SustainableWork

The world of artisan foods entrepreneurship is in its infancy. Innovation in foods and everything connected to it will increase omni-directionally, as Bucky Fuller said, for as far as I can see. This move toward local foods and regional food systems will make better, healthier foods available to increasing numbers of people at increasingly affordable prices.

I want to help make the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen a platform for food innovators and entrepreneurs to take advantage of this emerging artisan foods marketplace.

One way we will launch this effort is through a program we're calling our Preparation Partnerships. In this process the Innovation Kitchen will prepare, process, package, store and distribute your food innovation for commercial sale.

I'm going to put the draft of this Preparation Partners plan into this blog post and then later move some of it forward as we see what works.

Our Preparation Partners will be food innovators - chefs, existing small food businesses, new food innovators, farmers, anyone who loves food. We will offer a partnership with the Innovation Kitchen to launch and grow artisan food businesses in a state-inspected, commercial kitchen.

Let's map out how this would work on one simple case.

Let's say you want to start or expand an artisan food enterprise.

As an example, let's say you wanted to start an food business around a soup or stew that celebrated a specific local food. [Editor's note: this is a very good idea.]

As a Preparation Partner you could have your recipe prepared and tested at the Innovation Kitchen in an artisan-batch, commercially relevant scale. If this works for all involved, we can help register your recipe and your new business with the state. Then, as a Preparation Partner, you can have your recipe prepared, packaged, and distributed for commercial sale on a contract basis through the Innovation Kitchen.

Here's an overview… The Preparation Partners program will be a platform you can utilize to launch your artisan food business without having to invest in an entire food processing facility and support networks on your own.

This Preparation Partner option will be the initial focus of the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen. We see 3 key processes making up this program.

Process 1. Will it work? As your Preparation Partner, we want your food innovation to succeed. We will work with you to prepare your recipe in artisan-scale, commercially-relevant batches. This insures your recipe will meet your goals for taste, quality, packaging, etc. when it is prepared in larger volumes in a commercial kitchen. Think of it as a 'shakedown cruise' for your recipe.

Process 1 example: You have an amazing morel mushroom soup recipe. It works great in your home kitchen, and everybody loves it. You want to launch a small food business around this recipe. However, you need to learn a number of things about what happens when you scale your recipe up to small commercial batches. Will it meet your goals for quality? How much of the recipe ingredients will you supply? What ingredients will be purchased at what specifications and price? In short, what are the true costs of production for a small-scale commercial production run? This first process at the Innovation Kitchen is designed to answer those critical questions with you tasting and approving the results. This step also supplies critical documentation of real numbers and actual times required, not extrapolated results.

The idea is to make a small, smart investment in your emerging food enterprise to make sure the idea is scalable. Also important, this first Preparation Partner test run will give everyone involved a basis for pricing larger, commercial production runs if that is an option.

So, how is My Magnificent Morel Soup Mix doing? We rented time on the commercial dehydrator at the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen and got a batch of our morels just right for a dry mix. We purchased some ingredients from local farms. We bought a few ingredients and our packaging through the Innovation Kitchen's Purchasing partner program. The recipe scaled up to a small-scale commercial size. All costs were documented.

This matched the targets in our business plans, and we decided to move forward and prepare for commercial sale.

Process 2. Signing In. Most food products sold commercially must have their recipes and process approved prior to sale. (A good thing for all of us!) There are exceptions, but if you're going to run an artisan foods enterprise you need to think of yourself as a professional and run your enterprise accordingly. That includes going through legal registrations and all professionally relevant trainings and certifications.

The Innovation Kitchen has the support in place to help legally register food products and processes in Wisconsin. We will also have access to full information for selling your food products outside of Wisconsin. Additionally, the Innovation Kitchen 'Signing In' process makes available business help finding information about appropriately registering new business entities.

Process 2 example: With the help of the Innovation Kitchen, we submitted our Morel Mushroom soup recipe and processing steps. We included all three of the sizes we were intending to produce. We were approved within a few weeks. During that time we also incorporated a new enterprise around our business plans and registered with the appropriate state and federal agencies. We also did this with resources available through the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen.

Process 3. Launch services. Preparation Partners will have access to Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen marketing and sales networks, as well as storage and distribution networks.

Process 3 example: We test marketed our Magnificent Morel Mushroom Soup through the Innovation Kitchen marketing network and found the right mix of customers to start with. After processing our Magnificent Morel Mushroom Soup, the Innovation Kitchen stores our finished product. We send in orders for our soup, and the Innovation Kitchen ships them directly to our customers.

Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen Preparation Partners.

So, what's one of the easier and smarter ways to launch or grow an artisan food business? Outsource the testing, organization and food preparation to a state-inspected commercial kitchen that is set up to celebrate artisan foods.

All the difficult food regulation, management and execution steps will be done to code in a state-inspected commercial kitchen. You will have the opportunity to pre-test your recipe at a commercially relevant scale, document your costs, and market-test consumer demand.

Is this a guarantee of success? Of course not.

What the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen represents is a valuable opportunity for food lovers and food entrepreneurs to experiment with new food innovations and product lines in an affordable, valuable setting. A goal of the Innovation Kitchen is to help develop new and existing artisan food enterprises that celebrate healthy foods and our grow our rural communities.

Our Preparation Partners program is one of the ways we can make that happen. Got a recipe you'd like to try?

Stay tuned. I will report back as this emerges.

Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen link

Photo is of Hyde's Mill in beautiful Iowa County, Wisconsin.

Labels: artisan food processing, bootstrapping, business plans, entrepreneurship, innovation, Outsourcing, platforms, slow startups, startups, Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen

There is a strategy for helping local enterprises expand by providing the tools and resources needed to help then innovate and grow new markets.

It's called economic gardening and I greatly support the goals of this effort.

The economic gardening community would not want me to paraphrase, but I would say the basic idea is to support existing high-growth potential businesses and innovators with information and data tools needed to grow and create jobs.

In rural regions, where are those innovators, those businesses with growth potential? As I drive down my beautiful, rural Iowa County back roads, I'm passing entrepreneur after entrepreneur as I pass farm after farm.

There is an entrepreneur on every farm.

These are enterprises that need support structures to innovate, grow, and create jobs in rural communities. The demand is there for products and services ranging from food production and processing to knowledge workers. Our rural entrepreneurs need help with the infrastructure and networks required to connect them to that demand.

I'd guess that there must be a map of the density of entrepreneurs per regional population that would include farmers as entrepreneurs. I'll bet it shows rural regions having the highest densities of entrepreneurs.

And yet, in rural areas with high levels of entrepreneurship, historically there have been a lack of appropriate resources to support these businesses.

Rural entrepreneurs need data, knowledge, and help innovating and growing into new markets.

Those prospects are changing for the better. In Wisconsin there is a great program for growing new farmers. It's our School for Beginning Dairy and Livestock Farmers.

The Director of this great program is Dick Cates who also operates the award winning Cates Family Farm in - drum roll, please - beautiful Iowa County Wisconsin.

This is the kind of economic gardening support that rural entrepreneurs need: access to knowledge and training, appropriate infrastructure, and ongoing support.

We've been trying to add to that discussion with our efforts in Iowa County over the past year or so to put some network and physical infrastructure support in place to help our rural businesses utilize the knowledge that's out there to innovate and grow and make new jobs.

The vegetable processing facility in Highland will process 2011 crops.

A group of us have helped with support/training seminars held in Iowa County to help existing farmers and new food entrepreneurs to innovate and grow into our emerging facilities and expanding markets. The focus will be on profitable vegetable production, marketing and distribution in our region.

By helping make new tools and infrastructure available to our rural entrepreneurs, we can help them prosper in these new markets.

So, first up, our Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen in Mineral Point will have its Grand Opening on Sunday, July 11. We are working hard to make this facility the most valuable it can be by offering many ways for food entrepreneurs to access preparation services and processing tools needed to innovate and grow.

The Innovation Kitchen will become a knowledge hub as well as a physical platform. In one location, we will be able to link knowledge, data, and valuable personal connections to physical resources and easy access to vendors, buyers and sellers. I believe this is the kind of infrastructure and support network needed to help our rural entrepreneurs, businesses and communities grow into emerging opportunities.

