This week, Coastal Foodshed (CF) will officially open their new 5,500 square foot farmer food hub facility located at 127 W. Rodney French Blvd. at the Kilburn Mill in New Bedford, in suite S1-57. The new facility includes warehouse space, a 640 square foot cold storage unit, and retail shop. Coastal Foodshed’s farmer food hub moves $10,000–$20,000 worth of local food each week from a network of 60 local farms out into the community.
What is a Food Hub?
Coastal Foodshed operates as a local food hub, which means they purchase local food from a variety of local farmers throughout the Southcoast and take it back into the new facility and store it before selling it through one of their retail programs, or they distribute it through their Farm to Food Relief program.
Local food hubs are beneficial to farmers because they are able to aggregate local food from a variety of farms and then distribute it and sell it into markets that the farmer may otherwise have a hard time reaching.
On the retail side, CF operates several programs: The New Bedford Farmers Market, The Virtual Market, The HIP Delivery program, Pop-Up Markets.
The New Bedford Farmers Market which is held on a weekly basis all year long at Buttonwood Park and they also operate a HIP Delivery Program where they partner with community organizations to bring bags of local food to households and individuals who use SNAP benefits to purchase much of their food. The Virtual Market is their online market where customers can order local year-round for delivery or pick-up on Wednesdays and Fridays. CF delivers to 19 communities in the Southcoast.
In the new space, they have opened a Pop-Up retail store that is open Tuesday–Friday from 9 a.m.– 6 p.m., increasing access to local foods even more.
In Mass., the Healthy Incentives Program (HIP) gives SNAP customers a $1 for $1 match when they purchase local fruits and vegetables from eligible HIP vendors (capped at $40/$60/$80 depending on household size). CF is an eligible HIP vendor, so through this work they are trying to make healthy local produce more accessible to SNAP customers, while also making it easier for them to earn additional SNAP dollars so they can purchase more food.
Beginning in 2023, CF also received two grants from the Commonwealth to purchase just over $1 million worth of local food from their farmer network to be distributed to a network of food pantries and organizations working in hunger relief so that people in need of emergency food relief can still access fresh, healthy local produce and foods — while also investing in local farms. To date, CF has moved about $600,000 worth of food with that grant funding, and it will continue until May 2025.
CF is also working to grow its wholesale channels, particularly through school meal programs.
Overall, CF works to increase access to local foods for low-income and historically marginalized community members, while also supporting local farmers and working to help them grow their sales and operations.
Since opening in 2017, Coastal Foodshed has directly and indirectly sold or distributed $2.69 million worth of local food, over $780,000 of which was distributed to local food pantries over the past 21 months to ensure the most food insecure households across the Southcoast have access to fresh, locally grown foods.
Learn more at https://coastalfoodshed.org or call 508-259-2647.
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