6 days Ago By Nathan Bowe
DETROIT LAKES — In good news for the Manna food cooperative — and for the regional food supply chain — federal money has started flowing again toward Manna’s effort to build a commercial kitchen in its under-construction store in Detroit Lakes. The $304,000 grant approved last year by the U.S.
Department of Agriculture had been frozen without explanation until recently, when an $86,000 reimbursement check came through to Manna Treasurer Ryan Pesch, for money already spent on the project. ADVERTISEMENT “I was able to reimburse what we incurred from the end of November to the end of March,” he said. The Minnesota Department of Agriculture administers the grant and serves as an intermediary between the USDA and Pesch.
“The money was set to be awarded in the form of monthly reimbursement,” said Pesch, who is “trying to incur as many costs as possible now that the window is open.” The grant is still officially “under review,” he added, but it is now possible to put in for reimbursements. So he is going to put in for reimbursement for the walk-in cooler, and to pay off drywall and electrical work in full.
“Let’s jam what we can in there, that’s the way I look at it,” he said. When all is said and done, Manna will probably have put about $400,000 into its new commercial kitchen, which will be part of the Manna store now under construction in the former Beug’s Hardware building downtown. For now, Manna continues to operate in its existing store downtown in the Norby Flats building.
So what does a commercial kitchen have to do with strengthening the food supply lines? It goes back to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, which messed up national supply lines. Remember the empty shelves at grocery stores? And remember how the pandemic shut down packing plants and led to pork producers having to kill and dispose of millions of market-ready pigs? ADVERTISEMENT So Congress took action. “That’s what they came out in reaction to, when all the supply chains just fell apart,” Pesch said.
“They said we should invest in the 'middle' supply chain, we should reinforce the regional supply chains.” Thus was born the USDA’s Resilient Food Systems Initiative, which had $420 million in American Rescue Plan funds to provide competitive grants across the nation. “The purpose of the Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure program is to build resilience in the middle of the food supply chain, to provide more and better markets to small farms and food businesses, to support the development of value-added products for consumers, fair prices, fair wages, and new and safe job opportunities,” the USDA said on its website .
Not only would the grants be used to strengthen the supply chain, but also to help local and regional food producers develop new products and markets. And that’s where the new Manna commercial kitchen will come in. For example, there’s an organic potato farmer in Halstad, Minnesota, who works with three other area potato farmers to aggregate large amounts of organic potatoes.
“He does the washing, packing, holding and remarketing of these potatoes, Pesch said. That Halstad farmer sells a lot of bulk potatoes to school districts, but those districts have asked him if he can provide shredded or chopped potatoes, not just big bags of bulk potatoes. In other words, “they want what is called ‘light processing,” Pesch said.
ADVERTISEMENT Simple enough, but to do that, the farmer would need to have a licensed facility — like Manna’s commercial kitchen — to do the work. “We should be able to handle tens of thousands of pounds of potatoes, no problem,” Pesch said. “And we’d be doing it in a kitchen with the right equipment and that is certified .
.. it would be a good value-added addition to what he’s already doing.
” There’s another producer who is interested in selling African eggplants, but they can’t be slow-frozen — they turn to mush — so they need to be cut into rounds and frozen instantly in the blast chiller, Pesch said. By sharing a kitchen, it opens the door to a lot of possibilities for smaller producers, he said. After all, not everybody can afford to sink $400,000 into a commercial kitchen setup, which includes the capacity to store food after processing — in the form of a 16-foot by 8-foot cooler, a freezer that’s the same size, and a mid-sized blast chiller to instantly freeze fruits and vegetables.
For smaller growers like Pesch, who operates Lida Farm in Otter Tail County, it could provide the opportunity to create a jarred tomato product that could go right on the shelf — almost like Manna private-label tomatoes. “With that shared kitchen, embedded in a retail system, we can create consumer-packaged goods and try it out on the shelf – provided locally, in a local store, that any consumer can walk in and buy,” he said. ADVERTISEMENT The commercial kitchen could also be used by local food entrepreneurs, to bake bread or get started with a food truck, Pesch said.
A licensed commercial kitchen facility opens up all sorts of opportunities to sell food to the public in a store setting. That compares to a “cottage food license,” which allows people to sell baked goods, for example, directly to the consumer, but not wholesale. To handle scheduling and payments for the commercial kitchen, Manna will likely turn to Food Corridor, an online scheduling and payment system specifically for shared kitchens.
Yes, there are other shared commercial kitchens around. The closest one is Square One in Fargo, Pesch said, adding that “there’s a movement towards that nationwide.” Manna staff have met with owners of other shared kitchens to work out any problems in advance.
Like making sure whoever rents the kitchen cleans up properly when they’re done. Setting clear expectations is key to a well-run kitchen, Pesch said. It helps that most commercial kitchen users are repeat customers who take their responsibilities seriously, he said.
There are a half-dozen or so farm producers actively interested in using the kitchen, and another half-dozen people have inquired about it, he said. ADVERTISEMENT If everything falls into place, Pesch hopes the kitchen will be finished this summer and ready to open this fall..
