 Sales and production director of the Kansas City food hub and I started with the food hub about a year ago, but I remember when the hub was getting started and conversations were happening in Kansas City and in Lawrence in 2010, 11, I was out in the field wishing I could be in those conversations. So I'm happy to be here today in this position and seeing how far we've come. This grant came along at the perfect time for us. Like I said, 2011, 2012 we were just in conversation and then feasibility studies, conversations were happening, questions were asked, surveys were done, farmers were brought in, buyers were polled in the years to follow 2013, 2014 and then the end of 2014 Katie Nixon and Marlon Bates called for farmers to come show up and build this thing. They got together and they put the framework together. The food hub was launched in 2016 and when this opportunity came up in 2017 it was time for us to really look at our branding, look at food safety and look at traceability of our product going backwards. So 2016 the food hub was launched and we had the mission to join together to bring farmers who had been working hard, who had been going to markets and had been growing, maybe having a CSA, give them another opportunity to aggregate product and reach the middle market. We started selling to restaurants that we already had relationships with, we reached out to corporate cafeterias, like Hallmark and the kitchens that Bon Appetit ran small locally owned grocery stores and we started talking to schools. The farmers that came together and that are still involved in the food hub, there were 15 of us, there were five in the first year and then 10 last year we grew to 15. We're looking at about three new growers joining us in the next month or so. It was important to the founders to maintain farmer ownership and also for the food hub to be run by farmers. We have collected 250 years of experience growing, there's 40 or more high tunnels and greenhouses on our property were scattered around Kansas City out to 125 miles at the most. Most of our farms are within 75 miles of Kansas City and then even 40 miles so closer in. When we started talking about the food hub we thought that we would bring food from 250 miles out into the city to feed our 2 million people. We may do that but as it's grown and as the idea of the food hub has spread word of mouth, farmers who see what's going on call us, our farmers who are in the hub and are talking to other farmers at market call us so it's really spreading word of the mouth really in an organic way. To give you an idea I always like to have a graphic or a geographic picture so you can see that we really are scattered around Kansas City. To the project we wanted to work on branding and at that time when we were just getting started we had a logo, we were just putting processes in place, we were figuring out the language of working together and the method of working together and even how to drive to the buyer and how to have those conversations. We were really young. There's one thing for one person to go out and knock on a door but as a group to figure out what your message is and how to reach that audience and how we're even going to bring cucumbers from one farm and potatoes from another farm and get it in one place there was just a lot to figure out so we spent a year or so doing that. In the second year we really went after partnerships and systems and reaching out to the community even more. So while we were looking inward in the first year and the second year in 2017 it was the perfect time to start branding and start thinking about who we were. It's too bad you can't really see this upside down picture. In 2016 we spent a lot of money on getting a professionally done marketing campaign so we paid professionals, we paid consultants, they said you should be called this name we don't say it anymore. You should use these colors we don't use them anymore and we wondered why it wasn't taking off and still you know it's a funny thing when the professional tells you you should do something one way and then you spend money for it you kind of continue down that path and I'm really proud of the leadership of the hub in the end of 2017 once we got this grant and we started really asking these tough questions they said okay enough is enough if we cannot even remember the right way to say the name of the hub we say it backwards more often than we say it the right way and the community can't say it the right way let's change the name let's change the name to our nickname that we've always been anyway so we started calling ourselves the Kansas City Food Hub and since then we have really started putting together the branding and identification around that so we started with cutesy fun stuff right of farms of farmers we have always wanted to maintain that we are farmers we are farmer run we are the real deal in a in a city that 18 broadline distributors are talking about local food and are peddling their food as local as far as five six hundred miles out we really needed to show faces of farmers we really need to show that this food was grown 20 miles or 50 miles from your place so this farm is more your farm in Richmond Missouri he's really one of our one of the two bigger anchor farmers that we have and we use his photos a lot we get a lot of feedback on our logo how it looks honest and that's a really solid thing I think I mean I want people to believe what what we're saying is what we're doing we also use a lot of stories our stories are