food

Good Food Takes on the School Fundraiser

| ChrisHardmanWriter

OCTOBER IS NATIONAL Farm to School month. It’s one of those “take the pledge” times of year that catapults school fundraising season into overdrive. And with the designation comes all the familiar annual pressure to load the tables with goodies and buy whatever is on offer.

We’ve all been there. A co-worker or family member blindsides you with catalogues and order forms for candles you don’t need or cookies you don’t want. In a moment of weakness, you find yourself signed up for a giant tub of cheddar jalapeno popcorn chock-full of artificial ingredients..

But school fundraising is no longer the old-time cottage industry many of us remember, bolstered by the bake sale and door-to-door dollar chocolate bar pitch. It’s big, big business. According to the Association of Fund-Raising Distributors and Suppliers (AFRDS), schools and other non-profits net $1.7 billion selling cookie dough, candy, popcorn and a variety of other food and non-food products. Schools depend on these fundraisers to purchase sports equipment, technology, and plan field trips.

At the same time, as cultural interest in—and government support of—healthier school lunch programs has grown, parents and educators have begun questioning why schools sanction the sale of high-fat, high-sugar processed food, especially in a nation with a childhood obesity rate of 17 percent and rising.

When Mark Abbott found himself faced with the annual school fundraising campaign, he dutifully supported his son, who sold $400 worth of candy and cookie dough to friends and family. But after Abbott’s son questioned why he was selling processed food his family never ate at home, Abbott was inspired. He thought, why not create a school fundraising program that offers healthy, locally made products including honey, jam, pasta, granola, and seasonal produce?

In 2013, Abbott did just that, and introduced FarmRaiser—an online and mobile market—to schools in Flint, Michigan. With his fundraising model, not only can schools raise money, they can also support local businesses that produce healthy food. “Parents are responding to it in a big way,” Abbott says. “We are disrupting an industry.” Since 2013, FarmRaiser has managed 150 fundraising campaigns, become active in 22 states, and helped raise $270,000.

With a traditional school fundraising program, a school can expect to net 20-50 percent of sales. FarmRaiser, on the other hand, preserves that net percentage for schools (by charging a flat rate of 10 percent of sales, Farmraiser guarantees at least a 45 percent return to the school, though the typical campaign returns, on average, 51 percent to the cause), but also extends the support to local food artisans and farmers. “Our entire value proposition is leaving 85 percent of the money in the community,” Abbott says.

FarmRaiser tailors the products to the school’s location, so most of the vendors are truly “local,” and live within 30 miles of the school. For people who want to support the school but aren’t interested in receiving products, FarmRaiser offers a community basket donation. Half of every cash donation goes to the school while the other half goes to a local food bank or homeless shelter. According to Abbott, 10 percent of sales are community basket donations.

FarmRaiser works with 150 food vendors who offer more than 500 different products. Abbott explains that although the vendors sell their products at 50 percent less than retail, they gain tangible benefits with very little risk. FarmRaiser shares customer information with their vendors, allowing them to reach out to potential customers they know have already tried their product.

“For our suppliers that sell direct to consumers in their community, the cost of acquiring that potential customer is the margin [they] would have made in retail sales,” Abbott says. He estimates that 15,000 people have tried local products with FarmRaiser so far.

Al Dente Pasta Company in Whitmore Lake, Michigan has participated in 16 FarmRaiser campaigns since 2013. It sells its products in a bundle: two bags of pasta and one sauce. “For us it isn’t a financial gain. It was more wanting to support something really interesting that I thought served an important purpose,” says owner Monique Deschaine. “The model is a real win-win. You’re showcasing local ingredients. You’re allowing schools or organizations to fundraise. And you are giving people what they want.”

Like any online fundraising platform, FarmRaiser’s business model depends largely on how well its technology functions. And for users of other similar platforms like Kickstarter or GoFundme, the interface and “campaign” process will feel relatively familiar: a dashboard design that’s friendly to users who sit anywhere on the tech-savvy spectrum, and a mobile app that replaces order forms and processes payment by check, cash or credit card. Around 45 percent of FarmRaiser transactions are electronic, Abbott says, and he expects that number to grow.

For schools that still want to use paper, brochures and order forms can be printed from the FarmRaiser website, and schools can input their own orders into their custom campaign pages. Abbott says 75 percent of the campaign set-up and maintenance is automated, and his team is working on the final 25 percent.

But getting the technology up to speed is really only part of the equation. “Our biggest challenge is finding schools that want to do healthy fundraising,” Abbott says. Approaching schools to give a sales pitch is very expensive and time consuming. So instead, FarmRaiser has developed partnerships with like-minded organizations such as Slow Food USA, Food Corps, and Whole Kids Foundation. Abbott estimates that the FarmRaiser message can reach as many as 1 million people on social media through posts from its partners.

