The BulleTin • Monday, FeBruary 21, 2022 A3
LOCAL, STATE & REGION
Farm to table
Meeting the community’s needs
Northwest food hubs
spell success for
local farms, markets
and restaurants
driven by different commu-
nity needs.”
BY BRAD CARLSON
Capital Press
BOISE — Dave Krick talks
with his employees at his
three contiguous restaurants
in downtown Boise on a late
December afternoon during
the post-lunch lull.
“I don’t want to do the same
thing twice,” said Krick of his
restaurants, each of which
serves different menus. “I
like the challenge of building
something different and the
spirit of things being unique.”
Another challenge he has
overcome is getting more lo-
cal food to his customers.
Restaurateurs, farmers and
others are finding that food
hubs — which serve as clear-
inghouses for produce, meat
and other foods — along with
reimagined farmers markets
can help.
A FARE deal
Krick is president of the
board of the Idaho Inde-
pendent Food, Agriculture,
Restaurant and Beverage Alli-
ance, which formed in spring
2020. The nonprofit, known
as FARE Idaho, helps local
farmers and independent
food buyers connect in new
ways, and identify challenges,
such as livestock processing
delays, a recent focus.
“We’ve created a trade asso-
ciation that connects the sup-
ply chain from farm to table,
especially that intrastate sup-
ply chain,” he said. A goal is
to “bring together those farm,
food and beverage provid-
ers with the markets that are
most likely to sustain them.”
Katie Baker, FARE Idaho
executive director, said help-
ing members understand and
access COVID-19 relief pro-
grams was a focus in 2021.
This year’s emphasis is to
“connect producers with re-
tailers to create a more resil-
ient food system.”
“My hope is to really build
a community around this or-
ganization so we can together
create positive change for the
industry,” she said.
For Krick, buying local
food was an early interest. He
opened the first of his three
downtown Boise restau-
rants, Bittercreek Alehouse,
in 1996. The established
concept, prime location and
good staff aid viability “and
allow us to take some risks
and do fun, creative proj-
ects,” he said.
“I had some friends who
were local farmers that sold
at a local farmers market I
helped set up,” Krick said. “I
got introduced to more local
farmers. I realized we could
be part of the solution as a
restaurant simply by buying
from them. It’s been a long
journey. The movement has
grown.”
The state does not have a
large food hub. The last was
Idaho’s Bounty. Hailey-area
farmers and consumers in
2007 founded the coopera-
tive, which ultimately grew to
include about 90 producers.
It opened a Boise-area ware-
house as part of an aggressive
2016 expansion plan. The ex-
panded hub did not sustain
viability and ultimately had
to downsize before closing its
doors in 2018.
Baker, who worked as an
Idaho’s Bounty volunteer and
staff member for eight years,
said challenges included dis-
tribution management and
expenses in an inherently
low-margin business. Staff
and board leaders struggled
with the strategic plan and
operating model.
She said FARE Idaho “real-
ized that distribution, market-
ing and sales were still prob-
lematic for producers. So one
of the organizational goals is
noah Thomas via Capital Press
Come Thru Market, a farmers market centering on Black and indigenous vendors, has gathered at The Redd Plaza in Portland summers since 2020.
“Are you delivering on
your programs? If you are
about food access, then
your key to success is, are
you expanding access to
quality food, are you serving
your constituency? …
Constituencies are different
for each food hub. They are
born for different reasons
and driven by different
community needs.”
— Sydney DeLuna, Oregon Food
Hub Network coordinator
Brad Carlson/Capital Press
FARE Idaho board president Dave Krick with executive director Katie Baker at Krick’s restaurants in down-
town Boise. “I got introduced to more local farmers. I realized we could be part of the solution as a restaurant
simply by buying from them,” Krick said.
to connect producers with re-
tailers.”
FARE itself is not a hub.
Krick said Idaho has some
successful small hubs, such
as Global Gardens in Boise,
“but on the macro level we
have not been successful. It
takes some regional density to
make that work.”
Food hubs
John Klimes, a FARE Idaho
board member who owns
Agrarian Harvest in Buhl,
said a small food hub is suc-
ceeding in Bellevue, south of
the Sun Valley area. For the
much larger Idaho’s Bounty,
“a big challenge was space and
distance. … When you start
putting two hours of drive
time in a refrigerated truck on
the road, that distance starts
costing a lot of money.”