really sell the product as much as the product sells the product and this is Jacob Thomas with the sheep in the background I love that photo I really want to use his six week old baby photo but he won't let me yet in our marketing so maybe in a year's time we can use the toddlers photo but we like to show that our farmers are real people working hard you know go into market and selling a little produce wholesale on the side we want to show our happy chefs and how professional they are and how proud they are the idea is like let's be like this ship let's be proud and strong and smart and clean by our product right we also want to show off the most extreme and fancy produce that we have so we use turmeric in a high tunnel in all our you know oftentimes and then of course winter production in that awesome romaine lettuce you know something happened with my slides branding is more than advertising it's more than telling a story so I can sell a product right it's really who we are and how we show up every day how we have conversations and how we move around and when we started really looking at this and looking who we are in Kansas City this grant helped us participate in ways that we may not have it funded our operations directors participation in the the convergence Kansas City a lot of people are working in the food systems and coming together and talking and have been conversations so it funded her time to participate that way to join in and really move the needle on local food move the needle so that we could all have better healthier lives and that farmers could make a better living so as much as that message can be told we tried to tell it there are many other ways that advertising and branding helped us a lot we tried to tell our story in a way that we could show that why we were still small farmers and while we our family farms we also were consistent we were farmers that would show up at the product that you needed when you needed it what you ordered and it would look the same week to week so we were fortunate enough to develop and then to to share the message of our anchor growers so you saw a photo of the Moirier farm in Richmond and then in El Dorado spring South Kansas City there's another anchor grower so we were able to market the staples while we show off the more specialty herbs and things something else about branding is showing up right consistently showing up same time same way same day looking the same with the same ability to get orders or to send out our information talked a little bit about participating in the in the community and so because we are in Kansas City and having these conversations we know people you know when you know people that whole brand that you carry with you is is desired right we are known as growers who have some experience growers who now have hit a market that has not been open to growers this size in the past and so we are sought after in collaborations and grant projects in in a whole series of conversations the second part of the grant was to develop our food safety plans and to look at Gap and to look at FISMA and it's a lot more straightforward right so I only have a slide about this but our partners with K-State I can't say enough right about the the partnerships we had at K-State Extension and also at the Latha station who showed up and asked us what we needed Cal Jamerson is a farmer himself from Florida and he recently joined the the staff at K-State at a Latha and he was able because of his whole sale experience really show up and have real conversations with growers who were looking to learn from another grower we did on-farm individual pre-assessment audits we would come to a farm we had an appointment we walked around the farm kind of a scary thing as inspectors well I've tagged along Cal was the guy so he would walk around as an inspector ask a few questions the farmer would you know show do this two hour talking through showing showing processes and then we would sit down in the kitchen table and a really neat thing happened when we sat down the kitchen table so what could have been a really hard conversation it was open and kind and I would say it was a little bit because of Cal and his and his persona but also I'm sitting in the kitchen table we were able to ask him questions we were able to ask the inspector questions there's those air quotes while we were gaining information from him and he would point out what we needed to improve upon and so the farmer at that point was supposed to go home and do homework or get to work and do homework and create the food safety plan from there and then finally the workshops that we all attended were the second piece of the grant the second piece of that portion and then we we did the post audits as well part of that also is a mock audit that we do annually we're hearing less and less from people requesting gap we're not yet selling to hospitals and we know that for hospitals we will have to be more more of our farms will need to be gap certified we are hearing we are hearing a lot more people just asking for food safety plan so as I go into restaurants I really try and ask them or let them know that each of our farms has the food safety plan and we have a cold chain we have recording done at our sub hubs where the food is delivered and aggregated and then distributed from and and together we're working to increase the knowledge of each farm as they come on and then just a sidebar there's a a lot more people asking these days about third-party certifications for animal welfare