Meanwhile, the billion-dollar school fundraising market provides an endless–and annually renewable– source of growth opportunities. The company currently staffs three full-time and one part-time employee, along with five engineering contract workers. So far, investors have provided the funding for start-up and operating costs. And as FarmRaiser continues to automate campaign management, the profitability of each campaign increases.

FarmRaiser is harnessing the power of good food rather than irrelevant junk, and in turn making more money for schools. Their technology is not that new, and neither — obviously — is the idea of healthy food. What it is doing is extending at scale the intangible benefits of a fundraiser beyond the institution and into the community.

Published on The New Food Economy by Chris Hardman 

Flint MTA Provides Rides to Grocery Stores

| ChrisHardmanWriter

BEFORE FLINT, MICHIGAN became synonymous with poisoned water, residents had another major health concern: limited access to healthy foods. Residents were shocked in the spring of 2015 when two of Flint’s major east side grocery stores, part of the Meijer and Kroger chains, closed their doors. The city had already lost a Kroger several months earlier on the northwest side of town.

“The public was wondering, ‘How will people get their groceries?’ There wasn’t a grocery store within four to five miles,” says Derrek Williams, manager of Fixed Route Transportation Services for Flint’s Mass Transportation Authority (MTA). In a city where42 percent of residents live below the poverty level, many households can’t afford a car to drive to a grocery store across town or outside the city limits.

“Our staff met to talk about what we could do to help people,” says Edgar H. Benning, the Flint MTA’s general manager and CEO, who grew up on the east side of Flint. “We had a real challenge on our hands.”

Last April, Benning and his team introduced a new bus route serving east-side neighborhoods called Rides to Groceries, which takes passengers to the east-side grocery stores, Kroger in the northeast and to Walmart in the southeast. (While the bus also stops near a new grocery store called Fresh Choice Market, few riders patronize the store because of its higher prices.) To make the bus affordable for as many people as possible, the MTA reduced the normal bus rate by half, to just $0.85 each way.

The new bus route took a while to catch on. “The people really didn’t know how to receive it, because no one tailors a bus for a neighborhood,” Williams says. “Our biggest challenge has been getting the people out to ride and understanding that this ride is set up for the grocery store.”

The MTA, which employs a staff of 470 people, launched a publicity campaign by handing out flyers, talking to block clubs, and knocking on doors. Special bus signs with grocery carts dot the route, and recently, the bus was wrapped with a colorful image that includes a shopping cart, fresh produce, and contact information.

In the early days of the new route, an MTA bus driver noticed one rider who was taking the bus almost every day and bringing home only one or two small bags. When the driver told Benning about the woman, he realized she was shopping every day because she couldn’t carry a week’s worth of groceries from the bus stop to her home.

Wondering if other riders had the same problem, Benning sent several of his staff into the neighborhoods to interview passengers. They found that some people had trouble maneuvering from the bus stop to their homes, Benning says.

In response, he decided to develop another option: “We offered another level of service, which would allow people to go from their home to the store,” he said. For $2.25 each way, residents living off the main route can call and schedule pickups and drop-offs at their homes. Similar to the bus route, the call-in service, which relies on a separate vehicle, is available all day, Monday through Saturday.

According to Benning, ridership has grown from 235 people the first month to about 900 per month more recently. “Not only do we have people who use it daily to go shopping, but we also have people who work at those stores and use it,” he says.

Frequent bus rider and Walmart employee Violetta Allen, who used to walk more than two miles both ways to shop and go to work, says she finds the new bus service helpful. “I used to walk from Center Road to work at Walmart,” she says. “The shopper bus brings me all the way out here. Now I don’t have to carry my groceries so far when I get off of work.”

The MTA plans to expand the service to the other side of town and introduce call-in program riders to grocery minibuses. Benning says the MTA has to adapt to the needs of an isolated and aging population. “In some cases, they go to the corner drug stores and are living off what’s on those the shelves,” he says.

The Rides to Groceries bus costs $6,000 per month to operate. Because the fares don’t offset that new cost, Benning has sought funding from the community and from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. So far, the Kroger Foundation donated $15,000; Walmart gave $1,000; and United Way of Genesee County gave $5,000.

“If we wait until the money’s there, we will never get it,” Benning says. “Let’s put it out [there], make it work, and figure out how to fund it.”

Published on CivilEats by Chris Hardman

 

Detroit Food Academy Prepares Teens for Jobs

| ChrisHardmanWriter

NINETEEN-YEAR-OLD Hassan Amaleki is on the fast track to a successful career in the food industry. By the time he graduated from high school in 2015, Amaleki had worked for a thriving food business, completed an entrepreneurial training program, and led the launch of a successful new product.

Amaleki gained these experiences through the Detroit Food Academy (DFA), an after-school training program for high school kids ages 13-20 that gives young people hands-on, real world experiences in developing, marketing, and selling artisan food products. Students work with mentor businesses, including Slow Jams, Friends of Detroit Potato Chips, Cynt-Sational Popcorn, and Brooklyn Street Local, to learn culinary and business skills.