Economic gardening for rural communities should include a focus on creating easier-cheaper-faster ways for farm based entrepreneurs and businesses in rural areas to access data, knowledge, and networks. It should always include support for the physical infrastructure needed to enable innovation, growth, and increasing access to markets.

There is an entrepreneur on every farm. Let's grow this resource.


School for Beginning Dairy and Livestock Farmers at the Center for Integrated Agricultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.

Cates Family Farm. Our natural, delicious tasting beef is from Angus and Jersey steers grown 'free-range' in the open air on excellent quality pasture. Steers are 100% grass-fed and grass-finished spring through autumn. The steers are raised without added growth hormones, and they do not receive any type of antibiotic for a minimum of nine months prior to processing.

1998 Wisconsin Conservation Achievement Award and the 1999 Iowa County Water Quality Leadership Award.

2006 - present. Animal Welfare Institute Approved. First beef farm in the USA to earn this approval.

Download information about seminars for area growers and food entrepreneurs being held in Iowa County, WI during April 2010. The focus will be on profitable vegetable production, marketing and distribution in our region. Topics include, The economics of growing vegetables for profit, The correct way to harvest, pack, store and cool vegetables for maximum quality and market value, and The essentials of food safety and Good Agricultural Practices (also known as GAP). Expanding information leads to expanding markets. Join us!

The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen

Schools for Beginning Fruit, Vegetable and Flower Growers also at the Center for Integrated Agricultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.

Labels: artisan food processing, entrepreneurship, new product development, slow startups, Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen

It was an honor to be included in a round table discussion today with Dr. Kathleen Merrigan, Deputy Secretary of the US Department of Agriculture.

I learned that the array of projects and real stakeholders the USDA must represent is daunting.

That's why having someone of Dr. Merrigan's experience in sustainable ag and regional food systems at the number two spot in this highly influential federal agency is pretty remarkable.

In a review of her nomination at gourmet.com: "She comes from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, in Boston, where she is the director of the Center on Agriculture, Food and Environment. She has also worked in government, as head of the Agricultural Marketing Service at the USDA, as a consultant to the Food and Agriculture Organization at the United Nations, and as staff to the Senate Committee on Agriculture."

"At Tufts, Merrigan has directed a group of projects designed to stimulate community gardens, develop regional marketing strategies between consumers and local farmers, and promote food and gardening education in local schools. This is not the traditional career path of high-ranking USDA officials."

Dr. Merrigan has significant responsibilities as a top member of a leadership team of a major federal agency. Yet amid all that she has carved out time and space, with no budget, to champion the great 'Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food' program at USDA (link below). It was inspiring to hear about the widespread movement these ideas have generated. It was also really cool to see this level of entrepreneurship at this level of policy making.

Our Highland vegetable processing and IQF facility will be a platform for enabling "Know Your Farmer" programs run at a scale that can start creating real-world, measurable solutions that match existing demand from our 35 million regional consumers.

Mark has insisted from the beginning that a goal for foods processed at Highland would be that they would be farm-identified for the consumer.

Much like the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen (previous post), the Highland facility will soon generate all kinds of new action steps that will connect consumers with local producers.

I know everyone that had the opportunity to meet with the entrepreneurial Dr. Merrigan while she was in Madison today was grateful for her visit.

It was a wonderful day to be in Wisconsin talking about food and the future. Thanks Dr. Merrigan!



USDA Biography of Dr. Kathleen Merrigan

Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food

Review of Dr. Merrigan's nomination in gourmet.com

Thanks to Stan Gruszynski, Director of Wisconsin USDA Rural Development for the invitation to Dr. Merrigan's round table visit. Stan is on the right in the photo above.

My friend Sue Noble, Director of Vernon County Economic Development and I got to discuss our complimentary regional projects with Dr. Merrigan today. Sue is on the other side of Dr. Merrigan in the photo above.

Mark's Renaissance Farm

See previous posts about the Highland vegetable processing and freezing facility by clicking the label 'Driftless Foods' below

Labels: Driftless Foods, entrepreneurship, Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen

Deputy Secretary of the USDA Dr. Kathleen Merrigan will be visiting Madison next week. She is a great proponent of a highly entrepreneurial effort at USDA called 'Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food'.

The 'Know Your Farmer' web site (link below) describes it this way: "This is a USDA-wide effort to create new economic opportunities by better connecting consumers with local producers. It is also the start of a national conversation about the importance of understanding where your food comes from and how it gets to your plate."

Wisconsin is rapidly emerging as a leader in innovative agricultural and rural economic development efforts that serve the goals of 'Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food.'

For instance, the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen is our new community-access food processing kitchen, located at Mineral Point in Iowa County. Creative new food products can prepared in the Innovation Kitchen and sold commercially. This will be a great platform for increasing connections year round between local producers and consumers. A top goal is to help increase economic opportunities and successful connections between local producers and consumers in the world of local foods.

The Innovation Kitchen is available to custom process smaller batch recipes on a contract basis. This will be artisan food processing: small-batch food preparation done in a state inspected facility by people who truly love their work.

The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen will also soon be available for rent on an hourly basis to food entrepreneurs with the appropriate certifications.

We will soon begin offering a program allowing chefs and food entrepreneurs to partner with specific growers and producers in our region to collaborate on creative new food products that can be prepared in the Innovation Kitchen for resale to their friends and followers.

There are many ways to use these types of platforms to create new economic opportunities to better connect consumers with local producers.

I think our Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen effort and all the exciting work done on the Highland/Driftless Foods project (vegetable processing and freezing) match up nicely with these goals.

Both create pieces of missing infrastructure that will allow wider regional audiences to know their farmer and know their food. All these efforts are being designed to be replicated appropriately in other regions.

The prototypes we're rolling out in Iowa County and all over Wisconsin, especially those of my friend Sue Noble in Vernon County, are being built to create new economic opportunities that connect increasing numbers of consumers with local producers.

The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen is opening now. Driftless Foods, our high-speed vegetable processing project in Highland is accelerating every day. These are real tools that will create new economic opportunities and new understandings of where our food comes from.

Thanks to Dr. Merrigan for her support of this kind of work, and we welcome her to Wisconsin next week!



Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food.

Learn more about the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen.

Labels: artisan food processing, Driftless Foods, entrepreneurship, Innovation Kitchen, Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen

I like thinking about new and emerging enterprises as practices.

Think of orthopedic practices, or law practices, or tax, accounting, or consulting practices, among many other professional examples.

As a startup or emerging business you will benefit in this new economy by holding yourself to this level of professionalism no matter the kind of enterprise you're involved in.

These people (practitioners) practice their craft long and hard but they DO continually practice. They get better. They innovate. They continue to grow. They continue to find new ways to add value to their customers. Or they fail.

Embedded in that growth is permission to start. If you have identified your enterprise as a 'practice' you've implicitly given yourself permission to start and (importantly!) to practice.

What's also implied is that you must plan strategies and business processes that make you increasingly proficient in the professional practice you are creating. It is vital that you learn, capture and improve with every transaction.

Building a successful practice in any field means establishing a professional business model as well as a subject expertise.

I'm going to stress this approach to new and emerging food entrepreneurs coming into the world of the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen.

Truly professional local foods practices can emerge if they plan and practice. New systems will create new opportunities and new jobs.

What cool work to develop in to a professional practice. Why not think about creating a local foods practice in your life? There are a lot of opportunities. Not only in growing, but in retailing and processing and distribution and many other points along of the food chain.

There are opportunities for creating new small-scale but highly-professional practices not just in foods, but in manufacturing and services and health care and on and on.

Whatever your field, no matter how small you think your enterprise is, treat it as your professional practice. Grow your practice and it will grow you.

My core foundations for small business job creation: permission, planning and practice.

Labels: artisan food processing, entrepreneurship, Practice, slow startups

Entrepreneurship is a game plagued with a lot of myths.

Those assumptions can often lead new entrepreneurs and untested small business people over a cliff and into failure.

