christian and Emma. We reside on our Sesquicentennial family farm on Featherstone Road, and are the fifth and sixth generation of Wenzels to live on our land, since 1860. I graduated from GVSU in 1993 with a degree in Advertising and Public Relations. I am currently self-employed as a sales and marketing consultant for several manufacturers in the outdoors industry. Finally, I am not the “Jeffery Wenzel - St. Joseph County Drain Commissioner”, though as second cousins, our grandfathers were brothers.

3. What is aRegional Food Hub? A Regional Food Hub is a business or organization
that actively manages the aggregation, distribution, and marketing of source-identified food products primarily from local and regional producers to strengthen their ability to satisfy wholesale, retail, and institutional demand.

4. Care to elaborate on that? • At the core of Food Hubs is a business management team that actively coordinates supply chain logistics. Food Hubs work on the supply side with producers (small farmers) in areas such as sustainable production practices, production planning, season extension, packaging, branding, certification, and food safety—all of which is done to enable these producers to access wholesale customers, such as buyers for foodservice institutions and retail stores. • Many Food Hubs have made investments in food distribution infrastructure. They often own or lease a warehouse that functions as a drop-off point for producers and a pickup point for distribution firms and other customers. Food Hub activities at a warehouse may include dry and cold storage, grading, packing, labeling, and light processing (trimming, cutting, and freezing), all of which are done to ensure that food hubs can meet their wholesale customers’ purchasing standards.

5. Benefits for Producers and Our Community = Win/Win! • Regional Food Hubs have emerged as an effective way to overcome traditional infrastructural and market barriers. For those smaller and mid-sized producers who wish to scale up their operations or diversify their market channels, Food Hubs offer a combination of production, distribution, and marketing services that allows them to gain entry into new and additional markets that would be difficult or impossible to access on their own. • Because most Food Hubs are firmly rooted in their community, they often carry out a number of community services. These include donating to food banks, increasing consumer awareness of the benefits of buying local food, organizing educational farm tours, offering farm apprenticeships, increasing healthy food access by establishing delivery mechanisms into underserved areas, and—for food hubs with a retail component— carrying out activities such as SNAP redemption, nutrition and cooking education, and health screenings.

6. Local Jobs? • With local producers supplying the fruits, vegetables, and animal protein, a Food Hub would employ people to receive, sort, wash, freeze, package and store the harvest at the processing/storage facilities. • Sales, marketing and transportation jobs would also be necessary to distribute the variety of food products – brought under a common brand name, such as River Country Natural Foods. • AFood Hub feasibility study recently conducted in southern Wisconsin estimates that a Food Hub operation running at Full Capacitycould create 400 jobs and inject an additional $60 million into the local economy. Furthermore, it would be able to serve as many as 50 family farm businesses in the southern Wisconsin region with the potential to increase their overall farm revenue by $900,000 to $1.8 million. • Initial job projections for a Food Hub start-up are in the 20-30 range with annual sales from $600,000 - $800,000.

7. Competition? • With approximately 170 recognized Food Hubs across the United States today, only five are located in the State of Michigan – located in Traverse City, Detroit, Clarkston, Byron Center and Grand Rapids. • Creating a Food Hub in Sturgis would cover Southwest Michigan and Northern Indiana for both Production and Distribution. The only Food Hub in Indiana is located several hours south, in Indianapolis. • The demand for local and fresh food products far outweighs current production capabilities in every region, and the demand for these products continues to increase annually.

8. Next Steps • A Regional Food Hub is not re-inventing the wheel itself, but determining what type and size of wheel is most beneficial to, and best fit for, your local community. • Studying established RFHs to narrow the search field, and learn as much as possible from those that are successful. • Searching for local, state and federal financing. • Personally? A greenhouse to extend growing seasons would be very helpful on our family farm.