After completing the 25-week program, graduates earn a certificate in food entrepreneurship, and have access to a network of potential employers and an opportunity to enter a summer employment program. Best of all, the program is completely free.

The unemployment rate among Detroit youth is alarmingly high at 30 percent compared to the city-wide unemployment rate of 6.5 percent. While the DFA has only just begun to track the activities of their 800 graduates, they do know that of the 44 students who completed the past two summer programs, 90 percent were hired by their mentors or the DFA. That’s 40 young people with new jobs.

“That confidence our students are building is our main focus,” says DFA Executive Director Jen Rusciano. “Food is just the [most fun] way to do that.” Rusciano, along with Noam Kimelman and Amy Berkhoudt, founded the DFA at Detroit’s Cesar Chavez High School in 2011.

During the school year, the DFA runs as an after-school club that meets 1-2 days a week for a few hours. Hassan Amaleki joined when he was in ninth grade. “I found a program where I can make a whole bunch of different kinds of great food,” Amaleki says. “From then on I [thought], ‘wow this is a great program; I got to stick with it.’”

The DFA offers their program at eight high schools around Detroit, and around 200 students have joined the DFA this year. DFA staff use portable equipment to turn classrooms into kitchens for cooking demos and workshops. The meetings themselves are often driven by student interest. For example Amaleki loves preparing pasta dishes. “We always cook and we always eat,” says Rusciano.

At the beginning of the year, the students use a budget to plan field trips. DFA students have visited Detroit’s Eastern Market, one of the largest historic markets in the country; D-Town farm, an eight-acre urban farm run by the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network; and small businesses, such as Sister Pie on the city’s East Side.

In the summer, the students work as interns with Detroit food companies, where they can pursue either a culinary or entrepreneurial path. “We try to walk the mentees through every aspect of running a business,” says Shannon Byrne, a DFA board member and the owner of Slow Jams in Detroit, where Amaleki worked. Byrne has been hosting DFA students since the program began. The students work with her on food production, selling at markets, sourcing ingredients, budgeting, inventory, and bookkeeping. Byrne sees the partnership as benefiting her business as well as the students.

“Teenagers come into an experience with a different perspective,” she says. “Some of the questions mentees have asked over the years really help you reflect on your own business and your values in your business.”

Students commit to one day a week with their food mentors. Amaleki learned to keep moving while at Slow Jams. “They taught me to get work done right away,” he says.

“We make it pretty clear that the students are there to both learn and help,” Rusciano says. “We only reach out to food businesses that have a triple bottom line vision, folks who see themselves contributing to the foundation of a broader community in addition to having a great business.”

In 2015, DFA launched Small Batch Detroit to give students more real world experience and to generate revenue outside of the grants that fund the program. Amaleki was part of a group of students that developed the DFA debut product called Mitten Bites, no-bake granola snacks with dark chocolate, peanut butter, and dried fruit. “We did a lot of research on it before we made it,” Amaleki says. “It’s something almost everybody has had before. Somebody’s mom or grandma made an energy bite that was also a snack.”

Mitten Bites have taken off. They are for sale at 30 locations, including the Eastern Market and Whole Foods. Once a week, Small Batch Director Jacob Schoenknecht, Amaleki, VISTA service member Margo Dalal and DFA students produce Mitten Bites in a rented commercial kitchen. The team recently doubled their production level from two batches of 600 bites each to four.

In addition to working in food, DFA graduates have gone on to pursue careers in fields such as education and nursing. And their experience with the DFA has given them an important head start. “It’s transformative,” Byrne says. “We can see the impact on all of the students that come through.”

Published on CivilEats by Chris Hardman

Philadelphia Cuts Salt in Chinese Take-Out

| ChrisHardmanWriter

AS FOLKS DIG into Chinese fare to celebrate the Lunar New Year, they might be surprised to hear that they’re getting an extra helping of sodium. Popular main dishes such as General Tso’s Chicken can contain as much as 2,325 mg of sodium in one serving, 25 mg more than the amount FDA recommends eating in an entire day.

In 2012, a group of Philadelphia health advocates noted that their city has more than 400 Chinese take-out-only restaurants—more than all the city’s fast food joints combined. They formed the Philadelphia Healthy Chinese Take-out Initiative, with the goal of reducing the amount of sodium in Chinese take-out by 10 to 15 percent.

Overconsumption of sodium is a nationwide problem. The average American eats nearly 3,500 milligrams of a day, or 15 percent more than the FDA recommends. The recommendation is even lower for people with hypertension, for African Americans, and for middle-aged and older adults.

The Philadelphia initiative targeted low-income neighborhoods where predominantly people of color reside and Chinese take-out is commonly eaten. “In Philly, we have such high rates of hypertension, particularly among African Americans and Hispanics,” says Jennifer Aquilante of the Philadelphia Department of Public Health (PDPH).

