News & Events

The 2013 Toronto Public Health and Food Flow research indicated the need for the Food Flow Facility, a social enterprise that will provide commercial scale food processing for agencies. It will also incorporate other services such as a community freezer, food skills training, a mobile kitchen, and distribution through partners.

With funding from the Toronto Enterprise Fund and Ontario Trillium Foundation,  the Food Flow project completed a feasibility study for the Food Flow Facility. We assessed the following three possible scenarios: 1) A new space based/near partner agencies; 2) Rental in a partner’s existing space; and 3) A mobile food processing kitchen. The feasibility study indicated that the partner space option in combination with the mobile kitchen would have the most impact and address a range of needs.

Now we are developing a full business plan, consulting agencies on services they could use, and assessing opportunities for processing that will meet the community food sector’s needs.

Do you have thoughts on services the Food Flow Services could offer your agency? Let us know! We are consulting with agencies over the next couple of months through one-on-one meetings, focus groups, and online surveys. We would love to hear from you!

The Food Flow Facility will provide (but not limited to) following services, programs, and healthy processed products that

Services and Programs

• processing surplus donations (to agencies or food banks)
• access to processing for farm seconds
• training in processing
• training in food skills for work placement
• centralized storage
• aggregated purchasing of fresh fruits and vegetables
• others (possible collaborations for equipment purchasing)

Healthy Processed Products

• canned tomatoes
• canned other vegetables and fruit
• frozen vegetables and fruit
• frozen sauces
• frozen soup stock and pureed
• dehydrated fruits and vegetables
• baked goods (sub-choices: bread, granola bars, muffins, granola, cereal)
• frozen meat
• others (e.g. ketchup or dressing)

The Food Flow project with the West End Food Co-op held a thoroughly successful food canning workshop for community agencies this month. We roasted up a boatload of tomatoes, made them into sauce, produced tomato stock on the side and discussed the Food Flow Kitchen plans, all in three hours! We had participants from Houselink, Scott Mission, Sketch, and the Four Villages CHC. We will be running several more Community Chef workshop on a variety of topics starting in September—watch this space!

Also please read this great short report from one of the participants, titled “Canning as a way of giving life“. 

Why food canning for community agencies? The Food Flow research found that many agencies face the challenge of inconsistent fresh food donations. We heard from one small agency that got a truckload of apples one day; another one got a truckload of frozen carrots dropped off all at once. It is not easy for agencies to use or process a large donation of one item before it goes bad, and still provide diverse, healthy meals; furthermore, agencies often do not have enough storage space for large quantities of fresh or frozen donations.

So here food canning and processing come in. Food processing helps extend the lives of vegetables and fruits and make them available throughout the year. Thus it can help stabilize organizations’ food access. Food processing can also create value-added items (e.g. tomato into tomato sauce and apple into apple jam).

This workshop focused on training of hot water bath canning, using roasted tomato sauce as an example. Here are the photos from the existing workshop!

The workshop began with slicing a lot of tomatoes into half.

Extra moisture after roasting can be used as tomato soup stock!

Roasted tomatoes are put into a food processor.

Tomato sauce is jarred and placed into a hot water bath for 12 minutes.

This food canning workshop was a part of a bigger project that we have been working on: The Food Flow Kitchen. The Food Flow Kitchen project is one of the key pilot projects incubated from the two-year Food Flow project funded by Ontario Trillium Foundation.

The Food Flow Kitchen is a social enterprise that will provide commercial-scale food processing services for non-profit agencies. The Food Flow Kitchen is being designed to address some of the challenges and unmet needs of community agencies that the Food Flow research identified in 2013. With the support of Toronto Enterprise Fund, we are currently developing a strong business plan. This food canning workshop provided us with the opportunity to solicit feedback and inputs on services and programs that the Food Flow Kitchen can provide.

We are planning to organize another food processing workshop for community agencies soon! Please let us know if you are interested in participating by emailing us at parkdale.clt@gmail.com.

*Big thanks to West End Food Co-op! And thank you for the support from Ontario Trillium Foundation and Toronto Enterprise Fund/Enp-TO.

Food Flow is exploring an urban community freezer for meat. The project would provide the infrastructure to pool the resources of local social service agencies for bulk purchases of meat at volume discounts. The meat would be kept in freezer storage at a distributor or a large agency until delivery or access by the member agencies.

As a part of our exploration, we have been looking at existing community practices of community freezers from other jurisdictions. We have found the following typology of community freezers.