Malcom Gladwell had a good article in the Jan. 18, 2010 New Yorker called "The Sure Thing. How entrepreneurs really succeed."

This is a good article that upends many assumptions about entrepreneurship . It's largely an analysis of the commercial behavior of high-roller entrepreneurs but there is much good for startups and new entrepreneurs to glean.

A standout among those assumptions is that successful entrepreneurs are risk-takers. Malcolm Gladwell's piece posits that most successful entrepreneurs are risk-avoiders.

Quoting from the economist Scott Shane's book, The Illusions of Entrepreneurship, "Yes, he says, many entrepreneurs take plenty of risks - but those are generally the failed entrepreneurs, not the success stories. The failures violate all kinds of established principles of new-business formation."

These would include how much money you have available to start, organizing as a corporation, business planning, types of startups and the always-popular, "Ninety percent of the fastest-growing companies in the country sell to other businesses; failed entrepreneurs usually try selling to consumers, and rather than serving customers that other businesses have missed, they chase the same people as their competitors do."

These are key areas to focus on when starting an enterprise of any kind. I think there are many ways in this economy for starting sustainable new ventures. You just need to align expectations with reality. That said, there has never been a better time to try your own business.

Here is perhaps the most telling 'vote-with-their-feet' story to emerge from Malcom Gladwell's article on entrepreneurs: "This is consistent with the one undisputed finding in all the research on entrepreneurship: people who work for themselves are far happier than the rest of us. Shane says that the average person would have to earn two and a half times as much to be happy working for someone else as he would be working for himself. "

Shane goes on to describe an experiment in which entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs were asked to choose among outcomes that would net them $5 million with a 25% chance of success or one that would net them $2 million with a 55% chance of success or a profit of $1.25 million with an eighty-per-cent chance of success. The entrepreneurs overwhelmingly chose the last, safest option.

"They were drawn to the eighty-per-cent chance of getting to do what they love doing."

Your enterprise needs to continuously create value and profit to be sustainable. If you do what you love, you can't help but create value. To put that love into action requires that you build your professional practice appropriately, which means planning that minimizes stupid risk so you get to keep doing what you love.

Sounds like a risk worth taking.


Malcolm Gladwell article abstract in the New Yorker. Subscription required for full article.

Photo is of a Cocoa bean, the basis of chocolate.

Labels: business plans, entrepreneurship, Practice, slow startups

I believe economic development means helping create opportunities.

Inventor and Entrepreneur Clubs are a really fun way to discuss and learn about opportunities for starting and growing enterprises of all kinds.

We have ours in Iowa County typically on the fourth Monday evening of each month. People get together to discuss, ask questions, and share strategies about entrepreneurship and doing enterprise. It's really fun to see new and old friends interact and help one another with business and startup ideas.

Each month different speakers focus on specific topics. In next week's meeting we'll have Maria Davis from one of our great local foods group REAP, and Lois Federman from her wonderful program Something Special From Wisconsin. Mark will speak directly to growers interested in producing vegetables for the Highland processing and freezing plant. I'll get to cover the possibilities for food entrepreneurship and business expansion available through our new Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen. Looks like a landscape of great opportunities to me.

Here is our press release for our next Iowa County Entrepreneur Club meeting. You can download a PDF version at the end.


Iowa County Entrepreneur Club meeting to focus on growing businesses and creating jobs in local foods and regional food processing.

Dodgeville, WI –

Start or grow your own business around the growing possibilities of local foods and regional food processing!

Local foods and regional food enterprises are blooming everywhere. This is becoming a great way to start or grow businesses in Southwest Wisconsin.

Join us at our next Entrepreneur Club meeting Wed., Feb. 24 in Dodgeville, WI. This meeting will specifically focus on the strong possibilities for food and agricultural entrepreneurship in our region, with four featured speakers:

Maria Davis from the REAP Food Group (Research, Education,
Action, and Policy) will discuss 'Buy Fresh Buy Local Southwest
Wisconsin' and the demand for local foods.

Lois Federman from Something Special From Wisconsin will
discuss the possibilities for working with farmers markets,
produce auctions, and Community Supported Agriculture
(CSA) programs.

Mark Olson from Renaissance Farm will discuss plans for the
Individual Quick Frozen (IQF) vegetable processing and
freezing facility planned for Highland. This section is meant to
give regional growers as much information as is available so
they can plan future farm activities with this facility in mind.

Rick Terrien from Iowa County Area Economic Development will
discuss business support available for area growers and farm-based
entrepreneurs. Rick will also discuss business startup and
expansion possibilities at the new community-access Wisconsin Innovation
Kitchen, a state-certified food processing facility available to growers and
food entrepreneurs, operated by the Hodan Center in Mineral Point.

Grow your own business around the growing possibilities of local foods and regional food processing!

Please join us for a great evening of information sharing at our next Iowa County Entrepreneur Club meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 24. There will be a social hour beginning at 5:30 and the meeting will begin at 6 PM. The location is at the Stonefield Apartments, 407 E. Madison St., Dodgeville WI. The event is free to the public. Bring a friend!

Download more information, agendas, location maps and much more at http://www.iowacountyedc.org.5100b.html

Networking among attendees will be encouraged in the evening's program. "Our goal is to grow the network of entrepreneurs and those that support them in the Iowa County area" said Rick Terrien, Executive Director of ICAEDC.

The Iowa County Area Entrepreneurs Club is an informational forum where entrepreneurs, inventors, existing businesses, new businesses and people thinking about starting their own businesses can come together to encourage each other and share challenges and encouragement. The group meets on a monthly basis, usually the fourth Wednesday of the month. More information about the group is available on the ICAEDC website at www.iowacountyedc.org/5100b.html or by emailing info@iowacountyedc.org

Download a meeting flyer for this meeting focusing on growing vegetables for the proposed Highland processing and freezing facility:
http://www.iowacountyedc.org/imagesb/ Meeting_Flyer_2_24_10.pdf

END.

If you're in the area please stop by!

Iowa County. Come grow with us.

Iowa County (WI) Area Entrepreneurs Club

REAP Food Group. Research, Education, Action and Policy on Food Group is building a regional food system that is healthful, just, and both environmentally and economically sustainable.

Something Special From Wisconsin. I believe Iowa County Economic Development is the first County EDC member in Wisconsin. I love this program.

Mark's Renaissance Farm. Who knew cinnamon rolls could become an addiction?

Download this media release in PDF format

Information about growing vegetables for the proposed Highland processing and freezing facility.

Labels: artisan food processing, entrepreneurship, innovation, Innovation Kitchen, new product development, platforms, slow money, slow startups, startups, Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen

I got to meet up with statewide friends this week at the Wisconsin Economic Development Association meeting.

Many compelling discussions with a strong emphasis on innovation and entrepreneurship. Great to see the grow-your-own enterprises theme continuing to emerge.

My take-away from the event came from a longtime economic developer who had led a previous life as a serial entrepreneur. We were talking about how economic development organizations were measured.

His strongest point was that economic developers don't create jobs. Business people create jobs.

He's right of course. So what is it that economic developers can do well?

My notion of what economic developers CAN do is create opportunities. More on this at the end.

The Driftless Foods vegetable processing and freezing facility continues to emerge. The group held its first grower information meeting this week. The idea was to tell people what the process looked like right now for growing vegetables for the new plant in the future. There is a link at the end to this article.

Editor Jim Massey of The Country Today Magazine did a great interview with Mark this week about his vision for Driftless Foods.

I thought this piece was especially good because Mark is highlighting that this is a market-based response to demand he himself is experiencing. As a proven entrepreneur and as a creative food innovator Mark is telling us what he and his peer-innovators need.

"Seven words on Olson's Renaissance Farm office wall explain some of the thinking behind the project.

'I Benefit, You Benefit, We All Benefit,' the phrase reads.

'If I (as a small producer) need something, [editor: processing to scale] then my peers need it as well,' he said. 'I have a friend who makes pasta. He and I do the same thing - we're out there driving around marketing our products. The idea is if you can get a group of people to work together then you could get economy of scale relatively quicker."

Yep. What Mark said.