Sodium is known to raise human blood pressure and half of the city’s African Americans and nearly a third of its Hispanics suffer from hypertension (or high blood pressure), which can lead to heart disease, heart failure, stroke, and kidney problems.

Launched in 2010 by the PDPH—with funding from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—Get Healthy Philly also promotes healthy foods, smoke-free environments, and works to reduce youth smoking rates.

For the initiative, staff from the PDPH Get Healthy Philly program, Temple University’s Center for Asian Health, the Asian Community Health Coalition, and the Greater Philadelphia Chinese Restaurant Association worked with 300 Chinese takeout restaurants. Not only did they target table salt, the most obvious source of sodium in our diets, but they also turned an eye toward processed foods, canned sauces, and prepared mixes.

First, they asked restaurant owners two important questions: Did they realize that too much sodium contributed to health problems? And, second, were they willing to make changes? Most of the restaurant owners answered yes and requested help in preparing and marketing lower-sodium meals. Get Healthy Philly brought in Professor Shirley Cheng of New York’s Culinary Institute of America, to conduct classes and provide recipes for lower-sodium Chinese cooking.

Professor Cheng gave chefs from over 200 restaurants free cooking training in late 2012 and early 2013. She recommended included using ginger, garlic, scallions, and lemon to add flavor instead of table salt, and also using lower sodium ingredients and modifying recipes. In one example, Cheng recommended a modified sauce recipe for shrimp and broccoli that reduced the sodium from 2,400 mg to 1,300 mg. Her chicken lo mein sauce reduced sodium from 2,500 mg per order to 1,600 mg.

Restaurant owners received a certificate of participation, a door decal, a toolkit, posters about sodium, and recipes for the most popular menu items.

“Chinese food in general is high in sodium because of the sauces,” Aquilante says. “We ask them to use about half as much sauce as they normally do.” In addition to using less sauce, the Get Healthy Philly program also asked the restaurants to give out soy sauce packets only when asked.

Tongshe Lu, owner of Great Taste Chinese Food, completed his training in 2012. “It’s a great program for Chinese take out restaurants,” he says.

To measure the program’s progress, Temple University Professor Grace X. Ma conducted compliance checks at six, 16, and 24 months post training. She found that the sodium content in the three most popular dishes dropped consistently: 13 percent in General Tso’s chicken, 30 percent in chicken lo mein, and 34 percent in shrimp and broccoli.

“I’ve reduced half [the] sodium after the training,” says restaurant owner Tianxing Chen.  “It helps to make everybody healthy in the community.”

How did the customers respond to the change? Get Healthy Philly surveyed over 300 customers from nine restaurants after the shift. When asked if they would order the dishes they’d eaten again, 91-97 percent of the customers said yes.

However, initiatives like this one in Philly show that sodium is an acquired taste, so over time people can adapt to less sodium in their food. “We know from research that a 20 percent reduction in sodium isn’t that noticeable,” says Aquilante.

Partnerships between the Chinese and African American communities have been key to making the Philadelphia Healthy Chinese Take-out Initiative possible. In 2015, PDPHbegan a new outreach program with 80 pastors from African American churches. The pastors learned about the Chinese take-out program and other health issues. In turn, the pastors have begun educating their congregations.

Two years after training, 185 Chinese take-out-only restaurants were still participating in the program.

The success in Philadelphia is serving as a model for other cities looking to improve their residents’ health. In 2015 the Advocate Heart Institute and the Chicago Department of Public Health worked with four Chicago restaurants that serve South Asian fare to reduce sodium levels in their food.

“Several other cities have inquired about our program and replicated it in their own way,” says Aquilante. “Since our initiative is so comprehensive, I think cities can pull out pieces that they want to focus on.”

Published on CivilEats by Chris Hardman

 

Detroit Farmers Build a Better CSA

| ChrisHardmanWriter

ON PAPER, the community supported agriculture (CSA) subscription model is an ideal partnership. Members of the community support the farmer by paying for their produce in one lump sum before the harvest and then receive a weekly box of food during the growing season. In some cases, CSA boxes can provide up to four-fifths of a family’s diet.

But boxes can also be inconsistent—one week a customer can be overloaded with squash or kale, and the next week have none at all. The model also can have some downsides for farmers, who not only need to grow a diverse set of crops, but also spend time packing weekly produce boxes and staffing member pick up stations. And despite the upfront investment by CSA members, many such farmers are still struggling to make ends meet. (A 2014 Massachusetts study found that 81 percent of full-time CSA farmers aren’t earning a living wage.)

To address these issues, a group of young farmers in Detroit started a cooperative CSA in 2012 called City Commons. The five urban farms—Fields of Plenty, Food Field, Buffalo Street Farm, Vinewood Knoll, and Singing Tree Garden—contribute to the weekly box and are paid based on how much produce they supply. By pooling their resources, they decrease their workload and risk and provide their customers with a more reliable, varied collection of produce every week.

