How to Start a Community Food Project
If you’re in the non-profit, social enterprise, or community economic development sector, you know how valuable collaboration can be. Here are the steps to starting a community project that supports your mission and local food system.
1. Understand your community food environment
Before supply, comes demand. Take the time to gauge the need for freshly grown produce in your community by talking with community members, grocery stores, co-ops, farmers markets, local restaurants, and other businesses, like caterers or schools, that source food. Before you begin these conversations, know what produce - from broccoli to basil - is possible with a Growcer system by checking our Cultivars Guide.
Getting a feel for demand will also help you set a price point for your product.
2.Determine financial feasibility of the project
Once you’ve gathered enough information from your community, it’s time to turn your ideas into action. Our team will help you to examine how to meet your local demand best and what you can expect to earn with your operation.
Consistency, profitability, and sustainability are the key pillars of success for your project. When it comes to outside funding, it’s essential to know what funding options are available before you start. Several of the Growcer’s past community projects have successfully incorporated outside funding to launch or supplement training costs.
3.Present to your colleagues, community, board, or funders
Community food projects require communal and organizational support, and this becomes a team effort. To ensure the presentation to your board or discussions with your colleagues, are successful, our team can provide or co-create all the necessary support and materials. We can help you pull together custom slide decks with project-specific financials so you can paint a clear picture of what this project will look like and the benefits for your community.
You can schedule a 3D tour of the system to get an in-depth look at our technology.
4.Schedule a tour (In-Person or 3D)
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a tour will allow everyone to immerse themselves in what a project like this looks like in actuality. Take a trip to Ottawa to explore a Growcer system in-person or schedule a 3D tour to virtually walk-through the system. Seeing the system helps visualize operational activities and how your organization can personalize the system to fit your objectives.
Operators in Kuujjuaq, Quebec are being trained by the Growcer team on how to seed produce in the system.
5.Onboarding with our Customer Success Team
This step is where all the details are tackled. Meet with our customer success team to decide on packaging design, coordinate a planting schedule, and establish a marketing plan for your system. The team works with you on everything from crafting a brand to planning for the installation of the system.
6.Schedule installation and training
So this is it; once a deposit is made - we begin building your personally configured farm. Now we start planning your community food project launch! All that’s left to do is to nail down dates for installation. Installation can occur as soon as eight weeks from the first deposit. The installation also includes us providing you three days of on-site training, which will cover planting to harvest, and everything in between. Even after the three days are up, the Growcer team is still with you with 24/7 remote monitoring on all our systems. You will have access to support when you need it via call, text, email, and our Growcer app.
Interested in getting started? We can answer your questions, and help you figure out the details!