I got to talk about our design a bit, but focused on the need to take action steps; "This is built to be replicated over and over," he said. "Everybody is saying, 'What if,' or, 'We should study this a little further,' " Terrien said. "We're saying let's not just talk about it, let's try it out. Let's put one foot in front of another and get something done."

Terrien said the idea is to build a 'hub-and-spoke system' with the freezer facility being the hub."

My favorite quote from Jim Massey's piece comes from Stan Gruszynski, State Director of USDA Rural Development in Wisconsin. Stan has watched our project grow and has been very generous with his counsel as well as the invitation last week to make a USDA presentation in Chippewa Falls (previous post)

Here is Stan, from the article: "I think rural Wisconsin is just on the cusp of getting into this sort of thing. Hospitals, for example, want to buy commodities, poultry and meat from the local community, but they need a consistent supply. Things like this could happen with agencies like ours providing some of the resources in the local community. I think it can be done."

Thanks very much to Jim Massey and The Country Today for this and for the very nice piece recently about our new Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen.

So, back to the grower information meetings we held last week for people interested in growing vegetables for the new processing plant.

Barry Adams from the Wisconsin State Journal did a nice piece about the meeting. He covered the topic nicely and also caught me red handed with my 'opportunities' agenda…

"'We're trying to make opportunities,' said Rick Terrien, executive director of the Iowa County Area Economic Development Corp.

Tom Novak, a dairy farmer from Highland, said he came to Wednesday's meeting out of curiosity.

'I'm looking for opportunities,' Novak said.

Jeremy Litchfield, 35, of Dodgeville grows a variety of vegetables that he sells to Sam & Maddies, where he is a cook, but would like to more than double the size of his acreage, which is now a three-quarter-acre plot of land. He says the proposed plant would be beneficial for growers.

'It's a way to keep their farms growing,' Litchfield said."

Rural economies are rich in entrepreneurs - every farmer is an entrepreneur. They want to grow. They want to innovate. Just as with Mark's quote above referring to the need for processing capacity, these entrepreneurs need opportunities and infrastructure to nurture their innovations and grow their businesses and to create jobs and invigorate their rural communities.

Economic developers can't make jobs, but they can make opportunities.

Sounds like a plan.


Country Today story about Driftless Foods by Jim Massey.

Wisconsin State Journal article about the first Driftless Foods grower information meeting by Barry Adams.


Wisconsin Economic Development Assn. (WEDA)

Recent article in The Country Today about the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen by Jim Massey.

Mark's Renaissance Farm

Labels: artisan food processing, Driftless Foods, entrepreneurship, slow startups

USDA Rural Development

I greatly appreciated the invitation to give a presentation at a Wisconsin USDA Rural Development jobs forum last week in Chippewa Falls.

Wisconsin state Director Stan Gruszynski invited me to discuss our Iowa County initiative for doing rural economic development and making jobs.

I couldn't speak directly for Mark and the Driftless Development group (see below) of course. However the presentation centered on the design Mark and I have been working on this past year. (Now thrown into hyper-drive by the coolest bunch of scary-smart advocate/adventurers I've ever worked with.)

The gathering was called 'Forum for the Future… Pathways to Wisconsin Job Creation", and was held at Chippewa Valley Technical College. I'll link a couple of articles below.

Speaking only for myself, I told them having meetings about making jobs in rural economies was fine, but we needed action steps more than anything else. It was my position that we should start running market-based experiments that have a real chance of making jobs, especially in rural economies.

I said there will be mistakes and zigs and zags. I told them that's the REAL value of the experiment. What gets learned. What works. What (importantly!) doesn't work. After we finish prototyping this in Iowa County and the region, teams will be trained and in place to effectively ramp this up to make jobs and do economic development from the ground up in lots of widespread places.

The speaker before me, Scott Schultz, Executive Director of Wisconsin Farmer's Union, really set up the subject well. He talked about how strategic plans for making jobs and growing rural economies had been written and then executed poorly over the last decades, with clear losses across wide swaths of rural economic development. He called for trying new experiments that served all parts of ag, especially the 'ag in the middle' piece our project is designed for.

I really enjoyed this USDA Rural Development forum and am very grateful for the invitation.


Movement on the first vegetable processing and freezing hub in Highland.

Lawyers and money are on the move. Reminds me of Warren Zevon's wonderful title 'Send lawyers, guns and money', with vegetables instead of guns. My goodness, this feels refreshing after all the time laying groundwork and building the network.

Spring is in the air.

Granted, it takes a certain kind of wiring to be able to say that in Wisconsin in early February. That's why I so much appreciate the chance to work with Mark and the entire scary-smart leadership team contributing to this adventure.


New Hollandale Library open for business.

The good folks of Hollandale, in the beautiful Southeast part of Iowa County, opened their first library this week (pictured above). What a thing of wonder and beauty. Many congratulations to Hollandale and thank you very much for the chance to share your economic development ideas this week.

Creating experiments in job creation for rural economies.
Movement on our regional food processing model.
Best of all perhaps, a new library.

That's real progress.



Chippewa Valley Newspaper article, by Mark Gunderman

Chippewa Valley Community College Spotlight

Mark's Renaissance Farm

Wisconsin Farmer's Union

Chippewa Valley Tech College

Beautiful Hollandale, WI Iowa County, WI. Come grow with us.

Labels: artisan food processing, entrepreneurship, slow startups, startups

The working title for this post was 'Ulrich and Eisenhower'.

I was reminded once again this week of the powerful role preparedness plays in small business planning.

If you're going after outside investments and loans, you will need very specific financial projections based on assigned income and expense assumptions. All enterprises need this as they mature.

For most self-funded startups and newly emerging enterprises these kinds of financial projections should not be your first step. The money stuff will be built in of course, but you need to learn about a much wider range of subjects before you can start your financials.

Our Iowa County Entrepreneur's club this week was amazing I thought. Ulrich and Alex Sielaff from the Sielaff Corporation in Mineral Point shared a detailed overview of how their award winning design and manufacturing skills recently earned them Small Manufacturer of the Year from Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce.

Ulrich is rich in intellectual property - 25+ patents - but he is even wealthier in business experience. He described a life of enterprise that has merged opportunity and threat successfully for decades. It was a truly wonderful story that I learned a great deal from.

What also struck me later that if you looked back on the history of how their Sielaff Corporation had to innovate and respond to new market conditions it would not look like a straight line.

Now imagine if you were starting a new business and you were asked to create a formal business plan using the map Ulrich and Alex described. Build in all the zigs-and-zags. Chart out all those shifts and turns the Sielaff Corp. had to take to make opportunities out of change - rapid, unanticipated shifts in products, markets and globalization just to name a few.

That kind of business plan map - for a new or emerging small business - would not go over well with people lending money or investing.

However, there is a great lesson in the Sielaff story for startups and newly emerging enterprises. Ulrich and Alex have created extensive social networks (the face-to-face kind) within their industry. They stay at the leading edge of manufacturing by building deep knowledge and respect for all their stakeholders, and really great design into every part of their enterprise.

The Sielaffs succeed and innovate because they have a wide, proactive knowledge of their field and can change wisely and quickly, as necessary.

Looking backwards, that probably didn't produce the kind of business plan map Ulrich would have written at the beginning of his enterprise. However, what an admirable and successful place it took them.

The Eisenhower quote I bring in often goes like this, "Plans are nothing; planning is everything."

To me this means that you must thoroughly research as many possible inputs to your endeavor as possible. You will indeed craft a plan based on what you learn. But as the story goes, it's the journey that's more important than the destination.

The plan you design is typically not the one that happens. What will determine if you grow or fade is your knowledge, resources and love of your field. Your ability to survive and grow will depend on your answer to that challenge. But that same challenge is also your greatest opportunity as Ulrich and Eisenhower and countless legions of small businesses can attest. Building your skill and the ability to adapt rapidly and wisely will be your greatest resource.

The strongest advice I can share with any new startup or emerging enterprise regarding business planning is to fill the toolkit with as much knowledge and information about your entire field, not just the specific slice you will compete in. Learn widely about every detail, every subset of the field you will be working in. Create systems to store incoming data. Build in processes to continuously search out new resources.

