Tucked away in a small back office of the Chattanooga Area Food Bank, three people are rearranging oversized cubicles in order to hang a large dry-erase on the wall.
They are the sole employees of the Harvested Here Food Hub, an organization that acts as the broker, or middleman, between mid-sized farmers and local clients.
The cubicles are donated, too tall for the office in which they sit, and Director Ray Rollison, assistant manager Thomas Persinger and marketing coordinator Whitney marks joke about tearing them down anyway. Paperwork, crates of apples and boxes fill the already crowded space, and photos of farmers line the walls, save for a dry-erase board. The small, two-foot by two-foot board they hung next to a window to keep track of their clients and accounts was no longer fit, as the organization anticipates the perpetual growth of their business.
They'll be doing good, they say, if they can fill the new board up soon.
As a sort-of cousin of the Food Bank, which services 20 counties in the area and circulated 3 million pounds of produce and 12 pounds of food to the area in the past year, Harvested Here works with smaller farmers who are primarily selling at farmers markets in the area.
The food bank pays the pick and pack out prices for their seconds--tomatoes they leave on the vine, the imperfect and unfortunately harder to sell pieces--to distribute through the food bank.
"But while we walked away with donations and food to fill the food bank, we saw potential to connect these farms with local clients who would want to use their produce," says Food Bank Director Meaghan Jones. "We already had these established relationships within our network."
While the Chattanooga Area Food Bank is on a mission to put out more nutritious foods, Harvest Here is advocating on behalf of the area farmers, getting their locally grown food in our favorite restaurants, corporate cafeterias, and even in our big box stores.
Rollison has more than 30 years of experience as a buyer for grocery stores in Illinois. He was brought on board to head the Chattanooga food hub by Jones, who knew off the bat he would be an asset to making connections with his institutional knowledge.
Rollison says there are more than 360 similar food hubs in the country. Chattanooga looked at food hubs in Nashville, Asheville and Greenville, but Jones says Harvested Here is mainly modeled after Grow Food Carolina, based out of Charleston.
With such demand for locally grown foods and with endless local buyers, Rollison says Harvested Here is designed a niche that Chattanooga is eagerly accepting into the mainstream.
"People expect and look for local foods...You know it's hard for a restaurant or retail store to call and work with 10 different growers at a time," Rollison says. "So we think we can help them out by offering an inventory list, being there and knowing the food, as well as working directly with them. We pick up and deliver, and coordinate with the farmers on every order."
But Harvested Here's mission isn't solely just to get local produce on our plates. Behind each piece of fruit, there's a farmer and a local family responsible for sowing the seeds. That's why assistant manager Persinger and Marks are also getting the stories behind the farmers out there. Connecting people to their food, whether they buy it as a part of a dish at a restaurant or at the store, is just as important, Persinger says.
"Everyone is really supportive of local foods and it's what they want, with a reason," he says. "People want to have that relationship with their food now, and knowing we have access to it, is so valuable. It all starts at the table."
Last year, Harvested Here partnered with Crabtree Farms to host seminars for growers on how to grow their business and how to get into the buying game.
"We want to show them the logistics of getting their produce into these stores and restaurants," Rollison says. "We want to make it work with the farmers, and give them what they need, the resources, to get out there."
Harvested Here works with a dozen farmers and as many clients, including Easy Bistro, 1885, and St. Johns. Harvested Here also sells to Blue Cross Blue Shield for its cafeteria and hope to work deals with other corporate cafeterias. For Rollison, Marks and Persinger, they see expanding to as many as 30 farms and many more retail clients.
"The sky's the limit. If we're firing on all cylinders, we can do it," Rollison says.
It's not all cliches. Benwood Foundation has a multi-year commitment to funding the food hub, but Rollison hopes that the hub is self-sustaining in three to four years. The produce Harvested Here sells to clients is marked up to cover costs, like wholesale distributors, and they'll soon expand out of just selling produce, into eggs and cheeses as well as beef, poultry and pork.
"There's huge potential here. We look at a wide range from a 120-mile radius," says Jones. "We fully believe that farmers are a vital part of the economy."
This story originally appeared in Edge magazine, which may be viewed online at www.meetsforbusiness.com