City Commons boxes always have between eight and 10 items so customer don’t get overwhelmed with too much of one or two vegetables. And with careful planning in the winter, City Commons farmers make sure they have enough variety to fill their customer’s needs. “[That diversity] is part of why the cooperative model creates such a consistent product,” says Alice Bagley of Fields of Plenty. By the end of the season, members will have received about 50 different types of fruits, vegetables, and herbs.

City Commons’ membership grew from 13 to 60 members between their first and second year of business, and rose to 90 members last year. (This year, they limited membership to 65, because one of their founding farmers moved away and another is having a baby.) The original group of farmers met while working for the Greening of Detroit. Each had previous experience with CSAs and a shared philosophy for sustainable farming.

Once a week, member farmers send an e-mail list of available produce to crop coordinator and Vinewood Knoll owner Elizabeth Phillips. She then calculates how much product each farmer needs to contribute to fill customer boxes. “The beauty of the cooperative is if I only have greens, I have four other farmers back me up providing other things,” Phillips says.

Each farmer also has a role in running the business. For example Bagley manages the books, and Link from Food Field responds to e-mail inquiries. “Our administrative work is what we give back to the cooperative,” Phillips says. “We don’t get paid for those jobs.” With no administrative costs, City Commons is able to keep their prices at $450 for a 20-weeks full share and $230 for a half share.

“We want to make sure the food we are growing is accessible to the community we’re in,” says Buffalo Street Farm’s Chris McGrane. He grows food on the east side of Detroit in a neighborhood that is mixed with abandoned, run down homes, and older, inhabited ones, and says that most of his neighborhood relies on some type of food assistance. As a result, City Commons has to be able to accept Michigan Bridge cards from Michigan’s electronic food assistance program. McGrane says about half of City Commons’ customers are from Detroit, and the other half work in the city.

The support the cooperative CSA provides to farmers is invaluable. “Farming is kind of lonely,” says Phillips. “It’s just nice seeing someone every week who is going through the same thing and supporting you.” If one farmer needs to take some time off, the other farmers pitch in as needed. “You don’t have to have that 24/7 marriage to the farm,” says McGrane.

A known customer base also gives the farmer more time to spend on farming instead of marketing. “You know [the produce is] going to get sold,” says Bagley of Fields of Plenty. “At the beginning of the season, I already knew that I had 65 customers waiting to eat the things I was growing.”

Published on CivilEats by Chris Hardman

 

Bringing Pollinators Back to Washington

| ChrisHardmanWriter

HAVE YOU CONSIDERED putting in a beehive, but worried that you might not have the time to maintain it? If you live in Seattle, you’re in luck. Once a month, Corky Luster’s Ballard Bee Company will install a hive, care for the bees, and harvest the honey for you.

“It’s like having a lawn service, but with bees. You can sit back and enjoy the bees, and we will take care of them,” Luster explains.

Ballard Bee customers sign up for a year of “urban pollination” services at a time. During the 6-month honey season, they receive two 12-ounce jars of honey a month, and in winter, Luster makes sure the hive survives.

In the process, he is turning suburban backyards and city rooftops into honey producing habitats, in hopes that it will help his customers connect the dots between what they eat and the natural world around them. “By [giving people] bees, you bring them into the fold, and they become part of the food system,” Luster says.

To make his business sustainable, Luster does more than manage hives. He teaches classes, consults with chefs, and sells honey and beekeeping supplies. “We’ve had a huge interest in beekeeping in Seattle,” he explains. His classes sell out and many of his graduates move on to their own beekeeping adventures.

Luster also consults for some of Seattle’s finest chefs. He helped both Jason Stoneburner of Bastille Café & Bar in Ballard and Gavin Stephenson of Seattle’s Fairmont Olympic Hotel set up rooftop apiaries. “My goal was to educate the chefs and get them involved,” says Luster. “Both are really bright and very interested in trying to be part of the solution.”

The restaurant apiaries have succeeded. Chef Stephenson now manages five rooftop hives that house half a million honeybees. He harvested more than 400 pounds of honey last summer. Last year, after relying on the service of Ballard Bees for three years, Chef Stoneburner has taken over caring for his hives. He uses his honey in desserts, vinaigrettes, and in a popular cocktail called the Bee’s Knees.

In 2014, Luster started a new service for restaurants called the apiary partnership program. He invited restaurants and chefs to buy bee hives that he manages for a small fee. The restaurant gets 100 percent of the honey. According to Luster, the partnership is a great success and he plans to expand this program in the future. His clients include the Walrus and the Carpenter, an oyster bar in Seattle, Vif, a wine and coffee café in Seattle, and the Tom Douglas Restaurants.

