Financing Our Foodshed (5 page)
Read Financing Our Foodshed Online
Authors: Carol Peppe Hewitt
Credit: Tami Schwerin.
Woody’s comment that none of the newly formed Slow Money groups had yet made a direct loan catalyzed us into action. I’m not even sure we understood him correctly, but it was too late. We responded as if to a dare. It was just too darn tempting to be first. We are all starters. Between the three of us, we had started several businesses, non-profits, and a music festival. This one was a no-brainer.
Lyle was ready. “I know someone right now who needs $2,000 for a bread mixer. That can be our first loan.”
“If you can you make that loan before the National Gathering,” (which was being held in northern Vermont in two weeks) I offered, “I’ll go on up there and tell them we made a loan.” What was I thinking? Shelbourne Falls, VT, is a 16-hour drive. It’s a good thing I love a road trip.
And so it began. Lyle loaned Lynette, a fledgling baker, $2,000 for a commercial mixer. A few weeks later, I loaned Angelina $3,000 to expand her restaurant, and our friend, Gary Thompson did the same. And Slow Money NC was launched.
We didn’t set out to change the world that day, it just happened. Lyle had already built a community-scale biodiesel operation (which has become a model in the renewable energy industry) and authored three books. Jordan brought a world-class music and dance festival to rural North Carolina and then to Miami, while insisting on addressing environmental concerns (like adding solar energy and eliminating the sale of plastic water bottles) along the way. We all share a passion for local, for building community, for fairness, and for protecting our planet. Slow Money was all of those.
Credit: Bett Wilson Foley
So that day was a game-changer for local food financing in North Carolina. We called ourselves the co-founders, and we strategized as to how to get more money moving.
We held a meeting and invited everyone we knew who cared — or who we hoped might care — about getting Slow Money moving in our area. We designed a rudimentary website, and tried to create a stir. It worked. Two and a half years later, loans to about 30 farmers and local food businesses, totaling well over $600,000, have been put to work directly and indirectly to increase soil fertility, grow local food sustainably, and build a stronger, more cohesive network of like-minded good-food activists in North Carolina.
In this book, I’ll tell the stories of many of these loans and what we’ve learned along the way, in the hopes that others will pick up the ball — or the heirloom tomato — and do the same in their own foodshed.
So, on to the stories of our enterprising Slow Money friends. Bon appétit!
| The Sweet Side of Slow Money We’re sweet on bakeries. Our first loan was to a baker, as was our third, eighth, and eleventh! Then we loaned to a miller. We even funded a couple of pieces of bakery equipment twice. These are the stories of four daring women, who each took a crumb of an idea, and, with the help of Slow Money, created a successful business. |  | 3 |
Our first loan went to Lynette Driver to pay for a commercial Hobart mixer she had found on Craigslist. She had been baking at the Chatham Marketplace grocery store and decided she wanted to set up on her own. Before she knew it, she had orders for 80 loaves of bread a week and was selling a variety of pastries at a local farmers market.
Finding a USDA-certified kitchen where she could bake was the next challenge. She remembered the pizza ovens out at the Shakori Hills GrassRoots Festival grounds. Twice a year, Salvadore and his cousin Franco travel from upstate New York where they own and run real Sicilian-style pizza restaurants. They fire up these ovens, and for four days (and late into the night) they make hundreds of pizzas for the several thousand festival go-ers. They use the best ingredients they can source, and their pizza is legendary. They taught a few locals how to make pizza, so occasionally the Pizza Shack springs to life for a volunteer appreciation party, or the Hoppin’ John festival. But most of the time it is dark and quiet.
Which meant it was available for Lynette to use. Once a week, she made the trip out to the fairgrounds to make her batches of bread.
Each week, she made 60 loaves for a local CSA and another 20 loaves to be sold out of the kitchen at The Plant, a local eco-industrial park that is home to, among other things, Piedmont Biofuels, our community-scale biodiesel plant. Lynette would start about 8
PM
, and it was 8
AM
before she was done.
There were benefits to working on her own in the peace and quiet of a 10' × 24' pizza shed on a farm-turned-festival grounds. The rent was low — just a couple of loaves of bread left on the kitchen table for the festival staff — and it was certainly peaceful there. But it was also lonely, especially compared to the hustle and social buzz of a lively bakery, like the one in Seattle where she had worked in the past.
At some point, the peace and quiet became
too
quiet and too lonely, and Lynette agreed to go back and work in that friendly Seattle bakery for a few months. She sold the mixer, paid the remaining balance on her loan, and off she went.