Take good notes. They will serve you well as your own business map develops. I promise.

More important, Ulrich and Eisenhower promise.

Happy planning. Enjoy the journey.


The Sielaff Corporation, Mineral Point, WI

Labels: business plans, entrepreneurship, new product development, platforms, slow startups, startups

Many people want to start their own enterprise but they never begin.

This is due to a variety of personal reasons of course. One very common reason I've seen over the years is that people just don't give themselves permission to try.

They are put off by all the language of commerce - market research and business plans and financing and on and on. It all sounds like too much to learn.

These planning steps are needed of course, especially as the organizations people plan grow more complex and expensive.

However, most people considering entering this fray can do a self-funded, slow startup with little or no money. You can also start your own enterprise in a way that you can fit into your own time schedule, if you have realistic expectations for growth.

That leaves only the fear of the unknown as the main reason people don't give themselves permission to try.

Give yourself that permission and take the first steps.

The only thing you have to lose - if you do this right - is your nagging feeling that you should have tried to start your own business.

Of course the first steps should be small steps. Some of them will be wrong. As long as they don't cost much money you will be smarter and better ready for the steps that come after that.

Do not give up on your dream of starting your own enterprise. There is lots of help available. There are mentors. There is training. There are free and low cost tools available that will connect you to knowledge, customers and possibilities almost without limit. This is the renaissance age of entrepreneurship, and it's just beginning.

Give yourself permission. You can do it.

Labels: bootstrapping, entrepreneurship, slow startups

The magazine Country Today did a nice piece on the new Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen recently.

I know I'm pretty enthusiastic about the entrepreneurship possibilities of local foods, but Editor Jim Massey caught me bubbling it seems. And I thought I was toning it down.

New, sustainable enterprises and regional food systems can be created to profitably serve the rapidly growing market for local foods.

Our new Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen, operated by the Hodan Center, will be a piece of that puzzle. The work Mark Olson and friends have created with the Driftless Foods prototype will surely be a vital and important prototype for larger regional food system replications.

These are not the ONLY pieces of the puzzle. A lot of parts go into a system. These are just our contributions to the discussion. We're doing experiments to help build reproducible regional food systems. The plan is to take that knowledge and help reproduce it with local groups working in their own foodsheds to create platforms for local foods entrepreneurship.

Here's a sampling from the Country Today article…

"Rick Terrien bubbles with enthusiasm when he talks about the economic development possibilities a new community kitchen will bring to Iowa County.

Terrien is so enthusiastic about the project that he's moving his economic development office into the building.

'This is such a fabulous story. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to it,' he said."

What I think is so compelling about our new Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen, The Farm Market Kitchen in Algoma, and others that will be opening soon, is the opportunity to do so much good in so many directions.

Talked with John Aue from Butter Mountain organic potatoes this morning at the market about this. Between the Innovation Kitchen and Driftless Foods, we can potentially create possibilities for new, young farmers to come on line and food entrepreneurs to have easier, affordable access to the infrastructure, both hard (buildings and equipment) and soft (branding, marketing and pre-built sales channels). Along the way we can help existing farmers experiment in diversifying some of their operations, build in conservation enhancements, and get some cash flow going back towards our farmers and our rural communities.

These experiments won't get everything right. There will be value knowing what doesn't work also. However, I'm convinced the Driftless Foods project will become a replicable prototype for regional food systems. I'm also convinced that the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen will open up new small-scale local foods processing opportunities that can be replicated elsewhere. I believe these opportunities can be profitable for all involved, especially the lucky consumers!

Mark Olson always says, 'There is genius in action'. Yep.


The Country Today article by Editor Jim Massey

Innovation Kitchen link at the new Iowa County EDC web site.

Butter Mountain organic specialty potatoes

The Farm Market Kitchen in Algoma, WI

Photo is of the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen on Dec. 11, 2009. Getting closer!

Labels: artisan food processing, Driftless Foods, entrepreneurship, Innovation Kitchen, slow money, slow startups, Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen

A friend sent me to a good Business Week article ("Entrepreneurs Keep the Local Food Movement Hot", by John Tozzi, Dec. 18, 2009) discussing a new study called "Community Food Enterprise: Local Success in a Global Marketplace". The study created multiple case studies focusing on the economic and community benefits of local and regional food enterprises.

I like that this study includes a focus on local ownership of food businesses. Developing local ownership of local food infrastructure is at the core of the Driftless project.

Here's what Woody Tasch from Slow Money has to say on the subject: "Advocates for local food say success depends on nurturing an interlocking network of small companies that produce, process, distribute, and sell food." Tasch continues," "We as a society and as an economy need to start optimizing for a large number of small things, not just relying on a small number of large things."

The study was a project of the Wallace Foundation, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

Here is an overview: "The local food movement is now spreading globally, yet is not well understood. To many, local food is exclusively about proximity, with discriminating consumers demanding higher quality food grown, caught, processed, cooked, and sold by people they know and trust. But an equally important part of local food is local ownership of food businesses. This report is about the full range of locally owned businesses involved in food, whether they are small or big, whether they are primary producers or manufacturers or retailers, whether their focus is local or global markets. We call these businesses community food enterprises (CFEs)."

"This report provides a detailed field report on the performance of 24 CFEs, half inside the United States and half international. We show that CFEs represent a huge diversity of legal forms, scales, activities, and designs."

They found 15 strategies for creating success consistent with their community character:

-Hard Work
-Innovation
-Local Delivery
-Aggregation
-Vertical Integration
-Shareholder Loyalty
-Speed
-Better Access
-Better Taste
-Better Story
-Better Stewardship
-Better Service
-Revitalizing Local Economies
-More Community Spirit
-More Social Change

As almost 5 years of posts on this blog will attest, this list above matches sustainable work practices I know to work.

I have not finished the full report, but this looks to be a wonderful effort toward identifying measurable economic and social benefit that arises from the development of Community Food Enterprises (CFEs). The individual case study I've been paying close attention to and highly recommend is their "Zingerman Community of Businesses".

As we work on our CFEs in the Iowa County area in the coming year, - especially the Driftless project - this kind of empirical support will be highly valuable.

There is a strong demand for local and regional foods and not enough infrastructure to help suppliers meet that demand.

Local foods and regional food systems are emerging as one of the hottest of all topics in economic development. What a time to be a local foods entrepreneur, investor, or - best of all - consumer!

Happy New Year 2010!


Community Food Enterprise report

Business Week Article, Entrepreneurs Keep the Local Food Movement Hot.

Slow Money Alliance

Thanks for the Business Week article tip to Neil Lerner, a friend and Director of the Madison area Small Business Development Center.

.

Labels: artisan food processing, business plans, entrepreneurship, new product development, slow money, slow startups

A new Business Week article - Ben Franklin Where Are You? - is about the United States falling behind in the global patent race.

The article in the Dec. 28, 2009 issue by Michael Arndt documents the fact that in 2009 for the first time non-Americans were granted more U.S. patents than resident inventors.

The body of the article focuses on the difficulties universities and high tech centers are facing in the patent race. However, the headline (celebrating Ben Franklin) highlights our history as independent innovators.

It's my opinion that this kind of citizen innovation and entrepreneurship is more alive and flourishing than I've ever seen in decades of work in the field. In fact I think the world is full of Ben Franklins, and that the age of the independent entrepreneur and inventor is just arriving.

I think a difference between an independent inventor and those in universities and corporate labs is that independent inventors work to solve very specific problems not create new technologies.

Dave and I didn't have any budget to launch or grow our company. We had values that were important to us and each of us had a skill set that built on the other person's strengths.

We also knew some really cool ways to solve some very specific problems. The fact that new technologies emerged from this and were taken through the intellectual property process was an afterthought.

The fact that the rest of the world is surpassing the United States in patents is a tribute to the value placed on ever increasing innovation by governments and societies worldwide. Much of the world seems to get it that continuous, sustainable innovation is the only way forward.

So, my favorite independent innovation story from the last startup Dave and I founded…

One of the world's leading satellite and space manufacturing firms, Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne, recently gutted their two satellite and space manufacturing plants in California and retrofitted them from the ground up with worldwide 'best of class' equipment. Their corporate mantra is: "Pure and simple, we are the best at what's new."

