Tag: Good Food Financing Fair

Farmer’s Fridge Fortunes Flourished At FamilyFarmed’s Good Food EXPO

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

FamilyFarmed’s Annual Giving Campaign is under way, and to highlight the work we do to build a better food system, we are running a series of profiles of great businesses that have participated in our programs. Today we look at FamilyFarmed’s Good Food EXPO and Good Food Financing & Innovation Conference through the eyes of Luke Saunders of Farmer’s Fridge, the Chicago company whose fresh salad vending machines are changing the way eaters view self-service food options.

OrgaNums

Store Placement Is Growing Pain For Baby Food Maker OrgaNums

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

Ashley Rossi is the founder of OrgaNums, a Chicago-area company that uses a cold-pressed (High Pressure Pasteurized) process to create healthy, nutritious baby food from organic ingredients. Ashley’s business benefited from its participation in the Financing Fair at FamilyFarmed’s 2015 Good Food Financing & Innovation Conference. In this contributed piece, she describes the challenges she has faced getting retail store placement for her brand in this new market segment.

Meet These Promising Businesses Thursday at Good Food Conference

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Financing & Innovation Conference, coming up on Thursday, is Chicago’s must-attend event of the year for investors, retailers, wholesalers, distributors and others who want a heads up about the region’s most promising Good Food businesses and products. And the centerpieces of this world-class networking event are the business pitch event and the Financing Fair.

Big Food and Good Food Panel a Highlight of March 16 Financing Conference

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

FamilyFarmed’s three-day, 13th annual Good Food Festival & Conference kicks off on Thursday, March 16 at Chicago’s UIC Forum with the annual Good Food Financing & Innovation Conference.

Accelerator Fellow Karma Kombucha: It Grows and Grows

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

The Chicago suburb of Mundelein isn’t quite yet famous for kombucha, a fermented tea with healthy probiotic properties that in recent years has drawn a growing consumer base. But if hard work and passion are the keys to entrepreneurial success, then Susan Fink’s Karma Kombucha is going to turn Mundelein into a kombucha capital.

Energy and Variety Mark the Second Year of Good Food Business Accelerator

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

The nine Fellows participating in the second cohort of FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Business Accelerator represent a wide range of exciting entrepreneurial ventures — from bakeries to a prepared meal kitchen to an herb farm, from an apple orchard and cidery to packaged Latino food products to a kombucha maker, and more.

Farmer’s Fridge and Its Salad Vending Machines: A Good Food Financing Fair Story

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

Vending machines. Not exactly what comes to mind when you think of Good Food… Until now, that is, thanks to companies such as Farmer’s Fridge, a business that is selling same-day-fresh jarred salads and healthy snacks from vending machines in dozens of locations around Chicago. This fast-growing company got a boost from participating in FamilyFarmed’s annual Good Food Festival & Conference and its Financial Fair.

Good Food Festival & Conference Starts Fast With Accelerator Discussion

Posted on by FamilyFarmed.org

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.

Raj Karmani of Zero Percent (right) and Michael Bashaw of Whole Foods Market

Accelerator Adds Fuel to This Year’s Good Food Financing & Innovation Conference

Posted on by FamilyFarmed.org

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.

dailyServing's functional food products

Promising Business Are Winding Up to Pitch at Chicago’s Good Food Financing Conference

Posted on by FamilyFarmed.org

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.

Zero Percent logo

Zero Percent: Startup Uses Technology to Reduce Food Waste and Hunger at the Same Time

Posted on by FamilyFarmed.org

Sometimes inspiration comes to you in a laboratory or a conference room. Sometimes it comes in the shower. And sometimes — as was the case of Raj Karmani, founder of the Zero Percent startup that fights both food waste and hunger — it comes during a routine visit to a local bagel shop.

Raj Karmani of Zero Percent (right) and Michael Bashaw of Whole Foods Market

FamilyFarmed’s Financing Fair Accepting Entrepreneur Applicants

Posted on by FamilyFarmed.org

To sustain and expand on that growth, though, entrepreneurs and investors must be able to connect and build businesses that expand the supply of Good Food products in local markets. That is the goal of FamilyFarmed’s annual Financing Fair, which is currently accepting applications from entrepreneurs who want to participate.