New Venture Advisors is seeing a growing number of Community Food Center and innovative food facility projects develop across the United States. We are constantly talking with teams and individuals who have big dreams and come to us for help or are looking for grants to fund their vision. While it is exciting to see […]
Sometimes the perfect storm for innovation is a crisis (or global pandemic) that pushes organizations further into their mission. Or it creates an opportunity to try something that under normal conditions would seem outrageous, but suddenly seems like the only option to meet the real-time needs of the community. We have been catching up with […]
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 […]
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 wider. The market is managed by Eastern Market Corporation (EMC) a […]
New Venture Advisors launched the MarketSizer® and HubSizer® Toolsite earlier this year to enable anyone to conduct preliminary assessments of various types of food system infrastructure. The results allow users to refine their food business concepts and due diligence plans. The Toolsite has been used by more than 1,000 visitors since March 2018. We surveyed […]
A microblog series on the HubSizer® and MarketSizer® tools from New Venture Advisors. Over the past few weeks we’ve explored how to analyze a market for local food with the Local Food MarketSizer® tool; investigated how to turn a grocery store into a food hub with the Rural Grocery HubSizer® tool; and most recently we […]
A microblog series on the HubSizer® and MarketSizer® tools from New Venture Advisors. This week we’re looking into how to use the Local Produce HubSizer® tool to estimate the economics and potential markets of a produce food hub. For this post, we’ll take you on the journey that I went through while using this tool: […]
There are so many “new” terms out there describing our food these days. They are on the produce racks (natural, organic, local, sustainably grown, fresh) and they are in the grocery aisles (whole grain, gluten free, no preservatives) and in the meat case! (hormone free, grass-fed, antibiotic free, farmed, fresh caught). There are also some […]
The regionally-based, source-identified wholesale supply chain, once a creature of mystery reserved for the imagination of a handful of optimistic change-makers, is now a successful tool for creating market opportunities for agricultural producers and conveniently delivering safe food to consumers. Here at New Venture Advisors, we often work with groups that come to us with […]
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 […]
The Whatcom County Food System Committee recently conducted a community food assessment that pointed to key opportunities to build a more robust and resilient regional food system. New Venture Advisors will partner with Whatcom County staff and the Food System Committee to draft a Whatcom County Food System Plan that builds upon these findings. This Plan will focus on six sectors of the food system including fishing, farming, labor, food access, environment, and waste, and will be informed by an inclusive and equitable 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. (2022)
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 school district commissary. The goal is to strengthen 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. NVA developed the business case for this ambitious project and continues to support its development. (2022)