Rocketdyne chose to recycle their manufacturing fluids using inventions Dave and I created. We worked out these ideas far from corporate labs and universities.

It was my last major sale for our company. I really miss that work.

Thank you Pratt and Whitney! The fact that you chose our inventions as the 'best of what's new' for fluid recycling in 21st century space manufacturing is a lifelong honor for an independent inventor.

For those of you working in the trenches, let me say that there are big firms and important organizations looking for better ideas and ways to innovate. Even when you're doubting your own capability to execute or to reach those markets, press on. The world needs you, your ideas, and your work. Like Pratt & Whitney, keep working to be the best at what's new.

Happy Holidays 2009!


Photo courtesy of Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne. Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-110)

Business Week article, Ben Franklin Where Are you?. Online edition Dec. 17, 2009. Print edition Dec. 28th and Jan. 4th.

Our first patent (patent number 6,183,654). I wrote this patent and did the patent drawings. For our subsequent inventions, we turned this process over to our wonderful patent attorney Dr. Jaen Andrews - Thank you Dr. Jaen!

Labels: business partners, entrepreneurship, green tech, innovation, intellectual property, startups

The idea I've been working on this year is that it's possible to build economic development landscapes. That is, design systems that let people enter the process of economic development at multiple points. You don't plant a tree or two. You try to create a sustainable landscape in which a wide range of interrelated opportunities for growth exist.

In my current job, because of the amazing assets we have in place, I'm working to make Iowa County a premier location to learn about and participate in agriculture and local foods entrepreneurship.

Our Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen will allow beginning food entrepreneurs to get into the game professionally, with greatly lowered barriers to entry.

Existing small food enterprises can use the kitchen to reach new, higher levels of quality, sales and profitability.

At this end of the landscape spectrum there will be many, many points of entry for individuals and small businesses.

At the other end of this spectrum the Driftless Foods project is moving forward. This has felt like the best startup idea I've ever seen since the first moments that Mark and I started talking.

Driftless Foods offers a chance for some serious meta-level good. There is a strong component to helping farmers stay on their farms by building the infrastructure they need to process local foods at a scale that can profitably support regions. It's a way to help people to get into farming and to help existing farmers securely diversify their sources of income.

The project recently got a very nice recommendation from the Wisconsin Secretary of Agriculture, Mr. Rod Nilsestuen.

"The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection strongly supports Driftless Foods and The Iowa County Economic Development Corporation in their efforts to create a vegetable processing and freezing facility.

A facility such as this will help meet the growing demand for locally grown foods, a demand that is increasingly important to the vitality of Wisconsin agriculture.

I firmly believe that Wisconsin's future is tied to the success of our agricultural sector, and the success of that sector depends on innovation and diversity. We need to keep farmland in farming and farm families on their farms. This project can help us do both. It also creates new job opportunities in your region and opens new economic development possibilities.

I can also see in this project the opportunity to create a model for processing locally grown foods that other communities can follow. This model promises to celebrate local foods, be profitable, and return value directly to the producers, the communities they live in, and the regions that support them."

What a wonderful, insightful show of support. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary!

So with the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen opening at one end of the spectrum and Driftless Foods launching at the other end of the spectrum, we've got a fairly diverse development landscape underway.

In the middle of that spectrum are some really delightful co-conspirators helping to knit this effort together.

We met today to plan the first information sessions for our regional growers. This will all take varying amounts of time. The Innovation Kitchen will be open in the Spring for food processing on a small to moderate scale. For the larger scale of Driftless Foods growers need to plan well in advance for joining this kind of enterprise.

We will have 3 informational meetings focusing on Driftless Foods in January and February. Because this is a diversified effort, we will also be able to support interested growers with information about the Innovation Kitchen.

The first two dates are not quite set, but the details for the third meeting are in place. We will dedicate the February 24th Entrepreneur Club meeting in Dodgeville to this grower information session. I'll post details below.

So, the development landscape grows across the spectrum and we can soon begin inviting people in.

This has been an amazing year watching and learning from this experiment in economic development landscapes.



Letter of support from Wisconsin Secretary of Agriculture Rod Nilsestuen

Link to the Iowa County Entrepreneur and Inventor Club page. Our Feb. 24th meeting will focus on opportunities for regional growers being created by the Driftless Foods project.

Photos are from our magical Shake Rag Alley in Mineral Point. Our EDC was able to host the quarterly meeting of the Thrive Economic Development Pros at Shake Rag Alley last Friday. Our meeting was in the replica 1840s carpenter's cabinet shop. Karla and her great team had it beautifully decorated to receive area children for Santa's visit the next day so the atmosphere was great. Thanks to all who came and shared beautiful Iowa County with us!

Mark Olson and Renaissance Farm

Labels: artisan food processing, Driftless Foods, entrepreneurship, new product development, platforms, Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen

The opportunity for entrepreneurship in local and regional foods surpasses anything I've seen in my 35+ year career as a working entrepreneur. It's like software, only sustainable.

In the world of local and regional foods there is a wildly expanding demand and an impossibly small capacity to supply this demand. The supply side - the people who grow and process these local foods - need help to get to a scale that is sufficient to begin meeting this demand.

It's a big subject with serious economic development implications for rural and urban areas worldwide.

My goal is to help launch our new Innovation Kitchen efficiently and with high value for all involved. I'm going to need to convey a lot of information across a wide variety of subject areas as clearly as I can.

That's why I took the Wisconsin Acidified Foods Training Course and passed my exams so as to be certified, as trained in: "microbiology of canned foods, principles of acidified foods, thermal processing, food process sanitation, facilities requirements, state and federal regulations, record keeping and process monitoring."

Not everyone will need this course to become an artisan food processor but many will. For anyone in Wisconsin thinking about this, I urge you to take this course (linked below). It's taught by Dr. Barbara Ingham, from the Department of Food Science at the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Ingham teaches this course 6 or 7 times per year around the state.

I could not recommend this course any higher if you are considering any kind of artisan food enterprise in Wisconsin.

All foods with any water content have a pH. This measures the acidity of that food. A pH of 4.6 is the magic number. Foods that are pH 4.6 or lower have enough acidic content to be assured of safety. Shelf stability of acidified canned foods is ensured by a vacuum seal and adequate thermal processing.

Artisan food entrepreneurs utilizing these kinds of foods who want to work from the Innovation Kitchen will need to pass these exams first. After taking this course I sincerely believe that this is not some kind of onerous intervention into free enterprise. Just the opposite. Being part of a system like this - one that inspires the highest quality, safest and most interesting food products is a branding windfall.

If you have an interest in this subject, this course is not only fun, but it is densely packed with information that Dr. Ingham shares in ways that are understandable and easy to remember. Also the take-away binders contain printouts of everything relevant to your journey as an acidified foods for later reference.

We were also very fortunate to have Dave Steinhardt, who is a Food Safety Supervisor with the WI Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP). Dave answered a wide range of questions regarding the inspection protocols that our artisan food processors will need to follow when working in the Innovation Kitchen.

This was a wonderful course. I can't recommend it highly enough.

For those of you in other areas, I would strongly recommend you search out this kind of training. It is in your own best interests. You will create better food products, and you will have a better business because of it.

Not all processors will need this kind of course. Some may need even more advanced courses, depending on the food. Some processors may require less training. My point is that you can't just wander into the subject and open up shop. You'll need to find out what training is needed and learn how to work in a community-access processing kitchen. It's not hard. You just have to do it, for all the right reasons.

So, back to the start. I believe there is a terrific entrepreneurship opportunity in artisan food processing, especially with a focus on local and regional foods.

If you have an interest in this field, start organizing yourself to get in the game. Costs to enter are low, demand is high, there appears to be a good opportunity for profit and - if this course is an indication - artisan food processing can be a lot of fun.


