Last night I had the genuine pleasure of sharing a few remarks about sustainable food systems with a group of food industry professionals in Chicago. It was an event hosted by Chicagoland Food & Beverage Network, formed last year to catalyze the 4,500 food companies in Chicago into an economic engine to drive growth, create […]
Anyone reading the food news these days would think that Big Food is dead. In recent years, analysts have been alert to the trends, publishing excellent reports such as Is Big Food In Trouble? (A.T. Kearney/The Hartman Group, 2016), Invasion of the bottle snatchers: Smaller rivals are assaulting the world’s biggest brands (The Economist, 2016) […]
We set out to curate a list of books that might comprise the canon of literature of the good food movement. But we quickly realized that the vastness of the issues and range of viewpoints would make it almost impossible to settle on a shortlist. So instead we decided to each share a set of […]
Anyone who has attempted to launch a food business knows how difficult it can be. Whether it’s raising capital, finding and retaining talent, balancing a side hustle with a full time job or finding reliable co-packers, we hear lots of stories from entrepreneurs that raise our sympathies and admiration. But nowhere have I encountered a […]
Late last year, not long after then president Barack Obama reduced trade restrictions with Cuba, the chance to explore the state of sustainable agriculture in Cuba became an opportunity I did not want to miss. In early February, I was introduced to a world I knew existed but found hard to fathom fairly from the […]
Last month, New Venture Advisors had the opportunity to coach twelve fellows of the Good Food Business Accelerator for a full day session. What an incredible program and inspiring group of entrepreneurs! The Good Food Business Accelerator gets farm and food businesses ready for prime time, giving them the skills to launch or scale up, […]
We became aware of the plight of rural grocery stores a few years ago. Through USDA funding we have begun to research if and how a rural grocery store can viably serve as a food hub to strengthen its bottom line. This blog post by Saloni – Rural Grocery Stores as Food Hubs – 2 […]
Access to healthy, fresh and affordable food is unfortunately not a given in all parts of the globe, nor in the U.S. Improving food access is a founding tenet of the good food movement, and today there are many national, regional and local organizations with missions dedicated to improving food access across all demographic levels […]
In January Wholesome Wave hosted the Transforming Food Access Summit in Atlanta. We attended the conference to co-host a session with Farm Fresh Rhode Island, a food hub in Providence that is having tremendous impact on community health. Our panel explored the intersection of local food and healthy food access. It was an exciting opportunity […]