Community freezers in Northern communities
Community freezer programs (CFPs) are one of the solutions to food insecurity in Northern communities, often initiated and supported by government. CFPs provide a communal storage space where hunters can donate harvested food. Those donated foods are stored and accessed by those who face food access challenges such as low-income families, seniors, and single parents. CFPs usually aim to improve the access to traditional foods that would not otherwise be available. For some households and individuals, limited time due to working full-time and high cost of supplies and equipment often become barriers to go hunting on their own.

One interesting example is the Nain Research Centre’s Community Freezer Program (CFP) in Labrador. Their Community freezer program was established in 2011 by the Nunatsiavut Government and the Nain Inuit Community Government. In addition to a regular community freezer program, the Nain’s Community freezer program provides a youth-focused program, in which local youths with senior harvesters will learn inter-generational knowledge and skills by engaging in various activities and programs.

2. Meat Locker in Ithaca
The Meat Locker is a program of the Finger Lakes Meat Project by the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins and Steuben Counties in Ithaca. The Meat Locker program promotes the “freezer trade” idea – sale of animals by the whole, half, and quarter. For farmers, selling meat in bulk contributes to decrease labour and inventory management costs, but it is not easy to find many customers to do so. While consumers are also interested in bulk-buying meat to reduce costs, they do not have large freezer spaces at their home. Also it is not easy for them to find farmers, either.

To address this interwoven challenge in promoting local meats, the Meat Locker project not only provides an affordable communal freezer space but also uses an online portal – MeatSuit.com – to connect farmers and consumers. Individual members can sign up to get a unit in the freezer space. More than 70 units are available in the walk-in freezer. Units range in price from $3/month for small bins (that hold 18 gallons) to $5/month for large bins, able to hold 25 gallons or a quarter of a beef steer.

3. Faith-based “Freezer Ministry”
Another type of community freezers is “Freezer Ministry” by faith-based groups such as churches and schools (for example like this). While serving as an emergency response, Freezer Ministry is not focused on food insecurity alone. These programs are often aimed to support families and individuals who face unexpected life challenges and difficulties – sickness, hospital visits, home care, bereavement, pre-/post-pregnancy and others – ones that make it difficult to prepare meals for family. Freezer Ministry programs are thus complementary to other programs and activities provided to support their members. Programs often solicit volunteers who can cook meals for freezers as well as meals.

Developing the Food Flow Kitchen – a social enterprise that provides commercial food processing services for community agencies and other food-based social enterprises – is one of the key recommendations from the Food Flow research.

The Food Flow team has been awarded the grant from enp-TO and Toronto Enterprise Fund to conduct a business plan for the Food Flow Kitchen!

We will conduct community consultations soon to ask for your feedback and inputs in how to design this initiative!

n July 10th (Thursday), the Food Flow project is organizing a workshop for community agencies – food-related staff and volunteers – on food processing and canning! The workshop is led by the West End Food Co-op.

The session will include basic processing practices as well as exchanges of ideas, plans and solutions for room temperature storage of donations and surplus food.

This event combines a number of key opportunities identified in the Food Flow research: skills exchange, community-based food processing, food training, and solutions for surplus donations, and etc…

Space is limited, so please sign up by sending your RSVP to parkdale.clt@gmail.com!

Workshops are $50 but with a sliding scale if needed.

Coming to your neighbourhood, canning at your doorstep…the Food Flow Kitchen might be a mobile food processing kitchen.

The Food Flow Kitchen is a social enterprise that will provide commercial scale processing for community agencies; it will increase access to affordably priced processed goods like canned tomatoes, provide new access to markets for farm seconds, and create stepping stone training and work opportunities.

The Food Flow Kitchen might be a mobile food processing kitchen. This mobile kitchen could pull up at your agency to process extra donations, train chefs and volunteers in basic canning for room temperature storage, and create community awareness of the issues in the community food sector.

The mobile kitchen could also, as in Mennonite communities, provide basic on-farm processing for farm partners. This would increase access to minimally processed, affordable local food for the community food sector, and provide jobs and training as part of a social enterprise.

This model is almost unique in North America. Mobile abattoirs have popped up in the U.S. in Vermont and other locations. The Food Flow Mobile Kitchen would provide processing for fruits and vegetables, making it a ground-breaking innovation in community food. The North Dakota Department of Agriculture developed a (big!) mobile food processing kitchen recently. In a conversation with Food Flow, Jamie Goode from the North Dakota project recommends that we focus on a smaller unit and one or two methods of processing (hot water bath canning and dehydration, for instance).