Forces for Good Food Spotlight Series: Appalachian Sustainable Development
New Venture Advisors is privileged to work alongside powerful forces driving progress toward building food systems we can all be proud of. These forces—our collaborators, partners, clients, visionaries—are leaders in changing how we think about food. As a returning...
NVA Toolsite: Planning Starts Here
One year ago today we launched the NVA Toolsite. We built it with the hope that it would help teams embarking on food system enterprise projects better understand the local market landscape and the most important factors to consider when evaluating the viability of...
Good Food Glossary: CSA
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a farming practice that promotes a shared commitment by consumers and growers to build a more local and equitable agricultural system. Introduced in the mid-80s, CSAs are “a community of individuals who pledge support to a farm...
Forces For Good Food Spotlight Series: The Hatchery
New Venture Advisors is privileged to work alongside powerful forces driving progress toward building food systems we can all be proud of. These forces—our collaborators, partners, clients, visionaries—are leaders in changing how we think about food. As a returning...
Porter’s Five Forces and the Good Food Industry: Supplier Power
Earlier this year I had an incredible opportunity to join Pasture One, a mission-driven distributor of sustainable, grass-fed beef. Our small team had a mandate to support ranchers using techniques that promote carbon sequestration and grasslands regeneration. While...
Shared Kitchens: A Changing Landscape
Announcements from the increasingly crowded incubator, accelerator, shared kitchen, food hub, and innovation marketplace seem to come at us at ever greater speed these days. New facilities are opening across the country and globe, new communities are being courted to...
Good Food Glossary: Food Desert
What is a food desert? The CDC characterizes a food desert as an area lacking in affordable fruits and vegetables, often found in rural, minority or low-income areas where access to healthy foods are limited (CDC 2011). In recent years, the term has been used to...
Forces For Good Food Spotlight Series: FamilyFarmed
New Venture Advisors is privileged to work alongside powerful forces driving progress toward building food systems we can all be proud of. These forces—our collaborators, partners, clients, visionaries—are leaders in changing how we think about food. As a returning...
Good Food Glossary: Shared-Use Kitchen
A simple definition of a shared-use kitchen is a certified commercial kitchen in which individuals or businesses prepare value-added food products and meals, usually paying an hourly or daily rate to lease a space shared by others. These spaces are most often used by...
An Immersion into the French Food System: Vive la différence!
In July I had the opportunity to travel through the Haute Savoie region of France. It was billed as a “culinary adventure” by Saveur the Journey. The description is what you might expect: “This trip will focus on visiting and learning from food artisans such as cheese...
How Dollar Stores are Changing Downtown America
A year ago, we started work on a project for the Kansas-based Sunflower Foundation, in partnership with the Rural Grocery Initiative (RGI) at Kansas State University, to understand the challenges rural grocery stores face. Of particular focus was the issue of...
Good Food Glossary: Supply Chain vs. Value Chain
Why a Value Chain is the new Supply Chain While presenting to a client in Texas on supply chains, we realized that we were using the words supply chain and value chain interchangeably -- is that correct? The answer is no. But, like all “food system terms” in the Good...
Building A Food System We Can All Be Proud Of
Last night I had the genuine pleasure of sharing a few remarks about sustainable food systems with a group of food industry professionals in Chicago. It was an event hosted by Chicagoland Food & Beverage Network, formed last year to catalyze the 4,500 food...
Toolsite Spotlight: A How-To Guide for MarketSizer® and HubSizer® Users
New Venture Advisors launched the MarketSizer® and HubSizer® Toolsite earlier this year to enable anyone to conduct preliminary assessments of various types of food system infrastructure. The results allow users to refine their food business concepts and due diligence...
Toolsite Spotlight (6 of 6): The Frozen Processing HubSizer®
A microblog series on the HubSizer® and MarketSizer® tools from New Venture Advisors Are you a food hub that sees surges from your farmers in broccoli in the summer or beets in the fall? Have you been trying to figure out how to take advantage of a big glut of produce...
Toolsite Spotlight (5 of 6): The Kitchen Facility HubSizer®
A microblog series on the HubSizer® and MarketSizer® tools from New Venture Advisors. Do you own or have access to an entire building, space or business and want to convert it into a commercial kitchen or food business incubator but are not sure where to start? Today...
Toolsite Spotlight (4 of 6): The Produce Facility Hubsizer®
A microblog series on the HubSizer® and MarketSizer® tools from New Venture Advisors. Over the past few weeks we’ve explored how to analyze a market for local food with the Local Food MarketSizer® tool; investigated how to turn a grocery store into a food hub with the...
Toolsite Spotlight (3 of 6): The Local Produce HubSizer®
A microblog series on the HubSizer® and MarketSizer® tools from New Venture Advisors. This week we’re looking into how to use the Local Produce HubSizer® tool to estimate the economics and potential markets of a produce food hub. For this post, we’ll take you on the...
Toolsite Spotlight (2 of 6): The Rural Grocery HubSizer®
A microblog series on the HubSizer® and MarketSizer® tools from New Venture Advisors. This week we’re digging into how to use the Rural Grocery HubSizer® tool. This tool was designed for an owner and/or operator of an independent grocery store that has at least some...
Toolsite Spotlight (1 of 6): The Local Food MarketSizer®
We are so excited about the launch of the NVA Toolsite and to get these tools into the hands of food system professionals, farmers, entrepreneurs, store owners and all of the hard working planners out there! Over the next six weeks, this NVA Toolsite Spotlight...
6 New Tools for Food System Planners
Over the last nine years New Venture Advisors has had the privilege of participating in over 60 food systems studies ranging from feasibility studies to market assessments, business plans and strategic business improvement plans. They have ranged in focus from local...
Good Food Glossary: What is (and isn’t) a Food Hub?
There are so many “new” terms out there describing our food these days. They are on the produce racks (natural, organic, local, sustainably grown, fresh) and they are in the grocery aisles (whole grain, gluten free, no preservatives) and in the meat case! (hormone...
Big Goes Small and Small Goes Big: 5 Ways Big Food is Finding Growth in the New Food Economy
Anyone reading the food news these days would think that Big Food is dead. In recent years, analysts have been alert to the trends, publishing excellent reports such as Is Big Food In Trouble? (A.T. Kearney/The Hartman Group, 2016), Invasion of the bottle snatchers:...
Reflections on Leadership and Human Flourishing
Earlier this month I was glad to attend the Community Food Systems Conference hosted by the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project at Tufts University. Not only was it an occasion to reconnect with friends and former clients, to enjoy the local food scene in...