Nearly half of Ballard Bee’s income comes from honey sales. The company owns an additional 130 hives that are housed 45 minutes outside of Seattle at Local Roots Farm and at Camp Korey. The honey produced by those hives has varied flavors that depend on where the bees are foraging. The first nectar flow begins early in the spring when the bees are feeding on pollen from the flowers of bigleaf maple trees, the largest species of maple found in the Puget sound area. Next the bees feed on pollen from blackberry bush flowers. The last flow is from the Japanese knotweed plant and has a fig and caramel taste to it. Called Dark Cream Honey, it’s Ballard’s favorite flavor and recently received national recognition as a 2015 Good Food Awards winner.

Education is important to the Ballard Bee Company’s mission. Luster’s goals when starting the business in 2009 were to teach people about bees, replenish the local bee population, and encourage new beekeepers. He is dedicated to spreading the word about the value of bees and says people are afraid of bees because they don’t know enough about them. When he works with a hive, onlookers express surprise that he is dressed in short sleeves without gloves. “People are amazed that honey bees are extremely gentle. They’re teddy bears,” he says. Some of his clients put lawn chairs near the hive so they can relax and watch the bees at work.

As pollinators of fruit trees, nut trees and crops, the value of bees is vast. According to the Washington State Department of Agriculture, honey bees pollinate $2.2 billion worth of tree fruits, nuts, and berries, and produce 2.5 million pounds of honey in their state alone. Those calculations do not include the value of all the seed crops bees pollinate, such as onions, watermelon, and squash.

Seattle, with its vibrant local food scene, is an ideal place to launch an urban bee company. Since Luster started his business, other bee companies have debuted, offering hosting, consulting, and education services. One business, called the Urban Bee Company, gives city dwellers a chance to sponsor a hive or an apprentice beekeeper along with hosting and education programs. “I could not be here without the support Seattle has given me,” Luster says. “I am really thankful for that.”

 

Published in Civil Eats: By

 

An Urban Farmer Breaks New Ground in Flint

| ChrisHardmanWriter

THIRTY-YEAR-OLD Roxanne Adair is a trailblazer. In 2010, she and a friend started Flint River Farm in Flint, Michigan, a city where urban farming isn’t the norm. Adair’s background was in fisheries, wildlife, and biology, and she used the knowledge gained working at the Genesee County Land bank to buy and rent city lots, totaling nearly three acres, in the heart of Flint.

This process wasn’t easy. Flint’s history mirrors that of other rust belt cities. The city had a robust economy based in the auto industry until it began to decline in the 1970s. When General Motors closed multiple plants and cut thousands of jobs in Flint in 1989, work suddenly became scarce. As unemployment and crime increased, the media dubbed Flint “the Murder Capital” of the U.S.

Despite the city’s challenges, Adair and her partner jump-started their business with a grant from the Ruth Mott Foundation. Their goal was to create a sustainable business model for urban farming in Flint.

The farmers built hoop houses, produced enough vegetables to supply a multi-family community supported agriculture program (CSA), harvested honey from two beehives, and even tapped neighborhood maple trees to make syrup. They sold their organically grown produce at the Flint Farmers’ Market.

Since her partner left in 2012, Adair has continued to expand the farm on her own, and the space now occupies 17 city lots. Flint River Farm produces a wide array of heirloom crops, including apples, blackberries, strawberries, cherries, corn, melons, tomatoes, squash, dried beans, carrots, beets and Brussels sprouts—the list goes on and on.

frf joannas dadWhile Flint River Farm is filled with fresh produce, the neighborhood still faces its challenges. Across the street is a burned-out convenience store. The main drag, Saginaw Street, is a block away and is home to strip clubs, a pawn shop, and a liquor store.

Theft is a frequent problem on the farm, but Adair doesn’t begrudge her hungry visitors. “If you need [food] bad enough to steal it, you need it more than I do,” she says. But, she encourages people to reach out to her first: “Tell me and I will harvest it for you. I’ll wash it for you and have it ready.”

Vandals also come through the farm regularly, slashing the thick polyethylene walls of the hoop houses or spray painting gang paraphernalia on the sides. Repairs and replacements can cost thousands of dollars.

By and large, however, the long-time residents of the neighborhood have become Adair’s friends. They share tools, talk over the tomatoes, and collaborate on composting. Adair recalls that when she started the farm, she rarely saw the neighbors outside. “They would mow their lawn and then run back inside,” she says. Now people have planted flowers and are taking pride in their landscape. “I can’t take credit for that,” says Adair, “but I think [the farm] has caused people to come outside more and not hate their surroundings.”

Throughout the year, Adair shares her knowledge through community workshops, on topics as diverse as urban foraging, composting, maple syrup making, organic gardening, and season extension. Although she charges a small fee for the classes, Adair admits that she doesn’t turn anyone away. “There is a spirit in the city of Flint that I haven’t found anywhere else,” she says. “The people who have stayed have been through some really hard times. I have a respect for the struggle.”

Flint River Farm aims to address the city’s high unemployment rate by providing jobs to Flint residents. Using grant money, Adair hired local teenagers to farm and work at the farmers’ market. At the height of the growing season, she employed nine full-time staff members and two interns. As the farm moves toward self-sustainability, Adair hopes these jobs will become more permanent. When the farm first started, it was entirely grant-funded. This year grants accounted for only 40 percent of the operating costs.

