Jun 19, 2020 | Entrepreneurship, Food Business Planning, Kitchen Incubators
Late last summer we were contacted by Open Door Advisors with a remarkable question: “Would you be interested in writing a starter guide to help houses of worship use their facilities as community kitchens?” YES! I could not believe that the idea hadn’t already occurred to us. Houses of worship — churches, synagogues, temples, mosques […]
Mar 17, 2020 | Case Study, Community Food Centers, Food Business Planning, Food System
The Oneida Nation is a federally recognized tribe of Oneida people, with a reservation located on 65,000 acres near Green Bay, Wisconsin. The tribe works to offer programs, services, and resources that enable the community to carry on with the strength and determination of its ancestors. The Oneida Community Integrated Food Systems group works on […]
Mar 12, 2020 | Community Food Centers, Food Access, Food Business Planning, Food Hubs, Food System, Kitchen Incubators
Community Food Centers are an exciting development in food system infrastructure and make up an increasing share of our work at New Venture Advisors. In this screencast I’ll share some of the elements we’re seeing come together in Community Food Centers across the nation. This screencast is the companion video to our Good Food Glossary […]
Mar 12, 2020 | Community Food Centers, Food Business Planning, Food System, Good Food Glossary
Our work at New Venture Advisors has evolved over the years. We began doing food system planning ten years ago, when much of our work centered on developing food hubs that aggregated local food and distributed it to local outlets. This eventually gave way to evaluating shared kitchens, grocery stores and many other types of […]
Dec 19, 2019 | Food Access, Food System, Kitchen Incubators, Local Food
As many of you know, we publish a monthly Good Food Brief with the big and small stories that chronicle trends in the food industry. Sometimes we come across programs that we wish had news coverage so that we could share them with you. Programs that serve often excluded communities, that deploy capital to build […]
Feb 20, 2019 | Feasibility Studies, Food Business Planning, Toolsite
One year ago today we launched the NVA Toolsite. We built it with the hope that it would help teams embarking on food system enterprise projects better understand the local market landscape and the most important factors to consider when evaluating the viability of their endeavors. Through interacting with the tools, we envisioned that teams […]
Sep 24, 2018 | Entrepreneurship, Food Access, Forces For Good Food, Sustainable Agriculture
New Venture Advisors is privileged to work alongside powerful forces driving progress toward building food systems we can all be proud of. These forces—our collaborators, partners, clients, visionaries—are leaders in changing how we think about food. As a returning feature of our blog and newsletter, we will voice our gratitude and place the spotlight on […]
Aug 16, 2018 | Food System, Local Food
In July I had the opportunity to travel through the Haute Savoie region of France. It was billed as a “culinary adventure” by Saveur the Journey. The description is what you might expect: “This trip will focus on visiting and learning from food artisans such as cheese makers, butchers, charcuterie experts, pastry chefs, bakers, winemakers, […]
Jun 21, 2018 | Entrepreneurship, Food Access, Food System
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 […]
Mar 8, 2018 | Entrepreneurship, Food Business Planning, Marketing
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) […]