so that's something that we're starting to look into and just by a little bit of research that I'm doing is the cost is varying widely so more to come about that just a brand new thing for me and then traceability is the is the third piece of this it goes hand-in-hand with food safety but the way we were able to address it and what we gained out of the traceability is the whole on the right side was the whole system of sending out the orders from the buyers to the growers and how the boxes were labeled we did it one way I think when a single farm it's it's it's a it's a little bit different than asking 15 farmers of all over all over the countryside to use the same box to use the same labeling to have the same look to their box and the same traceability and we were able to standardize that and we are also able to use these food safety forms at the at the sub hubs so food safety in practice looks like this the order would go out to the to the farmer and along with that order would be the box number and the and the buyer code product was harvested and washed and and then somehow delivered to the sub hub the food hub has been organized with a series of sub hubs about 40 miles outside of Kansas City so the farmers further out would get their product to the sub hub it would be checked in you can see all the traceability on that farm and are at that on that form and then picked up at the sub hubs and carried to the to the buyer so as we look at our fourth year of sales I would say that we stand on the edge of of success finally right the the big thing for me is that the buyers now know that it's safe or the growers now know that it's safe to continue to grow and that might sound like a bit of a strange thing to say but three or four years ago I was afraid that we would lose growers and the weather is bad the climate is changing and without the buyers there it's um not being able to meet that demand it's a pretty terrifying thing but I'm reassured now as we go out and talk to more buyers and as more growers hear about what we're able to move around we're getting phone calls and we're getting people to join us we are developing a protein line a CSA this year the CSA will let other growers join us who aren't growing huge amounts of any particular item but who grow specialty amounts maybe a little bit of cilantro or who have fermented items that they could join in and they would diversify our product at the same time so we are always trying to get better so well I have great pride in the work that we've done so far and where we are I still struggle with the farmers who take all their best product to farmers market and I go and visit them and they try and hide it from me of course you know so climate change of course is a problem we've had great we were very fortunate last year to work with a great partner that helped us with deliveries and and distribution this year we don't have that so we are spending February sitting down and figuring out where we can buy a reefer truck or refrigerated sprinter van or anything that might move our vegetables around so we're looking for that but we're figuring that out we're always streamlining processes and and systems and while it's wonderful that so many people are engaged and we're transparent and inclusive with our farmers it's also sometimes hard for decisions to be made so I'm very proud that we just got our one-inch KC Food Hub labels delivered this week and after a year and a half of trying to get that done that's a huge success you know there's a lot of talking and it's a it's a wonderful thing to work together and and I feel that we are we are getting there when we talk to buyers or and when we talk to farmers and they they talk about joining the food hub what they say more than anything is that they hope to belong to something more than them that they do hope that they can reach new markets and they hope they won't have to go to four markets a week any longer and of course they want to sell their vegetables so they can send their kids to college I'm not saying that's not important but what I hear over and over is that to belong to some group to know that they're not out there alone is is of great importance to them so happy to be here thank you for all listening I'm here for questions and there's another messed up slide the gentleman asked if there are any paid employees of the food hub and we have since the beginning since 2016 have had a director who is a jack jack of all trades so I do a little bit of everything Tom asked how have things changed how have we progressed since the early days of the feasibility study and the surveys done at those time at that time there was an estimated 125 million dollars unmet demand for local food in the area 58% of the people surveyed said they were interested in buying more local food I think 68% of the farmers who were interviewed said they were interested in participating in some kind of aggregation so as I'm out talking with farmers they're at least curious so I don't know if I can put a number to how that 68% has changed what I hear though more and more is just curiosity putting the toe in the water like what does it feel like to work with a group how might it be better to work with the aggregator or a group a cooperative like we are rather than work alone am I willing to take less money than if I was working alone and selling still at market I'll add on to that that we are we we believe that the product that the farmers grow that we have for sale belongs to the farmers until the sale is made I