ACORN Wholesale Collaborative

From 2010 - 2012, ACORN employed an AmeriCorps volunteer to serve as its first part-time coordinator to manage network events, outreach and communications. This new capacity allowed board members to secure several grants from the High Meadows Fund, the John Merck Fund and the Vermont Department of Agriculture.

This funding went to research the supply and demand for local food, to the organization of a local food system council of farmers, processors, institutional buyers and retailers called the ACORN Wholesale Collaborative, to research the barriers to institutional purchasing of local food and to organize matchmaking events to bring new buyers and sellers together.

2011 Report

The ACORN Wholesale Collaborative (AWC) was funded in December 2010 to conduct a planning study to determine the feasibility and economic viability of a low-cost, online wholesale brokerage and delivery service linking Addison County produce growers and institutional buyers.

Click Here to Read the Final Report

2012 Report

Phase 2 of the ACORN Wholesale Collaborative (AWC) was funded in June 2011 through the Vermont Agriculture Innovation Center (AIC) and the High Meadows Fund to develop new markets for local growers through online transactions with institutional and non-institutional buyers. The goal of the online platform was to connect local buyers and sellers and give them the tools to do business directly with one another. The support of an advisory group of local growers and buyers was instrumental to AWC’s research of online platforms. The launch of the pilot was forecasted for October 2011 to capture the end of the season for fresh produce and sell storage crops through the end of December. A Matchmaker event was simultaneously organized in October to facilitate direct relationships between fresh and valued-added producers and buyers and to introduce local stakeholders to the online project.

Click Here to Read the Final Report

In retrospect, the AWC was too early - the local food system, on both the supply and demand side, was too thin to support it. Since then ACORN has continued to put energy into developing a wholesale market. We are organizing grower meetings, hosting consumer focus groups, working with institutional buyers and revisiting the potential for online sales and marketing to better connect the community.