Innovation Kitchen rock stars. Go YumButter!

My friends Matt and Adrian are smart food entrepreneurs who are fun to work with. 

Matt and I have talked about this since it was just a gleam in his eye.  Now he and Adrian are lighting up the artisan food world and I couldn't be prouder.

They are featured in this month's Martha Stewart Living magazine and they have an exciting Kickstarter campaign underway you should check out.

The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen has supported the development of a number of great foods from many entrepreneurs and regional farms.   We are currently producing and packaging Matt and Adrian's Yumbutters.  A wonderful win-win.  Together we're making great food and important regional jobs.

Innovation Kitchen rock stars!


Yumbutter web site

Article about Martha Stewart meeting Yumbutter 

YumbutterGO's Kickstarter campaign

Support Yumbutter's Kickstarter campaign with just 3 clicks

Farms, food and the future

This is an amazing time to be considering careers and new businesses in the food world.

The University of Wisconsin National Agri-Marketing Association visited the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen last week.

It was exciting discussion to consider the wide ranging opportunities these young people have waiting for them in food and agriculture.

Thanks for a great visit!

Farms, food and the future.  These young people inspire me!

"Farm-to-Institution: Next Steps in Supporting Local Food Infrastructure"

If you want regional food systems to work you have to include professionally certified small-batch food processing at a regional scale. 

Good new article:  "Fruit gives way to jam, tomatoes become sauce, vegetables are pickled, relished and frozen. Seasonality, and our responses to it, may be the single most defining characteristic of local food. And, methods of processing, preserving and adding value are emerging as an important part of the opportunity and challenge"

"Build Infrastructure and Develop Networks: In order to sell to institutions, farmers need to address product availability, seasonality, quality, and consistency, as well as the sales, distribution, processing and handling needs of institutions. U.S. food infrastructure is better equipped to deal with larger farms and longer supply chains. So, smaller farms aimed at localized sales often do not have the ability to wash, chop, pack or freeze their products in order to accommodate institutional demands."

Regional systems need support networks and year-round sales to succeed.

From Farm to institution:  Next Steps in Supporting Local Food Infrastructure. At HuffingtonPost.com  10/25/13 

Thanks to Michael Hoadley at FEWZION for the link.

Tomatoes are 'Sweet Olive' that we grew along with 'Sungolds' in our garden this year.  Both great producers.