was pretty animate last spring that we needed to look at the prices the first two years we were using prices that the previous person got from the Chicago terminal market so they were conventionally grown mass produced prices product prices and last spring being a grower myself I knew that product that I was seeing here was much different and so we during our collective crop planning conversations we also included pricing and five of our growers are certified organic and ten of them are sustainable family owned so we had a wide range of opinions and pretty a solid opinions of what the product was worth so not only at market but a lot of the growers were also selling wholesale at that time so we use that wisdom and we you know jockeyed back and forth and we got a price for the product that everybody could live with and then at that time on top of that we would add 20% so we had 20% for the hub on top of the price at the farmer set and so that intrigues people who just are sticking their toe in and wondering how it might be as far as how much we've been able to change or move the needle on local food I feel tremendously hopeful like in this room and between farmers and between growers in Kansas City this is no competition there should be no competition because the product that we have is so small and has only begun to reach the markets that it can reach and it's a completely different product than what's out there already so the more we work together and I think we're fortunate in this region that we are working together to see how we can make that happen right so the question is how do we separate or identify certified organic product produce separate from conventional produce and I'm sorry to use those blunt terms but that's the wholesale market right so if you're not certified organic you're considered conventional and that's the piece I think of this whole wholesale idea that hurts the most we have right because sustainably grown produce should get a higher price than conventional produce but I'm not able to to really have that conversation every week but we put out an availability sheet and we are developing an online local food marketplace platform that will let this all be more online right now I send a spreadsheet out to a list of maybe 20 buyers that we normally work with they fill it out and get it back to me in the next couple weeks it's a list so the top of the list is conventional and then we have an organic section as well there are a handful of buyers who buy only certified organic produce so I do a modified list and send them only the certified organic produce and then the whole commingling thing that we have to follow we maintain that in the sub hubs yes sir yeah so the certified farmers came up with their price and the farmers who aren't certified organic came up with their price the question is how do we maintain quality and how do we maintain standards for quality across the board lots of conversation lots of talking and kind of some hard conversation sometimes we have this concept it's not a thing yet but it's a concept of a yellow sheet that a farmer would get if I got a box of beats that aren't quite right you know it happens less often than what you might think the 15 growers that we are have experience our market growers so they know what how to take care of the product how to how to hold it how to wash it how to box it I would say the problems that we have had been more like within one box an inconsistent size I want to see potatoes all the same size and they'd be some little ones and some big ones so we have that conversation some buyers might not mine if the buyer would mine and would fix that because we're still small and because our buyers are all within maybe 20 miles of the center of town we're able to get to that place and fix that problem as quickly as possible but you bring up the the question of problems and we have struggled with circling back at the end and getting invoicing to the buyers in time and collecting that and it's just that last piece of the puzzle that has been the hardwood we expect that in the future I keep looking at Tom Buller he's one of the founding members of the farm of the food hub and we work closely to make sure that the billing happens and the farmers are paid but that's a hard piece because we've had we've it's been too decentralized over the last couple years we're going to bring it home and and take care of it now more between us and closer okay so the question is for the ugly produce or the produce that may not be boxed exactly the weight needs to go to the buyer what do we do with that there's a couple of it's a couple things that we're doing we don't see a lot of it first of all the farmers are really good about sending me what needs to go they we we have constant phone calls or texts and lots of conversation back and forth they'll text me a picture I mean that's amazing right they can be in the field and text me a picture wasn't that way ten years ago so there's a lot less quality issues than you might expect farmers individually are donating to after the harvest or the harvesters and so they're taking care of that we stockpiled some sweet potatoes and winter squash over the winter a friend organization actually the folks who delivered for us all last year and kind of a bind right now so we had 300 extra pounds of winter squash so I delivered that this week to their soup kitchen so they could feed people so that's the whole that's a whole part of being at the table and having being invited and having a voice