About The Heartland Food Network

Mission:  Heartland Food Network strives to increase the amount of local foods sold in Minnesota every year. We believe that everybody deserves fresh, locally grown food, and we strive to increase access to this food for all Minnesotans.

How We Work: We work directly with Minnesotan chefs, caterers, colleges, and other food service professionals to help them purchase and use more locally grown ingredients in their establishments.

We recognize that purchasing and using local food can be a new experience for some chefs. Therefore, we provide a “toolkit” of information to help break down barriers to buying local food.

• Education: Training and technical assistance events to help chefs buy local, a written Guide to Buying Local Food, tips and best practices for using local food
• Connections: We connect chefs to other chefs and to farmers and food distributors that sell local food
• Knowledge sharing: We strive to facilitate learning and knowledge sharing by connecting chefs who are “new to local” with those that currently use local for  “peer-to-peer” learning

In 2010, thanks to funding from the USDA Specialty Crop Block Grant Program and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture Minnesota Grown Program, we will be hosting several local food learning days to facilitate information exchange among chefs. These workshops, which will be held in the spring and summer of 2010, will connect chefs with practical information and resources to help them start using local food in their establishments.

• Chef-to-Chef Local Learning Day in the Twin Cities: This event will bring together experienced “local food” chefs with those that are new to using local. Chefs, government representatives, local food distributors, and farmers will be there to offer a range of resources to chefs looking to buy local foods. See Chef-to-Chef Local Food Learning Day page link to new page when created

• College Campus Trainings: We will host trainings for college campus cafeterias to help them use more local food: These will bring together campus cafeteria chefs, farmers, food distributors, and school administrators who wish to use more local foods in their cafeterias. See College Campus Trainings Page link to new page when created

• Guide to Using Local: We will write and publish a Guide to Using Local Food in Food Service, which will be a written guide book for chefs and food service buyers on buying and using local food, to be published in Fall 2010. See Guide to Buying Local link to new page when created

For more information, please contact:
Annalisa Hultberg
Heartland Food Network Coordinator
ahultberg@mnproject.org
615-789-3328