The County Food Hub has received $115,000 from the Government of Ontario to upgrade its facilities and create a new food entrepreneur incubator program. 

It is a big step forward for the non-profit, which regularly rents its kitchen to food entrepreneurs, and can now build training programs to help new businesses get off the ground.

Recipe for Success is a 12-week program designed to provide the skills and resources to scale up an entrepreneurial business plan. Participants will learn everything from recipe testing and food safety to styling and marketing.

“Essentially, it’s  boot camp for food entrepreneurs,” said Executive Director Melissa Tran.

Part of the grant will go towards purchasing a new walk-in refrigerator and freezer, an industrial mixer with attachments, a label applicator for jarring and canning, and a date coder. 

The funding comes through the province’s Agricultural Workforce Equity and Diversity Initiative, designed to assist underrepresented groups with starting an agri-food businesses. 

The Food Hub qualified to have 85 percent of the funding, $97,750, as a grant. $10,000 will come from the municipality and the rest via fundraising by the Hub. 

The catch is that the grant is designed as a reimbursement for program spending, and the County Food Hub doesn’t have the money to float the upfront costs. To ease the burden, Council approved a $40,000 loan to cover up-front expenses, to be repaid by the end of 2026. 

The new 12-week incubator will be “boot camp for food entrepreneurs.”

—Melissa Tran

“This is how economic development works. This is how partnerships and communities work,” said Councillor Phil St-Jean.

“This is a very innovative and exciting next step,” Councillor Bill Roberts said in a written statement. “We created the County Food Hub to both save a valuable rural public school and help mitigate, or eliminate, rising food insecurity in our community.”

The non-profit began as an innovative way to use surplus space at Sophiasburgh Elementary School, which was slated to close its doors in 2020. 

Sharing a roof with the school, the Hub rents its commercial kitchen space to caterers, food producers, and food security groups. The doors are open to everyone. It also uses the space to expand its community reach, offering cooking classes and hosting community dinners. 

Last September, the County’s Economic Development Officer, Karen Palmer, conducted several consultations with people who have used the kitchen or may do so in the future, as well as local farmers, to understand how best to serve the County’s food producers. 

“At the end of the day we’ll have some new equipment there that will make the manufacturing process more efficient and a twelve-week incubator program that will let entrepreneurs get a start, which has been a missing ingredient,” she said.