Forces for Good Food: Whatcom Community Foundation

Forces for Good Food: Whatcom Community Foundation

Large food system changes need innovative thinkers, like the Whatcom Community Foundation in Washington State, that galvanizes the larger community to build a viable local food system that feeds people and sustains the land. Their vision is to develop a local food...

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Case Study: Oneida Food Innovation Center

Case Study: Oneida Food Innovation Center

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...

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Community Food Centers for Health, Wealth & Equity

Community Food Centers for Health, Wealth & Equity

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...

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Good Food Glossary: Community Food Centers

Good Food Glossary: Community Food Centers

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...

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Forces for Good Food: CommonWealth Kitchen

Forces for Good Food: CommonWealth Kitchen

We are excited to spotlight CommonWealth Kitchen in our Forces for Good Food series.  CommonWealth Kitchen is Greater Boston’s only food business incubator / accelerator and integrated “small batch” food manufacturer, providing shared-use kitchens, wrap-around...

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8 Ideas from 2019 Worth Sharing

8 Ideas from 2019 Worth Sharing

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...

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The Question of Growth: Not Just for Kitchen Members

The Question of Growth: Not Just for Kitchen Members

The growth cycle of most small businesses that make their start in a shared kitchen or kitchen incubator is different from a business operating within its own space. Both face the normal challenges of scaling and the capital needed to support their growth, but...

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Good Food Glossary: Ghost Kitchen

Good Food Glossary: Ghost Kitchen

A simple definition of ghost kitchen is “commercial cooking space with no dine-in option” (QSR Magazine). The concept derived from restaurants that wanted to increase their meal delivery capacity to meet demand without having to increase the size of their storefronts....

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Good Food Glossary: Regenerative Agriculture

Good Food Glossary: Regenerative Agriculture

Regenerative agriculture is a term and practice gaining attention throughout the worlds of food and climate science and increasingly appearing in mainstream conversations. Regenerative agriculture refers to “agricultural practices that work closely with nature to...

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How Health Care is Influencing Food System Planning

How Health Care is Influencing Food System Planning

“Let thy food be medicine and medicine be thy food,” reads the famous Hippocrates quote that opens many forays into the topic. Imagine a world where nutritious food can combat illness and drug dependency. While the food-as-medicine movement has been around for...

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Forces for Good Food Spotlight Series: Eastern Market

Forces for Good Food Spotlight Series: Eastern Market

Eastern Market is well known for its work as a large public market that has been a cornerstone in Detroit since the 1890s. Five different markets — a variety of year-round and seasonal markets — serve between 500-600 transient vendors. Its reach, though, is much...

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Hemp in America: Making Sense of the 2018 Farm Bill

Hemp in America: Making Sense of the 2018 Farm Bill

The 2018 Farm Bill brought hemp to the forefront of conversations across the US agricultural industry and among consumers in general as it broadly legalized hemp after nearly five decades of the crop being banned. While farmers, businesses, investors, and consumers...

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For Health and Harvest: Rebuilding Native Food Systems

For Health and Harvest: Rebuilding Native Food Systems

New Venture Advisors helps strengthen businesses that are a part of the good food supply chain. On our blog we’ve written about how traditional supply chain economics does not account for unprofitable externalities like the quality of life, soil health, trusting...

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Good Food Funding Guide

Good Food Funding Guide

We have had the opportunity to work with a great many businesses, nonprofits, and government entities that are making significant impacts within the good food industry. One of the biggest barriers we’ve witnessed in moving forward with an idea or scaling operations is...

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NVA Toolsite: Planning Starts Here

NVA Toolsite: Planning Starts Here

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...

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Good Food Glossary: CSA

Good Food Glossary: CSA

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a farming practice that promotes a shared commitment by consumers and growers to build a more local and equitable agricultural system. Introduced in the mid-80s, CSAs are “a community of individuals who pledge support to a farm...

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Forces For Good Food Spotlight Series: The Hatchery

Forces For Good Food Spotlight Series: The Hatchery

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...

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Shared Kitchens: A Changing Landscape

Shared Kitchens: A Changing Landscape

Announcements from the increasingly crowded incubator, accelerator, shared kitchen, food hub, and innovation marketplace seem to come at us at ever greater speed these days. New facilities are opening across the country and globe, new communities are being courted to...

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 Whatcom County Food System Plan

In 2021, the Whatcom County Food System Committee conducted a community food assessment that pointed to key opportunities to build a more robust and resilient regional food system. New Venture Advisors partnered with Whatcom County staff and the Food System Committee to draft a Whatcom County Food System Plan that builds upon these findings. This Plan focuses on five key goals for building a more equitable, sustainable, and resilient food system, and was informed by an inclusive community engagement process. The Food System Plan will provide the county with a policy roadmap that will strengthen the local food system for years to come. (2023)

 Whatcom Local Food Campus

The Whatcom Community Foundation invests in activities and organizations that improve the ability of people to help themselves, increase connections among people, and take cooperative approaches to community issues. WCF is exploring the development of a local food campus on a waterfront property that would become a multi-tenant site, anchored by a collaborative production kitchen benefitting food access, school system, and community organizations. The goal is strengthening Whatcom County’s local food system by promoting health equity, forging tangible strategic connections between food production organizations, and helping farmers connect with institutional markets. The facility will also feature an incubation kitchen, demonstration kitchen, event and classroom space, collaborative office and conference facilities, and housing.  New Venture Advisors developed the business case for this ambitious project and continues to support its development through engagement and operational development. (2023)