This CRAFT Course Helps Food Producers Pivot
In this file photo from April 2022, Kevin Keiller of Scorch Garden stands behind a table of his hot sauce products at a CRAFT networking event. (Tess Weaver ’19)
When Matthew Deutsch, a part-time farmer and full-time teacher in St. Paul, Minn., saw the resources available from the Center for Regional Agriculture, Food, and Transformation, he felt CRAFT was the right fit for him.
The courses are different, he said. “They’re more innovative. They seemed like they got me and what I’m trying to do.”
When Deutsch — who runs Deutsch’s Farm Goods, a community-supported agriculture business that sells produce grown on his parents’ farm — saw seats open for CRAFT’s Market Readiness Course last year, he signed up for the classes. He was glad he did.
“I hope to take another one,” he said. “I learned so much, and I made so many good connections.”
Nicolette Spudic, CRAFT’s director of business support, is one of the teachers in the program. She said CRAFT noticed during conversations with local food producers that certain farms weathered the instability of the COVID-19 pandemic better than others. Those farms fared better because they were able to quickly pivot their business strategies to develop new ways to sell their food, Spudic said.
That’s how CRAFT decided to put together this class. By giving farmers resources to diversify their income streams, they’ll hopefully be able to cushion their businesses against unexpected hardships in the future, Spudic said.
The focus is on reducing waste and generating income for farmers through value-added products. For example, someone who was unable to sell all the cucumbers they harvested could use what they’ve learned from CRAFT to repackage the crop as pickles.
Those skills are taught and honed over 12 classes lasting two hours each. Since the Market Readiness program is funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, participants can pay on a sliding scale, said Spudic. And anyone interested in putting out a food product can take the class, it’s not just for farmers.
Mary Simbari, an executive assistant at Chatham, took the program to learn how to better market her homemade candy nuts and dog treats, which she sells under the name “Mimi’s Cucina,” or Mimi’s kitchen.
“I had once gotten [candy nuts] as a gift,” Simbari said. “They were so delicious. I got a recipe and started making them, and everybody likes them. There’s so many different things you can do with them: salads, oatmeal, ice cream, by themselves, shower gifts—whatever!”
Going into the 12-week class, Simbari only knew a little about putting out her own food products. She’d only sold her snacks at small craft shows. But after taking the course, she reanalyzed the prices of her nuts and realized it would be better to adjust some of them. She also learned how to give a pitch.
“I wanted to learn whatever they were teaching,” Simbari said of the Market Readiness program. Every week, instructors hit on a new topic that expanded her knowledge. “They did branding, they did recipe development, they did labeling and talking to a producer. They did how to get into the markets, financing— it was great.”
Simbari saw a great variety of backgrounds in her other classmates: people local to western Pennsylvania, people from out of state, people with large food businesses, and people like her, who make small batches of products in their own home.
“That was really great,” Simbari said. “During the class, we could just exchange ideas and everything via Zoom.”
“Something people really found useful was time to talk to each other,” Spudic said. “Time to network, time to kind of ask the hivemind of all the other farmers and food businesses in the room about how to work through some challenges.” There were also guest speakers, like a farmer who created a canned tea, who took students through their own experiences bringing a product to market.
Deutsch said those expert insights were what really made the course stood out to him. “It wasn’t just the professors or the CRAFT folks talking about what they knew about marketing,” he said. “They brought in folks from a marketing firm, and they really let us ask them questions and learn from them. I really liked that approach.”
Classes for CRAFT’s next Market Readiness Course begin Jan. 9, 2024. Another course will be offered in May. Simbari said it’s worth taking because of the connections CRAFT can provide to people trying to learn more about selling their own food products.
“You’ll learn so much,” she said. “There’s so many resources out there that we don’t know about that they have access to.”
Under the pay-what-you-can model, participants can enroll in CRAFT’s Market Readiness Course for as little as $75. The course is a $395 value. Full or partial scholarships are available; scholarship applications for the Jan. 9, 2024 start date are open until Dec. 22. Learn more on the CRAFT website.