Upon her return to North Carolina, she began baking for The Eddy and the Saxapahaw General Store in Saxapahaw, NC. We were glad to have her back.
She’s taken a temporary break from baking these days, but those of us who enjoyed her wonderful local breads and superb pastries are looking forward to the day she takes it up again.
Meanwhile, that mixer went on to become part of another Slow Money story.
If you’ve ever tried to follow a vegan diet of no animal products — no meat, dairy, fish, eggs, or gelatin — you know it can be a challenge, especially in restaurants. And if you love traditional Soul Food, it can be even trickier. Stephanie Perry had a vision for a unique catering company that would specialize in vegan Southern-style Soul Food. She saw a flyer for a Slow Money NC event and wondered if Slow Money could help her start her business. She poked around our website and sent me an email to inquire:
I have been making vegan Soul Food for years. What is “Soul Food?” It’s the food I grew up on. Being an African American woman born and raised in NYC, I remember eating food that reminded and connected me back to my Southern roots. My family is from Goldsboro, NC and my mom would make favorites like fried chicken, baked macaroni and cheese, collard greens, candied yams, etc., every Sunday. As a child, I looked forward to these meals, and when I started my own family, I kept up the tradition. My mother was a dietitian by trade and created recipes that incorporated healthier ingredients and cooking techniques when she prepared her delicious meals.
In turn, I also started incorporating vegetarian and vegan items into my family’s lifestyle, partly for health but more for economic reasons. I have five children and often looked for ways to save money on our grocery bills. A friend of mine was a vegetarian who started sharing her recipes with me for making meat dishes out of vegetables, grains and flour (bean burgers, bulgur meatloaf and gluten). I started researching how they made these, and Southern Vegan Fried Chicken was born! I then began to experiment with more of my favorite recipes like macaroni and cheese and discovered the wonders of nutritional yeast to make vegan cheese sauces. What has resulted is a lengthy and versatile menu of recipes for vegans that are reminiscent of a good ole Southern Sunday Dinner — Vegan Soul Food!
But it had been a circuitous route from those early Soul Food Sunday dinners to making and selling vegan Soul Food as a business venture.
Stephanie explained:
When I was a stay-at-home mom, I sold homemade bakery items on consignment to specialty food stores. When I began working outside the home, I worked and trained under
talented chefs and pastry chefs for places like Foster’s Market and Wellspring in North Carolina. In Tampa, FL, I managed the bakery for Nature’s Harvest Market and created a vegan, diabetic-friendly pastry line. During college, I worked as a waitress for fine-dining establishments that included the Hershey Lodge and Convention Center.
After my divorce, I worked for a while for Bank of America in customer service and sales, then began a career in the hotel industry, starting off doing site-specific accounting for Marriott Hotels Inc., and working my way up through the ranks to Director of Sales for Hilton Hotels. I left the hotel industry because I wanted to do something more meaningful for myself and for my community. I was introduced, through my church, to Justice United, a multi-faithed, multi-race, strictly non-partisan, citizens’ non-profit committed to improving the quality of community by advancing social justice issues. I joined the Living Wage team and successfully co-chaired the campaign to getting a living wage policy passed for the Town of Chapel Hill.
I was again working in Sales and Marketing, but inside me burned my entrepreneurial spirit. I wanted to create my own business to build wealth for myself and for my community. I believe in Abundance. I know that there is more than enough for everyone.
The part Stephanie didn’t mention at the time was the difficult stretch after her divorce when she and her children were homeless and stayed on friends’ couches, in shelters, or in her car. And how she kept her vision alive, inventing recipes and trying them out on the generous friends who found space for her family in their homes. And the way she hung on to that entrepreneurial spirit and worked on her business plan at night after putting her kids to bed.
But, like so many entrepreneurs with talent, vision, passion, and a great idea, she still needed capital to get started. That was her biggest challenge.
Stephanie’s business plan had three phases. Her first step would be to launch a signature item to sell wholesale to specialty food shops and retail at farmers markets and community events. For this, she created a Vegan Apple Cider Donut — made from scratch, using regional ingredients as much as possible.
Stephanie explained:
The majority of the ingredients are organic. I got the idea after visiting the Poconos and eating the most delicious apple cider donuts at roadside farm stands. I came home and experimented with recipes until I duplicated the taste and texture using vegan ingredients only. I’ve done research for our area and found that this item is not readily available. This is a Krispy Kreme State! I have been making and doing taste tests with friends, family and the general public and the consensus has been an overwhelming “Go for it!”