Can a rich dessert be considered Good Food? It can when it is Eli’s Cheesecake and its owner, Marc Schulman, is a strong supporter of the Good Food movement and makes the effort to source from local producers when it is possible to do so.
Chicago on Monday hosted the annual James Beard Foundation culinary awards ceremony, and Rick Bayless was one of the event’s co-chairmen. Famed for popularizing regional Mexican cuisine in the city, he is a celebrity chef with a long-running TV show, and he has just added to his long list of cookbooks. But to many in the Good Food movement, it is his history of helping building the region’s local food system that is his biggest starring role.
Differentiation is an important key to success in the expanding sector of artisan food producers. A number of food entrepreneurs have sought their special niche by reaching into their personal experience and background. This is something that Rowida Assalimy did when she launched Kishr, a traditional hot beverage of her parents’ native country of Yemen that she grew up drinking.
One of the very few good things you can say about hard times, such as the recent Great Recession, is that they tend to unleash a lot of entrepreneurial energy. That was certainly the case for the owners of Spark of the Heart, a company that produces dry bean-based soup, salad and sides mixes, who will tell their story at the Good Food Business Accelerator’s Demo Day.
You would be hard-pressed to find a business that is more local, more community-based, and more dedicated to revitalizing economically challenged neighborhoods than Chicago’s Urban Canopy.
By Joel Blechman, FamilyFarmed When I tell people I’m the director of the Good Food Business Accelerator, which FamilyFarmed launched last fall, I’m frequently asked, “What does that mean?” Accelerators — which provide mentorship, networking opportunities, and other assistance to promising entrepreneurial businesses — compose a fast-rising sector that is promoting economic development in the Read more about Good Food Business Accelerator Fellows to Show Their Skills at April 27 Demo Day[…]
Anne Alonzo, administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service, says there is a lot of passion for sharing Good Food by supporting strong local and regional food systems — something she experienced firsthand during her trip last week to Chicago, where she spoke at the Good Food Festival & Conference presented by FamilyFarmed.
by Bob Benenson, FamilyFarmed There is ample statistical, financial, and anecdotal support for the contention that the Good Food movement is, indeed, a movement — one that is expanding markets for healthier food, produced more sustainably, more humanely, and with greater fairness to small farmers, entrepreneurs, and farm workers. This Good Food sector is engaging the interest and participation of millions of Read more about Policy Makers Increasingly Recognize That Good Food Is A Movement[…]
There are plenty of business success stories that emerge in the food world. To be a Good Food success story — like the four featured at FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Financing & Innovation Conference in Chicago Thursday — has a special requirement: a commitment to the values of local, sustainable, natural, and healthy food that is the foundation of the fast-growing Good Food movement.
FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Festival & Conference kicked off a packed three-day schedule Thursday with its Good Food Financing & Innovation Conference. The program featured an introduction to the nonprofit organization’s new Good Food Business Accelerator.
Each of the many individual elements packed into the Good Food Festival & Conference would make a great stand-alone event.
T.J. Callahan, the founder and owner of the Farmhouse Tavern restaurants in downtown Chicago and suburban Evanston is a bit wary of the “farm to table” label, which some critics say has been overused to the point of becoming a cliche. “Farm to table, it’s such a nebulous kind of concept,” Callahan said in an interview with Good Food on Every Table. “So we’ve called ourself, from day one, a ‘Midwestern craft tavern.'”
Finding sourcing for financial capital has been one of the major dilemmas that many startups (and even some better-established players) face in the fast-growing Good Food movement. Fortunately, the money gap is starting to be filled by venture capital groups that see the business potential in the Good Food movement. Chicago’s SLoFIG, an acronym for Sustainable LOcal Food Investment Group, was one of the first to see — and seize — the opportunity.
Paul Fehribach of Big Jones restaurant in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood will receive FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Chef of the Year award during the Good Food Festival, Saturday, March 21 at Chicago’s UIC Forum. He earned the award because of his culinary skills — steeped in the traditions of Southern cooking — and also because of the strong values that prompt him to seek out locally and sustainably produced ingredients, including many rare or heirloom varieties.
The new Local Foods store being built in Chicago may turn out to be something of village square for the local Good Food movement, bringing together and helping to boost the kinds of small food businesses people used to frequent. And it could, just possibly, serve as a template for the supermarket of the future.
Unlike a certain purple dinosaur, Chicago’s Purple Asparagus — a nonprofit group that uses fun and age-appropriate activities to teach kids about Good Food — is named for a real plant that is a springtime delicacy. That is kind of the point. Teaching children from very young ages about the benefits of real, whole, wholesome food is crucial to their developing healthy eating habits as they grow up, and that is the core of Purple Asparagus’ mission.
The Good Food Financing & Innovation Conference that kicks off FamilyFarmed’s annual three-day Good Food Festival & Conference is well established, as a dynamic event that connects food and farm entrepreneurs with investors and lenders. Businesses participating in the event have raised $11 million over the past three years.
Promising businesses in the Midwest’s local and sustainable food sector have raised $11 million from investors over the past three years by participating in FamilyFarmed’s annual Good Food Financing & Innovation Conference. Not surprisingly, this year’s event — coming up on Thursday, March 19 — has another lineup of outstanding entrepreneurs.
Eli’s Cheesecake has been serving up its sweet treats in Chicago for decades. As a local artisan producer that uses as many locally produced ingredients as possible, Eli’s has a prominent place at the Good Food movement’s dessert table. But the company’s commitment to expanding economic opportunity and social welfare through food is much broader than that.
The stories of immigrants achieving success by making the foods of their native lands are parts of the history and social fabric of the United States. But Jenny Yang of Chicago’s Phoenix Bean tofu has an immigrant food story with a modern twist. While millions of people have come to America to escape poverty or oppression, Yang first came to the U.S. from her native Taiwan a quarter-century ago in pursuit of higher education.