FoodHub Becoming the Facebook of Local Food

by Jennifer Lawinski, Posted Sep 1st 2010 @ 3:00PM

Social networking is helping local food growers and processors find ways to sell their wares to local food service businesses in the Pacific Northwest.

FoodHub, an interactive online tool launched in February by Portland-Ore.-based nonprofit Ecotrust, helps growers and food professionals find each other, The Oregonian reported.

With a revamped site set to launch in a few weeks, Ecotrust VP of food and farms Deborah Kane talked to the newspaper about FoodHub and how it works.

"FoodHub is a new online directory and marketplace that makes it possible for regional food buyers and sellers -- professionals, not consumers -- to quickly and easily find each other, connect and do business," Kane said. "Some people call it the Facebook of local food, or the Match.com for food buyers and food sellers."

The group has 611 members, running the gamut from restaurants to caterers to hospitals, schools and resorts, Kane said. Sellers include large and small food producers and processors. Members pay $100 for an annual membership and create an online profile with their business details.

Buyers can search by type of food they're looking for, and the Marketplace, which Kane calls the "Craigslist of the local food system" lists time-sensitive opportunities, like a crop of fresh arugula that needs to be sold that day, the paper reported.

And it's not just food that winds up being bought and sold.

"The FoodHub community uses Marketplace for all kinds of things, like transportation needs. An ice cream maker in Puget Sound was running refrigerated trucks into Seattle for deliveries, then coming home empty," Kane said.

"It was looking for someone to use that refrigerated space on the return trips. A Willamette Valley seed grower had lost all his beet stock in the freeze, and did a shout-out to all the farmers in valley, looking for storage beets."

The site update, launching on Sept. 19, will have a new look and a more streamlined product management interface, Kane said. New features will roll out every month.

Filed Under: Online
Tags: featured, food growers, FoodGrowers, foodhub, local food, LocalFood, social networking, SocialNetworking