Can The ‘Airbnb Of Kitchens’ Give Local Food Economies A Boost?

A woman filling jars.

The hardest part of starting a new food business should be in perfecting the secret recipe. For many entrepreneurial cooks though, the tough times come when searching for a space to legally make and sell their food. Commercial kitchen space, with stainless steel counters, industrial appliances meeting food safety regulations and appropriately-sized sinks, can be…

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The end of a drought for KCMO ‘food desert’?

vegetable display at Hen House

Residents living just south of downtown Kansas City, Missouri, might get a grocery store after all. Truman Medical Centers disappointed people in and around the Beacon Hill and Longfellow neighborhoods when, in mid-2015, it nixed plans to build a supermarket on the northeast corner of 27th Street and Troost Avenue. The project had been in the…

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Is the local-food movement growing up?

After more than a decade of explosive growth in the local food economy, the most visible portion of food sales within that sector has seen a slowdown. A new report from the U.S. Department ofAgriculture shows the growth of sales of local food at farmers markets, farm stands and through CSA models has lost momentum. Even the rate of growth in the number of farmers markets nationwide has slowed in recent years, rising just 1.5 percent from 2013 to 2014, after several years of rapid growth. But that’s not necessarily bad news for farmers. In fact, it could mean the entire local food movement is growing up.

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