ECDI Launches Kitchen Incubator Program

The Economic and Community Development Institute has been helping entrepreneurs in Columbus to start up and grow their businesses for the past five years. ECDI is now currently rolling out a new program to provide a wider range of development assistance. Their new Growing Entrepreneurs Initiative is launching with a focus on food-related industries and provides assistance to folks looking to take their kitchen ideas and turn them into a full time business.

Columbusunderground.com interviews Bob Leighty and Amy Szabo recently to talk about this new “Kitchen Incubator” program and what it can mean both for entrepreneurs as well as the community as a whole.

http://www.columbusunderground.com/ecdi-launches-kitchen-incubator-program

Food Chain Meeting in July

A Food Chain Meeting  that will take  place early the morning of July 16th in Bellville. It will  be at the Dutch  Heritage Restaurant just off of Interstate 71 (four exits  north of Polaris).  This bi-monthly meeting has proved to be a great networking  opportunity for  growers, processors, buyers, and others to meet. The topic  next month is  OSU’s Eat Global, Buy Local initiative, and the speaker is  OSU Dining  Service’s Sous Chef Patrick Murphy. Details are on the Flyer(pdf).

Columbus Ohio Going Green

I just read this article in thedailygreen.com about what the City and people of Columbus are doing to “go green”. In the local food arena it mentions:

• The Tip Top Restaurant downtown that is committed to extremely local food: they grow their vegetables on the roof of their building.
• Black Creek Bistro, a restaurant that recycles its fryer oil into biofuel to run the tractor on the farm where their produce is grown.

Read the entire article at www.thedailygreen.com

Local Food Bulletin Idea

To promote the use of local foods among restaurateurs and smaller groceries I thought there should be some way to let those customers know each month the following:

• what local food is available
• from what farmers, at what price, with direct contact info phone, email
• quantity available
• delivery schedule
• how long will it be available

A call can be made to each participating farmer each month where this info would be collected.  A database would be used to sort the data and make it most useful for the reader. The bulletin would be on a set schedule with a publishing cut-off time and date.

Meat and Dairy products as well as value added products would be included. Products would need to be grown or handmade by the seller.

The newsletter would be mostly this type of information but could also include a featured local dish of the week which would be contributed by a local chef or a culinary student working with local food from the participating farmers.

Funding: The newsletter would initially be free to all. It could be supported by donations from farmers or customers who find it useful.  If successful there could be ad support or sponsorship. Products commercially produced in Ohio from non-local ingredients could purchase an ad to be included. They would be marked as such to differentiate from locally grown goods.

Distribution: It has been suggested that this be an electronic email newsletter.  It is also possible to deliver via RSS, Instant Messenger or several other ways (using a service such as FeedBlitz) that would be readable to the recipients. FeedBlitz has a free version contains ads, but can be upgraded to eliminate ads later. It may be possible to deliver via fax or us mail for those users who require it and pay for the cost of mailing/faxing.

It may be necessary to create a separate bulletin for grocers, since there may be different pricing for them than for restaurants.

There may be opportunity for this to spawn a direct to consumer newsletter unless there is already one serving the local market in this way.  If anyone knows of such please advise.  Such a newsletter would include recipes and tips and could be circulated over the winter, if products are available such as preserved foods meat and dairy.

Any feedback is welcome.

by Mayda