there we know who's out there and you know I expect we kind of old that we owe them right they made deliveries for us last year so it's not like I was donating anything to them I was in a lot of ways paying back for the gifts that they've already given us and we see a lot of that happening in Kansas City people when it go around food they're really generous she's she's asking for information about how we crop plan and we do do that collectively I can tell you what we did this year and we talked a bit about last year I don't know how it was at the very very beginning maybe Tom will answer that but the organic growers got on a phone call and the conventional growers got in phone call and we just talked it out for about two hours each and you know I shared some information that I had from the buyers and the farmers shared what they would like to sell we talked about varieties it's really interesting to be on a phone call I mean you can imagine talking to four or five other people and and knowing when to throw it out knowing you know and these are really gentle sweet kind people too so they don't want to they they don't want to hurt my feelings and they don't want to say I'm growing that so sometimes they have to coax them into you know claiming what they want to grow I need to know what they want to grow and then we also even talked about goals like I asked them all to set goals for how much they wanted to sell through the hub it's one thing right to to do one or the other but they really do need to come together so consistency in quantity really is becoming an important part of that of looking at that so when we're selling to a corporate cafeteria or to a school they just really need to know that some solid product that they can use is going to be delivered when they need it we now have a couple of big growers that we're calling anchor growers and we're looking at those guys to really get our foot in the door of schools and in the corporate cafeteria so that they can depend on us and they kind of make way for the smaller growers who have a little bit of flexibility in what they grow it makes the our whole package more attractive the same time it's it's it's a lot of volume volume of negotiation trying to talk with a grower who plans on growing zucchini and peppers or grew that last year for the hub and learn the hard way that I wasn't going to sell any of that for them because we have an anchor grower that grows those things right so and none of us knew that that would be an issue so we kind of moved through that in a in a uncomfortable way last year I just made a broad broad decision to like when a farmer starts selling the cucumbers that guy's got the sale until he's all gone with his cucumbers and then the other one who has them can come up behind I mean with limited buyers I couldn't see any better way to do it I asked for folks to help me do it a better way but it was not perfect but at least it was fair down the line for everybody so I think when we started out crop planting was actually one of the hardest things because it was really a chicken or egg thing like the farmers didn't want to commit to grow something until we had buyers and the buyers didn't want to commit to buy from us until we had farmers who had proven that they could grow those things so I think the crop planting at the beginning was really like kind of like let's sit around we originally identified eight crops that were going to be our core crops and I think after we identified that before we actually started selling anything that kind of went out the window and it ended up being the first couple years a little bit more of selling what people had extra for because they weren't comfortable enough knowing that we could sell it and there were a few instances of people planting things that someone before Alicia had told them we could sell and we could not sell and so there were some hard feelings the other thing that I think fits into this and kind of is maybe a backdrop for some of Alicia's comments are I think working in a cooperative food hub is certainly not for everyone and the people that have come to the table and stayed at the table are people that have a little bit of give and take and if Alicia makes that executive decision that she's going to stick with that anchor growers produce and not sell my zucchini like you have to be okay with that and the people that aren't okay with that I don't know that we've had those but they figure out I think before they even would join that this isn't the right thing for them yeah because I know some of those people and they've gone other ways after some conversations with us so we're pretty transparent about that and it is very cooperative and that like you know I think transparency is the heart of that crop planning process so it's not someone feels like they're getting the inside deal and yeah yeah transparency is the thing we're talking about the way people make their livelihoods and what we take pride in and and I'm dismissing it like I try to be careful about that and a lot of conversations have you know we have and I think together we're getting smarter together we're understanding better where the holes are where our opportunities are we're learning that the protein line is a really big opportunity for us but even there when we talk about protein you know we have this it's across the board what we have certified organic eggs all the way down well certified organic eggs brown non-gmo eggs conventionally grown white eggs and then you have to have different