About The Heartland Food Network

Mission: The Heartland Food Network strives to promote the increased consumption of local foods in Minnesota every year. We believe that everybody deserves fresh, locally grown food, and we work to increase access to this food for all Minnesotans. We support local farmers by increasing the demand for fresh, local products in establishments across the state.

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 and buyers. Therefore, we provide a “toolkit” of information to help break down barriers to buying local food. We have three basic components to our work:

• 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 Days: These events bring together experienced “local food” chefs with those that are new to using local, farmers, and food distributors to promote knowledge sharing and connections. Our first event on 3/22/10 at the Craftsman was a success- over 40 chefs gathered to hear about using local food in their kitchens. Read a piece by Heavy Table on the event. To review notes on the day including a list of attendees, please click here.

Summer 2010 Chef to Chef networking and educational events: Please join us at our upcoming summer events! See our For Chefs page for event details and to RSVP. To download a PDF of the invitation, please click here.

Saturday, June 12th, 2010 9:00am - 11:00am at the Mill City Market

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 1:30pm – 3:30pm Midtown Farmers Market

Sunday, July 11th, 2010 9:00am – 11:00am St. Paul Farmers Market

• Local foods in Higher Ed: We work with college campus cafeterias to help them use more local food. We bring together campus cafeteria chefs, farmers, food distributors, and school administrators who wish to use more local foods in their cafeterias.
• Guide to Using Local: With help from local expert chefs, HFN is creating 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.
  

FOR FARMERS:

If you are a farmer that wants to sell to restaurants, we would be happy to pass your information along to the restaurants in our network. Please see our For Farmers page for details.

FOR CONSUMERS:

Are you looking for restaurants, schools, and other places that serve fresh, local food? Please see our For Consumers page for a full listing of restaurants that use local food.

For more information, please contact:
Annalisa Hultberg
Heartland Food Network Coordinator
ahultberg@mnproject.org
651-789-3328