NCGT Monthly Project Update

In This Issue:

NCGT Networking Events Facilitate Profitable Connections Between Producers and Buyers

NCGT Releases Guide on Selling Eggs to Grocery Stores

Connecting the Dots along the Value Chain: Pate Dawson-Southern Foods and Taylor Fish Farm

About NCGT

GOAL | Bring more locally-grown foods - produce, meat, dairy, and seafood - into mainstream retail and food service supply chains, thus enhancing food security by increasing access to local foods and by strengthening the economics of small to mid-sized farm and fishing operations.

STRATEGY | Identify the most promising solutions by which local production and associated value-added activities can enter local retail and food service markets, pilot these solutions in North Carolina, and evaluate and report the results for the benefit of other states and regions.

August 31, 2015

Greetings all,

Thanks for reading our monthly newsletter and please let us know what you think!

Sincerely,

The NCGT Management Team

NCGT Networking Events Facilitate Profitable Connections Between Producers and Buyers

Shawn and Karen King are making big business out of tiny greens. The couple's company, MicroGreen King in Yadkin County, produces a variety of microgreens hydroponically, using only water, light and natural burlap fiber as a growing medium. They were ready to expand their business when they attended the NCGT/NC 10% Campaign Grower-Buyer mixer in March 2015.

At the event they connected with Lowes Foods Director of Produce Merchandising, Richard McKellogg, and Locally Grown Accounts Representative and NCGT Liaison, Krista Morgan. Karen compares the event to speed-dating: "it's enough time to get the information about what buyers' requirements are, like GAP certification and liability insurance. As a grower, you don't always know their requirements, and you don't always know who you need to speak to [within a company] to start the conversation. It made it so much nicer and easier and faster for us" to do business with a large grocery chain like Lowes Foods, she says.

Shawn and Karen King with sons Noah and Jesse. Photo by Anida Kleege/Lowes Foods.

After the Grower-Buyer mixer, they moved through Lowes Foods new vendor process and in April, began selling into two Winston-Salem area Lowes Foods stores. Karen stresses the importance of consumer education to selling their product. "We go every weekend and sample our products," she explains. "People don't know what our product is; we have to educate them. Marketing is our biggest hill to climb."

The couple notices a strong relationship between their sampling events and their sales. They've also had marketing help from Krista Morgan, who created their farmer "story" for in-store promotion, and scheduled them for the stores' "Community Table" outreach events.

Once their products were established in the two Lowes Foods stores, they were approved to sell through Lowes Foods' sister-company, Merchants Distributors, Inc. Now their microgreens are being sold at about a dozen Lowes Foods stores throughout the state. Selling into Lowes Foods/MDI has enabled MicroGreen King to double their production, Karen says.

The next NCGT/NC 10% Campaign Grower-Buyer Mixer will take place at the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association's Sustainable Agriculture Conference in November. For more information please contact NC 10% Campaign Statewide Coordinator Robyn Stout.

NCGT Releases Guide to Selling Eggs into Grocery Stores

NC Growing Together has released a new report entitled

How to Sell Shell Eggs into Grocery Stores through Direct Store Delivery. It is intended for small to medium-scale North Carolina egg producers who are interested in expanding their markets into North Carolina grocery stores.

There is growing demand for locally-produced eggs in North Carolina. Retail outlets like grocery stores provide an opportunity for producers to meet this demand while potentially expanding their consumer base. Says Krista Morgan, Lowes Foods Locally Grown Accounts Representative and NCGT Liaison, "Customers can see and taste the difference in local pastured eggs, and once they try a dozen they buy more. So I am thrilled that we can support producers and make customers happy at the same time!"

The report provides guidance on what a producer needs to know before approaching a retailer, the vendor setup process at the retailer, considerations for packaging/labeling for retail markets, and preparation for a producer's first delivery to the retailer.

Read the report on the Resources for Producers page of the NCGT website.

Egg producers may also be interested in attending NC State's Small-Scale Egg Production in a Range Setting Field Day on September 24. More information can be found here. Registration required by September 4.

Connecting the Dots along the Value Chain: Pate Dawson-Southern Foods and Taylor Fish Farm

New NCGT partner Pate Dawson-Southern Foods has been making efforts to source locally for years, according to Director of Marketing Joel Sullivan. Sullivan is the fifth generation of his family to work in the business, which started out as a grocery store in Goldsboro. "We've always sourced locally, especially produce, from NC farmers, it's just a way of doing business. It's important to us," he explains. What the company needed, however, was a way of connecting with more local producers that they could do business with.

Pate Dawson, which for years served a customer base of mostly Eastern family-style restaurants, acquired Southern Foods in 2010. Along with Southern Foods, they acquired an expanded clientele of fine dining establishments -- many of which were looking for local products -- as well as a "cut shop" processing facility for meat and seafood. "The processing infrastructure enables us to really customize what we cut for our customers. Everything is cut by hand by skilled cutters, not by machines. It's the only facility of its size in the region," says Joel. The Greensboro facility employs about 40 people and includes a fish room, meat room, grind room, and local cheese area.

The Taylor Fish Farm family. Photo courtesy of website.

In partnering with NC Growing Together, Pate Dawson-Southern Foods has been able to connect with more small and mid-scale producers looking to do business. One such example is Valee Taylor of Taylor Fish Farm in Cedar Grove, NC. Joel met Valee at the NCGT annual meeting in January 2015. Valee, a Tilapia producer with multiple buyers including Whole Foods, was looking for a processor to fillet his fish in order to expand his product line. The two "connected the dots", as Joel puts it, and within a month Valee was delivering his fish to the Greensboro cut shop for processing. "Our cut shop facility can be a resource to other producers or fish houses who just need a processing partner," says Joel.

Project Contact Information

Rebecca Dunning, NCGT Project and Research Coordinator, rebecca_dunning@ncsu.edu, 919-389-2220

Nancy Creamer, Director of the Center for Environmental Farming Systems, NC State University; and Project Director, NC Growing Together, nancy_creamer@ncsu.edu, 919-515-9447

Michelle Schroeder-Moreno, NCGT Academic Coordinator, michelle_schroeder@ncsu.edu, 919-513-0085

Joanna Lelekacs, NCGT Extension and Training Coordinator, joanna_lelekacs@ncsu.edu, 919-244-5269

John Day, NCGT Military Partnership Coordinator, john_day@ncsu.edu, 704-785-6670

Krista Morgan, Locally Grown Accounts Representative, Lowes Foods; and Lowes Foods Liaison, NC Growing Together, krista.morgan@lowesfoods.com, 336-775-3218 ext. 53218

Patricia Tripp, NCGT Produce Supply Chain Development Liaison, trish@artisanfoodsolutions.com, 336-458-6980

JJ Richardson, NCGT Website and Communications Coordinator, jj_richardson@ncsu.edu, 919-889-8219

This project is supported by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative competitive grant no. 2013-68004-20363 of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

� 2013-2015 NC Growing Together