prices for all of that and who fills those slots and how do we advertise and there's a lot how do we handle seasonality season all of I think the buyers know that it's winter and we even though we have high tunnels we're not able to have tomatoes the buyers that are sourcing from us now are pretty savvy have been around for a while and if they don't we share with in fact someone asked me today for sweet potatoes and she didn't want to take three boxes because she was afraid they would spoil and so we have that conversation they probably won't spoil but I can't really afford to deliver one box of sweet potatoes 40 miles away so it's hard right because we're not doing sales officially this month and I don't want to leave those people hanging we told them all year and we have really tried to show up with what we promised all year long and to hold on to them so now not to have a constant check-in with me I worry a little bit but I also worry I do worry more about not having our systems in place so what I'm I'm gonna do kind of this middle ground and just do the check-ins with them now so check-ins sit down and have meetings and we're staying real to them I had an hour and a half conversation yesterday where I was on the phone able to tell three or four stories about our farmers wild you know like wild stories about barns burning down and about new babies and you know starting the CSA and how that's going to make room for smaller growers to join us so con communication so there's some the question is some of the buyers have signed contracts with distribution companies that make them promise to buy a certain amount all year long and do the are the are the buyers fearful for that I think that we are not big enough yet that we are pressuring we're not really financially or volume-wise pressuring the big guys big guys are calling us though the big guys know we're here and at some level they are a little bit worried or at least you know uncomfortably aware that we're coming up the question is are the buyers also telling the story of the farmer to their constituents and in a lot of times they are they all ask for our logo so that in a cafeteria they could say Kansas City food hub broccoli green acres market up north of the river in Kansas City had a big display of the food hub and farmers and displayed pictures and we had a whole case many of the restaurants we sell to have chalkboard that they name the farmers or on the back of their menu or on the website they name the farmers schools that are selling our produce also advertise and share that with the families in their in their newsletters we could always do more I could always do more marketing I could always do you know we definitely need a marketing plan and we just haven't right now we're just kind of yes that's a good question how big are the anchor farms and are any of the anchor farm certified organic I would say we have two anchor farms now and I guess I don't want to say that the anchor farms are selling the majority of the product they're not any they are equally important as the smaller farms they're important because we're able to get our foot in the door with some staple more needed product but without the fancy fun turmeric and ginger and arugula we're not going to stay in the door we're not going to get into grocery store or in grocery stores or restaurants how big are the anchor growers so Nathan Moyer and Richmond 25 acres of vegetables he's been in vegetable production his whole life he learned it from his dad who lives in Richmond too so 25 acres not huge but vegetable size I guess that is huge you saw his his production he has probably a five acre field of pumpkins in the summertime we walked through one acre field of peppers he has a couple of high tunnels they were full of romaine lettuce this this fall so that scale another anchor grower is south of Kansas City near El Dorado Springs County line produce it's actually a cooperative unto itself of Amish growers five growers are working together to to move product through one name and they collectively are probably about 15 acres separated out on five different farms there's another grower who we hope signs this year this month they're down near Rich Hill so that's straight south of Kansas City on 49 highway they are a big conventional producer but the son of the farmer is growing some certified he has a certified organic plot and so we're talking with him and encouraging him to expand that certified organic plot and sell a handful of these staples through the hub hospitals not yet I have a phone number they need to call I've knocked on a door of a hospital for several years now and and I kind of use this as a test to how how far we've come you know I call the guy and and I give him an update of how far we've come and okay we have one gap certified grower now we have two and he still won't talk to me most hospitals have this contract that we're talking about with US food or with Costco where 90% of their product has to come through these big companies and then they might have a little bit of space for small growers but those growers need to be gap certified to so we're just not there yet schools is really we're actively pursuing schools we are actively pursuing more corporate cafeterias and I guess we're focusing this year a lot on CSA we feel like that's a way where we can move even more product to places that we're going to anyway and really even get a premium for the the product a little bit more than we would get on just selling it straight to that kitchen