County food hub

Commercial kitchen space welcomes new users

The new County Food Hub at the Sophiasburgh Central School opened its doors for business in October and has already seen a number of big users for its commercial kitchen. The County Food Hub began as a way to avert the threatened closure of the school and avoid the disruption that would cause to the local community. The food hub occupies approximately one-third of the area of the original school, and has a long-term lease with the Hastings and Prince Edward District School Board, which partly defrays the operating cost of the school and allows it to remain open. The heart of the food hub is its large and spacious health-certified commercial kitchen. In addition to a modern combi oven—which combines the features of a regular oven, a convection oven and a steamer—there are two high-speed jet burners for use with extra-large pots, a sixburner range and convection oven, sanitary washing station, a fruit and vegetable washing station, prep tables, and fridge and freezer space. “This is a great outpost for the entire east side of the island,” says general manager Michael Farrell. “If chefs are doing a big event in this area, they almost always need a prep kitchen. This is for everyone from professional caterers right on through local community people. The business model was predicated on the whole agri-foods industry here in the County, and there was not enough shared commercial kitchens to go around. Now we have this space where you can count on coming in and it’s going to be up and ready.”

Michael Farrell stands in the community kitchen space at the County Food Hub, located at Sophiasburgh Central School.

Although it is still early days for the Food Hub, it already has two committed long-term users in Food to Share and Scottish Accents. There have been other users—the Royal Hotel used the kitchen to prep meals for a group of 700 people. The daily use rate is $240, which compares favourably with the rate for the Ontario Agri-Foods Venture Centre in Colborne at $280 per day, and it avoids the need to travel outside the County. There’s a half-day-rate of $150. In addition to the commercial kitchen, there are two unfinished spaces available for long-term lease, which potential leaseholders can customize to their needs.

“These spaces are an important part of our business model,” says Farrell. “They are up to light industrial standards, with a crawl space under the floor and would appeal to growing business that want to expand out of the small spaces they may now be using.”

The other big component of the business model of the food hub is to develop food literacy among students of the school, and then expand the program to include other schools in the County. “We want to improve food literacy and knowledge about nutrition,” says Farrell. “We will add a curriculum item for 2020 in Sophiasburgh and then expand to regional schools. We are already planning a school Christmas dinner preparation here, and I can see that on ‘pizza day’ the kids can make their own pizzas here.” The students will have their own space within the food hub, in an area that may one day include small tabletop cooking surfaces. At the present time, the local 4-H club has a community garden adjacent to the school, and Farrell envisions a time when students can grow their own food, prepare it in the kitchen, and take it home to their families. This link with community is at the very heart of the food hub project. The capital cost of refurbishing the facility was around $450,000. Part of the funding came from the County, Community Futures of Prince Edward Lennox Addington, the Parrott Foundation and the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. But more than half of the money came from the community. “The funding came from private organizations, businesses and, you know, Joe-downthe- street, people showing up at my door with $100, $500, and it all sort of added up. Adam Busscher and his team at Home Hardware have been very supportive,” says Farrell. “I’m very excited and confident for the future. We’re really focused on the food and food literacy aspect, and the users are starting to come in.” The County Food Hub has a website in the works, but for now information can be found at its Facebook page. For more information about the commercial kitchen, please contact Mike Farrell at 416.938.0673.