FOOD HUB GROWS
The Pan Cape Breton Food Hub Co-op has had a record-breaking year.
A homegrown organization that’s been changing the way local farmers, businesses and people interact and receive fresh local foods has had a record-breaking year.
The Pan Cape Breton Food Hub Co-op is a multi-stakeholder, nonprofit co-op that distributes local food across Cape Breton and this year they continued to expand their reach.
They’ve been able to reach 220 consumers with 42 producers selling goods by its website and a distribution chain that connects consumers and businesses that produce food products in Cape Breton. The hub started as a twoyear pilot project in 2015.
Executive director Alicia Lake said this year the food hub has expanded to new parts of Cape Breton with the help of other organizations.
“We did expand to Inverness and formed a partnership with Mill Road Social Enterprises and had a location running there for this season. There was super great volunteers over there, great consumer members and a really successful season,” said Lake.
The Inverness season wraps up on Thursday, but there are already plans to start it again next year.
So far in 2017 sales are over $120,000 for the food hub. Lake said they had plans to also expand to North of Smokey this year and had the interest, but had trouble finding a location.
“We were really focused on Ingonish, but over the year we’re going to focus on other locations North of Smokey. There was definitely interest, we had a workshop there a couple of weeks ago that was really well attended,” said Lake. “That will definitely be in the works next year, but it’s hard to say if it will be in Ingonish or further north.”
The food hub is at a crucial stage in its development as it scales from a pilot project to a viable independent entity. This scaling-up and organizational development requires capital, so they are looking to build partnerships in order to increase sustainability.
“An exciting thing that we have just launched this week is our corporate sponsorship strategy and we’re looking to partner with business’s across Cape Breton that are really interested in growing the local economy here and supporting farmers,” said Lake, who added the company is in a transitional phase.
“We’re going from this start up pilot project phase to into a viable business model.”
The goal is to raise $50,000 between November 2017 and June 2018. Current sponsors include Marcato, Grant Thornton and the newest sponsor, Protocase in Sydney.
All municipalities in Cape Breton support the food hub, but they do not receive funding from other levels of government.
The hub delivers orders to consumers in seven locations across Cape Breton. The locations that closed for the season at the end of October are: Sydney River, New Waterford and Port Hawkesbury. Sydney, North Sydney and Baddeck are planned to finish either in late November or early December. Inverness closes Thursday.
There is a $50 yearly membership fee for all members of the coop. Lake said this helps to support the operation.
The website for the Pan Cape Breton Food Hub Co-op is capebreton.localfoodmarketplace.com and items for sale are posted every Friday.
The co-op will reopen again in June of 2018.