Introduction

In 2012, the USDA Agricultural Marketing Services endeavored to create a national resource, developed by a small collaboration of industry experts, once known as the National Food Hub Collaboration, which brought to attention the definition, role, and impact of the regional food hub on American agricultural markets. This collaboration created the Regional Food Hub Resource Guide¹ which codified a unified understanding of the operations and needs of food hubs.

In 2015, USDA Rural Development created a four-volume series called Running a Food Hub. In this series the USDA defines a food hub as “a business or organization that actively manages the aggregation, distribution, and marketing of source-identified food products primarily from local and regional producers to strengthen their ability to satisfy wholesale, retail, and institutional demand.”

When the Regional Food Hub Resource Guide was published the research noted 168 food hubs across the US who fell under this definition. According to the latest National Food Hub Survey² conducted in 2021 (published April 2023), there were over 400 known food hubs across the nation with active contact information to receive the survey. This is an annual average growth rate of 37% with a 58% total increase in food hubs across the U.S. over a ten-year span.³

Today, many resources within the Running a Food Hub and Regional Food Hub Resource Guide remain relevant, and many other resources and case studies have been developed as the industry has evolved and matured. With this toolkit, we reference the original guides along with vetted and relevant resources that were developed over the last decade. The result is a central depot of resources that will support food hub leaders in the many roles they may play, and provide context, templates, and direct links so no matter the direction of your journey, you have a toolkit to support you along the way.

The Many Hats Project

This is a guide for food hub operators to understand the roles they may play in each phase of a Food Hub’s lifespan and providing peer-generated knowledge, industry context, and direct links to existing and relevant resources across organizational, value chain, operations, and partnership development.

The project team, led by University of Vermont, in collaboration with Michigan State University, and supported by a cooperative agreement with Agricultural Marketing Services, Local and Regional Foods Division, began developing this toolkit by assembling an advisory board of experienced food hub operators and industry professionals across the United States (listed in Table 1 below) who shaped the process, format, and content of this toolkit.

How to Use This Toolkit

As you consider how to best navigate and use this toolkit, you can refer to the table of contents and the Toolkit Structure below as your guide. As a toolkit, there is utility in showing a logical and linear progression from start up, to expansion and innovation. However, the knowledge from advisors and this research also indicated this is rarely the case. You may lead several distinct startup phases as new programs or projects develop which would require you to play the role of Founder more than once. External factors may force you to focus on organizational resilience far earlier than you may have naturally. The toolkit design enables you to find and use each section, along with the related actions and resources, independently to respond to the moment at hand.

Throughout the guide, you will read direct quotes from advisory board representatives, consisting of five food hub operators and one consultant. Our advisors emphasized that the most useful tool in their toolbox is talking directly to other operators, and we designed this project to reflect that experience. To that end, the project team also developed four episodes of The Food Hub Podcast as a companion to this toolkit where you can hear from the advisors in their own voices.

Three types of key resources are linked in the body of the toolkit: published research dating from 2012 to present and available on the internet; linked organizational, technical, or educational resources (non- institutional research); and operational templates and resources from our advisors linked to the Toolkit Resources section. We have worked to point you to the parts of the resources that are relevant and useful to the leadership role and specific organizational action area.