Managers of sizable food
hubs in the Spokane and
northern Puget Sound areas
in Washington state and in
Portland continue see many
opportunities and have over-
come challenges.
At the Local Inland North-
west Cooperative, known
as LINC Foods, in Spokane
Valley, partnerships direc-
tor Brian Estes said revenues
grew more than five-fold be-
tween 2017 and 2021, helped
by its members and staff and
a successful barley malting
enterprise.
“Having the right people,
both growers and the staff of
the co-op, going in the right
direction with the right re-
sources, that’s what it takes to
seize opportunities efficiently
enough to be viable,” he said.
At Puget Sound Food Hub
Cooperative in Mount Ver-
non, Wash., general manager
Andrew Yokom said they plan
to scale up this year. The or-
ganization also plans to fine-
tune production plans for
specific crops so the grower
at planting has a better idea
where the crop is going, in
what quantity and at what
price.
The hub will also empha-
size “working hard and get-
ting out there, telling people
about our work and our mis-
sion,” he said.
The Ecotrust nonprofit
opened The Redd on Salmon
Street, a Portland food hub,
three years ago.
“It’s beneficial to have food
hubs everywhere,” said Emma
Sharer, Ecotrust operations
director.
But, she said, analysis is
crucial.
“The food hub we built at
The Redd is perfect for last-
mile logistics — bringing in
food from rural producers,
aggregating food from small-
scale urban producers and
distributing it out in a tight
radius,” Sharer said. “But if we
look at another location in,
say, The Dalles, the opportu-
nities look so different.”
Response to a need
USDA defines a food hub
as actively managing aggre-
gation and distribution, and
marketing source-identified
food products, mainly from
local and regional producers.
The idea is to boost the
hub’s capability to meet local
wholesale, retail and institu-
tional demand.
“A food hub is a response
to a community need,” said
Sydney DeLuna, who coordi-
nates the Oregon Food Hub
Network and is a community
food systems consultant on
contract with Oregon State
University.
Needs driving a hub’s cre-
ation can range from land-use
patterns and economic devel-
opment to scaling up distri-
bution so small farmers can
access larger-scale buyers.
One key to success is, “Are
you delivering on your pro-
grams?” DeLuna said. “If you
are about food access, then
your key to success is, are you
expanding access to quality
food, are you serving your
constituency?”
All food hubs are not cre-
ated equal, she said.
“Constituencies are dif-
ferent for each food hub,”
DeLuna said. “They are born
for different reasons and
Fair return
At LINC Foods in Spokane
Valley, Carl Segerstrom, the
procurement director, said
an inherent challenge is that
local food often is more ex-
pensive than food from else-
where.
“But at the same time, we
are very focused on giving
a fair return to farmers,” he
said.
LINC’s Estes said a found-
ing premise more than seven
years ago was to help growers
increase sales, not simply to
act as an intermediary. The
team “has been able to work
with growers to really seize
that opportunity and make
sure we are truly creating new
value for our producers by
opening up those marketing
opportunities.”
At The Redd in Portland,
navigating COVID-19 re-
mains a challenge.
“Our operations and fa-
cilities teams hold all these
parts together, supporting
our anchor tenants in their
businesses, filling vacancies
through equitable leasing
processes and bringing in and
supporting businesses that are
serving our local food com-
munity,” Sharer said.
With FARE Idaho, Baker
said, businesses across the
state “had an opportunity
to come together and share
ideas, issues, concerns and to
help each other through the
process of operating in the
pandemic.”
Adapting farmers markets
As for selling and deliver-
ing local food in bigger quan-
tities, Krick, the restaurateur,
said farmers markets could
expand on the order-ahead
model, which has found suc-
cess during the pandemic.
He said equipping a farm-
ers market with cold stor-
age, a small processing or
packaging area and a ship-
ping-and-receiving setup
would be more viable than
developing a food hub, and
could bring new opportuni-
ties for the market and partic-
ipating producers.
“Local food is going to be
more nutritious and sustain-
able, including when we have
supply-chain hiccups,” Krick
said of the idea.
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