Download the 2010 Wisconsin Acidified Canned Foods Training for Small Food Processors brochure and registration form. PDF format. 164 KB

Labels: artisan food processing, bootstrapping, entrepreneurship, Innovation Kitchen, slow startups, startups

This story ran in the The Dodgeville (WI) Chronicle November 19, 2009. The article is not yet on line. Subscribe to the Dodgeville Chronicle by calling 608 935 2331

Food Innovation Kitchen will help launch new businesses

Published November 19, 2009

JEAN BERNS JONES

Iowa County will soon become home to one of the most creative economic development projects in the country - The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen - which has the potential for starting and growing hundreds of unique small businesses.

The Innovation Kitchen is a new, state certified food processing facility owned by the Hodan Center. It will also be available for public access, as a shared use community processing and marketing kitchen. Foods made here can legally be sold to the public.

The Hodan Center broke ground for the 10,000 square foot processing and retail facility four months ago at its previous Dairy Queen/Miners Point property in Mineral Point. Currently under construction, it is expected to open in early 2010.

"The kitchen will be available on an hourly rental basis to food entrepreneurs and small businesses," explained Rick Terrien, Executive Director of the Iowa County Area Economic Development Corporation (ICAEDC). The community shared-use portion of the project is being coordinated and marketed by the ICAEDC.

"We have an agreement that I'll do the entrepreneurship and business work, and the Hodan Center will do all of the kitchen work," Terrien said.

"The Hodan Center has created varied work opportunities for the client-employees they serve," he added. " Among other things, they have developed a line of their own food products. - dry goods, wet gods, gift baskets, and other things, - called 'Papa Pat's' Their products are in about 700 stores in 26 states. They've gotten so good at doing this, they ran out of space. It's an Iowa County economic development success story."

Last year The Hodan Center requested a Community Development Block Grant for the kitchen from the Wisconsin Department of Commerce. They were awarded a grant for $750,000.

Community access kitchens have been tried at various places in Wisconsin. The most successful model is a ten year-old venture in Algoma, called The Farm Market Kitchen.

"They have a small kitchen with 80 food businesses. Chocolatiers, bakers, people making mixes, sauces and salsas come from four counties away to process foods and start businesses there," Terrien said. "Most of them come in the evenings, because they are doing their small business start-up in addition to their day jobs."

"A great benefit for this project in Iowa County is that we have our own anchor tenant (Hodan Center) and the tenant already has people to work there, along with knowledge and experience in food processing," he said.

The Hodan Center client-employees will use the kitchen 5 days a week for their own products. Evenings and weekends it will be available to regional food entrepreneurs for starting or expanding their food businesses.

"In 35 years as an entrepreneur, I've never seen an easier or more affordable opportunity for starting your own small business than this Innovation Kitchen," Terrien said enthusiastically. His experience ranges from teaching basic business start-ups to having businesses with clients on six continents.

Now he is working out the kitchen details with Annette Pierce, Food Service Administrator at Hodan Center. The Hodan Center plans to offer its services to kitchen renters at an affordable price, and can help with supplying discounted ingredients, if entrepreneurs wish.

There are five different ways for food entrepreneurs to access the kitchen. On the most basic end of the spectrum are people who want to bring in their own ingredients, do all of the work, package their products at the kitchen site and sell it there. The front portion of the building will serve as a retail display area for products made by The Hodan Center and the entrepreneurs.

On the other end of the spectrum are people who want to have a food processing business without doing the work. They have the option of handing The Hodan Center a recipe which its client-employees would produce, package and label with the entrepreneur's own logo. The other options range between these two extremes.

"People can do a slow start-up with this. They don't have to be Donald Trump," Terrien said. "They can bring an idea to my office and I'll show them a basic, entry level business plan. I'll help them understand the possibilities and their responsibilities."

Labels: entrepreneurship, slow startups, startups

These posts have consistently tried to advocate for sustainable, repeatable business practices.

This brings me back often to Tom Peters. I am thrilled to see Tom has a new book coming out in early 2010. Tom Peters is at the top of my list of transformative business thinkers.

His new book is called "The Little BIG Things". Sounds like Tom at his best. He is building his current presentations around what he calls "The Eight Courtesies". I'll highlight them below. Buy the book.

Yes, the economy is awful and people are getting hurt badly, but it doesn't mean that we can't explore options for finding a way forward. There are opportunities for 'the rest of us' to start and grow new and emerging enterprises. I have a powerful sense that new kinds of local and regional trade will continue to emerge worldwide for the foreseeable future. It's happening from Australia to the West Bank, to Avoca, WI, and to China (hello Yongchao!).

There are deep and fruitful opportunities here. I am increasingly seeing my immediate contribution to the subject being enterprise creation through local foods.

Individually, these new enterprises may not seem Wall Street worthy, but in aggregate they represent a lot of positive, sustainable, long-term value for economic development on Main Streets and across regions.

So how do you participate? Think you've got to be some kind of uber-trained CEO type to run a new enterprise effectively? Think again.

It's nothing of the sort. You can do it. You DO do it now in other areas of your life. After 35+ years of entrepreneurship I couldn't have described effective entrepreneurship any better than Tom Peters is doing right now.

Here are the eight most important management tools Tom prescribes in The Little BIG Things.

"Epigraph:

Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart.—Henry Clay

The 'Eight Courtesies'

1. Stay in touch. (MBWA: Management By Wandering Around)

2. Invest in relationships. (Make friends. Obsess.)

3. Listen. (Respect. Learn. Student. PROFESSIONAL. Sustainable Competitive Advantage #1)

4. Ask. (Engage. Inspire. Consult. React.)

5. Thank. (Appreciate. Acknowledge.)

6. Network......

7. Apologize. (Unequivocal. Rectify. Over-react. Forgive.)

8. Practice thoughtfulness. (Kindness is free. This is ... STRATEGIC.)"


You heard it here: The Renaissance age of entrepreneurship is just beginning. Remember Tom's 'Eight Courtesies' as you journey.

You can do this friend. Start. Engage. Be courteous. Enjoy.


Eight Courtesies: From TP blog 11/24/09

I'm going to buy this book: The Little BIG Things. New book by Tom Peters out February 2010

Labels: boomers, bootstrapping, business partners, business plans, entrepreneurship, new product development, open source economic development, sales tales, slow startups, startups, Tom Peters

My friend Mark Olson and I, with a scary-smart group of emerging friends, have been working out possibilities for our Iowa County initiative. This is an economic development prototype to build interrelated local food processing clusters, operated at a scale to meet institutional demand. These facilities will be located strategically across rural economies and organized in a way that is mutually self-supportive. The design of this system moves the bulk of the revenue through the management and production levels, delivering it to the producers and their communities. There is a link at the end to the summary white paper about this initiative that we presented at the Slow Money Institute in Madison this summer.

To me, creating experiments in all kinds of regional food systems is needed. This is a startup effort and startups are not straight-line endeavors. Stuff needs to get learned. Policies and procedures need to get worked out. That doesn't mean go slow. It means to hurry up. Let's make our mistakes early, often, and inexpensively. Our Iowa County / Driftless Foods initiative is a startup designed to to develop and document the knowledge needed take the next steps.

With that base in place, our goal is replication elsewhere: finding ways to deploy successful regional food systems models in other places and at bigger scales.

I had a great meeting this week with a nearby multi-state region of 10 to 15 counties. This may become an opportunity to replicate the Iowa County prototype in a larger, more diverse region sooner than later. I've got some great new friends across this area. I am not only confident, but flat-out excited that we could knit together a world-changing leadership team for this project. Our goal is to create a reproducible regional food system, this time at a bigger scale. The idea is that a successful multi-county (and especially multi-state) model would be one that could be replicated nationally in short order.

Of course, every area will have its own ag (and non ag) resources to contribute to these regional systems. However, I believe the process of organizing and deploying regional food systems is what's critical for making them successful and reproducible. That's at the heart of what is valuable here.

And, to walk-the-walk, I had a chance this week to say what I thought local food processing clusters most needed right now in response to a question from people who could make my answer happen. I had a chance to ask for a lot of money but (per last week's post) I actually said enabling legislation.