To sustain the farm, Adair has diversified her product line. She has sold lip balm made from her bees’ wax, salad mixes from the hoop house, teas from dried herbs, eggs from her small flock of chickens, and nut butters she grinds herself. This month, she began selling bulk dried goods like organic oats and flour at her stand in the market. “I am confident that with bulk food bins we will be sustainable next year,” she says.

Last summer, the city threatened to confiscate the chickens Adair keeps at her house. Flint’s Blight Authority gave her 30 days to dispose of the birds. Adair used that opportunity to try to change a 1968 city ordinance that prohibits residential homeowners from keeping “fowl” on their property. She mobilized her support network, worked with the city council, and created a ”Friends of Flint Chickens” Facebook campaign.

On the last day, Adair sat on her front porch and waited for the police to come. She highly doubted that in a city with only three police officers on duty at a time, one of them would take time away from chasing drug dealers and thieves, to chase her chickens. She waited all day. No one came.

Like her chickens, Roxanne Adair is in Flint to stay.

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Detroit Company Creates Fresh Food Pit Stops

| ChrisHardmanWriter

IF YOU’RE ON THE HUNT for a fresh, ready-to-eat meal in Detroit, the best place to find it just might surprise you. Take the Sunoco station on Fort Street or the Victory Liquor and Food store on Warren Avenue. Amidst the Hot Cheetos and snack-sized Chips Ahoy cookies, you’ll find a cooler stocked with everything from fresh fruit and yogurt parfaits and spicy feta and hummus wraps to Thai chicken salads made with fresh, green lettuce—not the wilted iceberg you might expect.

The company behind the food might not be what you’d expect either. Fresh Corner Cafe (FCC) is a mission driven food and delivery service with the goal of making healthy food accessible to all Detroiters. To do this, they’ve turned to a most unlikely distribution center—neighborhood convenience stores.

For years, Detroit has been labeled a “food desert,” but that term is misleading. “It’s not that we don’t have grocery stores,” explains Detroit native and FCC co-founder Val Waller. “It’s that people have issues getting to them.”

According to a 2011 report from Data Driven Detroit, there are more than 115 grocery stores within Detroit’s city limits. In the years since that report was published, several high-profile grocery stores have opened stores in the city—including Whole Foods in June 2013 and Meijer in July 2013. But Detroit encompasses 138 square miles, the public transportation is undependable and some neighborhoods are simply not safe for walking. As a result, many Detroiters choose food from the closest of the more than 1,000 corner stores in the city.

“We’re trying to change the idea of what can be available in these spaces,” Waller explains. Initially FCC co-owner Noam Kimelman had to convince the shop owners that his products would sell. But Kimelman and Waller worked hard to build relationships with store owners and won over customers by providing free samples.

The idea for Fresh Corner Cafe came to Kimelman while he was studying at the University of Michigan. While working on his Masters of Health Management and Public Policy, he and his classmates came up with an idea for getting healthier food into urban areas. His first business, Get Fresh Detroit, launched in 2010 and offered for sale packets of food with fresh ingredients to make soup or stir fry. His goal was to make a gas station or convenience store a one-stop shop for fresh food ingredients. Kimelman soon learned that his customers were more interested in ready-to -eat meals, so he changed his business plan to offer pre-made meals.IMG_7849_edited-1

Kimelman recruited Waller, another U of M graduate, to join the company in 2011. Her degree in sociology and work experience in her family’s Detroit pizzeria have fueled her passion for creating an equitable local foodshed. She says access to good food should not be contingent on where someone lives.

Unlike most government interventions, says the Fresh Corner Café website, which “rely on big box retail to address healthy food access and obesity” the company’s goal is to “reduce barriers and uplift existing assets to provide a highly replicable and scalable solution with low capital requirements.”

Targeting convenience stores is an effective way to reach low-income shoppers. Fresh Corner Cafe sells to stores that are all certified to accept food assistance cards, also called Bridge cards. According to Data Driven Detroit, residents of Detroit spend twice as much of their Bridge card money at convenience stores as compared to the rest of Michigan‘s residents.

Fresh Corner Cafe works at a community level. They source fruit from Peaches and Greens, a locally owned produce market, and the wraps and salads come from Lunchtime Detroit, a sandwich shop. The staff lives locally and the drivers come from the communities to which they deliver. FCC delivers meals to 27 locations—including cafes, gas stations, and pharmacies—three times a week.

Currently the sales from the convenience stores do not generate enough revenue to turn a profit, so in order to keep the company sustainable, FCC expanded by placing their own self-serve to-go cafes in several Detroit workplaces. The company provides a fully-stocked refrigerator with a self-pay station and they stock and clean the shelves and handle all financial transactions. These workplace cafes makes it convenient for busy professionals to eat healthy and for businesses to provide fresh food to their employees.

