Food Access for Kids, Families Gets $500,000 Boost in Food to Market Challenge

“Team Leverage,” a collaboration of three major Good Food entities in the Chicago region, faced serious competition from four other strong finalists in the Food to Market Challenge. The team won the $500,000 award because of a strong social purpose — bringing healthy, nutritious, affordable food to more school children and their families — plus a distribution model with strong potential to be expanded in Chicago and replicated elsewhere.

Chicago Chef Abra Berens’ Magic Is Making Food Waste Disappear

“Minimizing food waste is the next round of work that we have to do, both in the farm to table movement and in our food culture generally,” says Abra Berens, chef of Stock Cafe at the innovative Local Foods market in Chicago. Read about her devotion to locally and sustainably sourced food, and to not letting any of it go to waste, in the latest installment of our “Farm to Table: Keeping It Real” series.

Guest Column: New Financial Data on Food Hubs to Help Local Food Sector Grow

The wholesale end of local food is a growing business sector that walks a fine line between profitability and social change, according to a new study from the Wallace Center, home of the National Good Food Network.

Local Foods retail store in Chicago

The Promise of Local Foods’ New Chicago Retail Store Is Right In Its Name

Local Foods, a Chicago distributor of local and regional farm and artisan food products, has opened a 27,000-square foot store not far from the city’s downtown. It is carrying produce, dairy, eggs, and meats from farms in the Midwest region centered on its biggest city, along with fresh, frozen and packaged foods from top regional artisans — and is considered a big step forward in local food retailing by advocates of the Good Food movement.

Grown in Detroit stand at Eastern Market
Local Foods Chicago retail store
Farmer Gene Mealhow of Tiny But Mighty.

Food Hub Survey Finds Growing Role, Ongoing Challenges

Food hubs, which provide aggregating, marketing and distribution services to regional food producers, are growing in numbers and influence, according to a survey report released Sept. 19, but still face a number of challenges.