On first review I was sure I should have said money, mostly because it's likely true. However, if regional food systems are to be made replicable, they really need some meta support, like enabling legislation, that will give people working on local food initiatives some actual tools to help them move the discussion forward. We need to quit talking about this and take some action steps. We need to create opportunities, enable infrastructure, build markets, create jobs and jump start economic development by nurturing market demand and giving our entrepreneurs a stable platform to grow from.

I remember the early days of recycled paper. It was a good idea that everyone talked about but was stuck in kind of a niche market of early adopters. When the Wisconsin government decided to emphasize the use of recycled paper in its purchasing, that business took off and we've never looked back.

I would suggest that we don't need more requirements, but if the enabling legislation were to just say that opportunities to utilize locally grown and locally processed foods should be explored, it would be huge. The locally processed language would give permission and support to people within local institutions - schools, hospitals, etc. - to see what they can do with local foods. Their buying power will ultimately most enable the success of this process. I would not make these institutions buy locally grown and locally processed foods. I would make it easier for them to do.

If the enabling legislation just indicated that locally grown and locally processed foods were included as a recommendation, but not a requirement, many valuable interests could be served, bypassing potential battle lines.

So, a really wonderful week for local foods processing. Future's so bright… I gotta wear shades. Based on what we learned this week we're planning on ramping up the pace of the rollout of our Iowa County initiative.

As my friend Mark always signs off, be well.


Download PDF white paper on our local food processing initiative first presented to the Slow Money Institute gathering in Madison this summer.

A great interview with Salli Martyniak of Forward Community Investments and Wally Orzechowski of Southwest Wisconsin Community Action Program about community investing. Wally is a friend and is a leader in our team rolling out the Driftless Foods / Iowa County initiative. Salli is a new friend who leads one of the most valuable enterprises I've come across in any field, Forward Community Investments

An interview with Mark Olson about his wonderful Renaissance Farm and adding value to agriculture.

Labels: bootstrapping, business plans, entrepreneurship, innovation, new product development, open source economic development, platforms, slow money, slow startups, startups

First, a great day this week meeting with the Speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, Mike Sheridan. The Speaker is on my left in the photo. On my right is my friend and our State Representative Steve Hilgenberg.

Next, I thoroughly enjoyed my presentation to the Wisconsin Economic Development Association gathering this past Monday.

The discussion at the end of these talks is always the best part. I was asked a long-standing question that is universal: Are entrepreneurs born or can they be made?

I took the obvious route and said yes.

Too easy. I also didn't get the answer right.

Entrepreneurs are not born or made. Entrepreneurs are enabled.

We can't make people do this stuff, but we certainly can make it easier for those that want to.

It's my opinion that we need better entrepreneurship infrastructure of all kinds. That's why I'm so excited about the almost endless possibilities for new business platforms that our Innovation Kitchen in Mineral Point will enable. Ditto for the local foods processing cluster we're designing and building across Iowa County and beyond. New platforms for creating value. Easier ways for people to know their farmers and food processors. Easier paths to value for all involved.

Entrepreneurs are not born or made. Entrepreneurs are enabled.

So, what does that mean in the trenches?

I learned a new term of art (for me anyway) that is one key tool for enabling entrepreneurs: enabling legislation. Enabling legislation isn't a tool like a hammer or a food processing plant. It's language used in law and regulation that helps something desirable happen.

I've got 3 words that I think could change economic development in rural areas dramatically. These three words could be inserted into (enabling) legislation so that it would create an outcome everyone wants. Such as enabling entrepreneurship and local foods.

In many states, including Wisconsin, there is legislation in the works that would guide institutional buying to build in a preference for locally grown food. I applaud that but I would insert my three words: a preference for locally grown and locally processed food.

You've seen this broken model in other business sectors… You produce a product. You ship it out of the region at low prices for value to be added. Then you buy your own stuff back at high prices. Haven't we heard this story long enough?

So, if you are a person out there who is working on local foods initiatives, think about adding one more layer to the equation. Include 'and locally processed' into your descriptions. Three simple words could lead to wonderful rural economic development possibilities. How anyone defines 'local' is up to them, of course, but there needn't be one answer. Different communities at local, state and regional levels can define what's right for them, and we can all have a good food experience figuring it out.

Creating appropriate scale economic infrastructure to support agriculture and rural economies benefits all people in a region. If regions are to prosper, rural communities must be included. Thriving rural economies support and enrich urban economies. Without both, regions stagnate.

We need to enable our local growers and food entrepreneurs a launch path to join the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food (KYF2) movement, sponsored by the White House (Thank you Mrs. Obama!) and the USDA.

We need to enable entrepreneurship of all flavors with as many tools as we can muster.

There is always economic chaos and we are entering an era of even faster change, but I'm a person who believes that, in general, humanity will continue to re-emerge into better lives with increasing value and dignity for continuously-increasing numbers of us.

Entrepreneurs are not born or made. Entrepreneurs are enabled.

You can do it. Wherever you are personally in this discussion, I urge you to enable and to be enabled by the possibilities of entrepreneurship. Let's go. The world needs you!



Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food (KYF2)

Labels: bootstrapping, entrepreneurship, innovation, slow startups, startups

I am really looking forward to a presentation I get to share with the Wisconsin Economic Development Association (WEDA) this coming Monday evening, Nov. 9. They have asked me to discuss opening a new economic development organization.

I am coming up on my first anniversary as an economic developer in rural Wisconsin.

On my first day on the job, Dec. 1, 2008, I was sitting in a vacant conference room in Dodgeville, WI. I had been shoveling info into a newly cloned database as fast as I could all day. I turned on the radio that evening as I set up to leave. I learned that a recession was officially declared to be underway. That day the Dow Jones fell almost 700 points, the 4th biggest drop in its history. To welcome me to my new gig, there was a whopper snowstorm clogging up all of the upper Midwest. Welcome to economic development.

For my talk on Monday I have limited expertise to share about economic development theory but I certainly can share what its like to take on this kind of opportunity as a working entrepreneur.

In short, there are deep and profound opportunities available in our rural and urban economies right now. What's needed now are small, measurable action steps. If we're to create a new and better economy we need to launch as many intelligent experiments as possible, learn from them, and repeat.

I'm convinced our Iowa County initiative is a valuable experiment in this mix. All around us there are big, amorphous, meta discussions underway about improving economic development. But that's all they typically are. Discussions.

Mark Olson and I had a wonderful meeting this week with a gentleman who helps lead USDA Rural Development in Wisconsin. He shared with us a really compelling story about his early work in community development that involved red lining in poor neighborhoods. Their team was most successful when they restricted their organizing and development efforts to a geographically limited footprint. When they did that, their efforts succeeded. They could impose timelines, measurement metrics and then get on with it. When problems arose, they had a manageable scope to deal with. When their peers and managers tried to design 'more efficient' experiments in larger geographic areas, valuable data was lost and the efforts to make things better inevitably failed.

That's why I'm so pumped up about this county scale experiment Mark and I are working on. If it leaks into neighboring counties as we roll it out, all the better. Regions should be knit together by this kind of work.

What's valuable is that we will have a geography in which real experiments can be run and real meaning can be extracted. I want something that works and that's reproducible.

If something like this can't be made to work in one county, it can't be made to work in 5 or 20 or 72 counties. We're preparing a small, smart action step to help take those first steps.

Let the studies follow (informed) action. I want to make well-reasoned, inexpensive mistakes and learn. One foot in front of the other stuff, but for goodness sake, let's do something. Let's put economic development in service to the people who need it, not those who just want to talk about it.

I am very impressed by the potential for USDA Rural Development in Wisconsin to make a national impact. Their interest in our experiment is exciting.




USDA Rural Development, Wisconsin

I made new friends this week who work with Forward Community Investments. This is a wonderful organization that works with nonprofits in Wisconsin to help them make strategic financial decisions and build their financial capacity for greater success. They are holding a cool looking community investing conference on November 19th, in Madison.

I've also made new friends in the Austin, TX area bootstrapping group. I am delighted to be included in their doings. If you are in the Austin area there is a good looking gathering on Monday evening 11/9.

Labels: bootstrapping, business plans, entrepreneurship, innovation, open source economic development, slow money, startups