So far, these strategies appear to be working. In August, Kimelman was recognized with a young entrepreneur SCORE award for pioneering the model and the company now employs six people.

Last year FCC sold some 30,000 meals bringing in $200,000 worth of revenue. Those numbers will continue to grow as FCC expands to more stores and offices. According to Waller, FCC plans to open their own certified kitchen, which will give them more control over ingredients and eventually allow them to introduce an organic line. “It is a social injustice for people to not have access to fresh food,” she says. “Detroiters are so used to not having things that they don’t even know how to ask for them.”

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FarmRaiser Takes Fundraising Local

| ChrisHardmanWriter

WHEN MARK ABBOTT’S SON  was in fourth grade, his local elementary school recruited students and their families to participate in a fundraiser for the school. After successfully selling cookie dough and candy to friends and family, Abbott’s son remarked that he had just sold $400 worth of things the family would never eat at home. “It’s too bad we couldn’t try something healthy like apples,” said his son.

That suggestion resonated with Abbott, so he had an idea. Instead of candy and chips from national suppliers, why not make it possible for students to sell healthy food from local farmers, beekeepers, and food artisans? He started a pilot program in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. And the following year, in 2013, FarmRaiser ran 30 fundraising campaigns for schools in Michigan and Washington State.

Fundraising is a necessary evil for our nation’s schools. Budget cuts from federal and state sources have left most schools financially needy. In a 2007 survey conducted by the National Association of Elementary School Principals, 94 percent of principals–representing a wide range of school districts across the country–reported that they had held fundraisers.

Often run by parent volunteers, these fundraisers generate money to pay for everything from field trips, to playground equipment, school supplies, and new technology. Schools in both low-income and high-income areas report the need to fundraise. At least 35 states provided less funding per student for the 2013-14 school year than they did before the recession hit. Fourteen of these states have cut the amount they give for each student by more than 10 percent.

Fundraising is big business. Student salesmen generate $1.4 billion a year peddling packaged food, magazines, and gifts, according to the Association of Fund-Raising Distributors and Suppliers. But as schools are challenged to create a healthier environment for their students, parents and teachers alike question sending kids out into the community to hawk high-fat, high-salt cookie dough and candy bars. “I want to support the schools, but I don’t want to buy the stuff full of high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils,” says Therese Povolo of Champion Hill Farm in Beulah, Michigan. She and her husband are beekeepers who have sold honey through FarmRaiser since last fall. The first school that used their products was only half a mile away from their home.

Fundraising is also one more way to fill students’ lives with candy and processed food. Children are especially vulnerable to big food marketing and having schools train them to be salespeople for high-calorie, low-nutrient foods seems counterintuitive. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, diet related illnesses such type 2 diabetes are on the rise. Their research shows that childhood obesity has doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents in the past three decades.

Similar to traditional catalogue-based fundraising programs, FarmRaiser customers order products from a set list of vendors. But FarmRaiser campaigns avoid cookies and desserts, opting instead for local fruits and vegetables and locally sourced honey, pasta, granola, spice mixes, artisan breads, jam, etc. Schools can also collect money from cash donations made online.

Most of FarmRaiser’s vendors are within 30 miles of the school and if the school has a personal connection to a farm or food artisan, FarmRaiser will add them to their product list. “We love to sell products that directly connect back to the students at the school,” says says FarmRaiser’s campaign manager Christina Carson. For example Leelanau Montessori in Suttons Bay, Michigan, includes dried cherries in their fundraiser from Cherry Bay Orchards, one student’s family farm.

FarmRaiser vendors also use the campaigns as marketing tools. It provides a chance to reach new customers at a time of the year when farmers’ market crowds in Michigan are dwindling. “We have a big tourist market in the summer and when that falls off, it’s nice to get other people aware of our product,” says Povolo.

Carson says that FarmRaiser’s financial model is competitive with other types of food-based fundraising, which offer schools anywhere from 20-50 percent of the profit. In this case, the school ends up with a flat 45 percent of the amount sold, FarmRaiser takes a 10 percent fee, and the rest goes to local businesses.

FarmRaiser also helps schools raise money through a program they call The Community Basket. Here’s how it works: The school accepts cash donations in the name of a local food bank. The school keeps 50 percent and the rest of the money is used to buy local food for the food bank. Typically the students choose the charity and then have a chance to deliver the donation. “[It’s] a great way for people to share the bounty of the fundraiser with people who are in need,” says Carson.

As the need for fundraising grows, so does the need for fundraising companies working for more than just their own bottom line. FarmRaiser plans to increase their campaigns throughout Michigan and the Seattle area and to move into other states in the coming years.

“Eighty percent of households purchase something from a fundraiser every year,” says Carson. If they were selling, say, local apples instead of candy, she adds, “you’d have 80 percent of people purchasing local food.” The impact on the local farm economy could be huge.

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