Community Teaching and Commercial Kitchen

Raised $34,971.00 Towards the Goal of $23,000.00

Project Wrap Up

Thank you Beatrice and all our supporters from around the country!  Because of your generosity, Food4Hope's Community Teaching and Commercial Kitchen is completed and up and running!  The space is beautiful and functional and fully inspected, licensed, and insured.  We have been busy hosting interactive, hands-on workshops teaching our community that we love "old fashioned" skills like cast iron cooking, pie, bread and pasta making, and how to extract medicinal qualities from herbs.  These workshops are red-hot popular with waiting lists for open spots.  Check out our website for all our fall and winter workshops. www.Food4hope.org/workshops

Food4Hope is also using the commercial kitchen space to create high quality, made-from-scratch, nutrient -dense, delicious food available for delivery.  And we use all local produce so we can support and promote the local growers and producers.  It's a 360° win-win-win situation!

Food4Hope is also working with several food entrepreneurs to find creative ways to maximize the kitchen space and bolster the local economy.  Stay tuned for more details!

Project Details

Live local! We are your connection to the local food supply chain! Food4Hope is Gage County's Food Hub and local food curator and aggregator! We are in relationship with the local producers of fresh vegetables, fruits, meat, honey, and cheese. We gather it all up, you tell us what you want, and we bring it right to your fingertips.  We are the fresh, local, innovative food choice! With the completion of the community teaching and commercial kitchen we will be able to add delicious, nutritious, prepared food in with our current weekly deliveries of eggs, bread, meats, honey, jam, and other tasty morsels!

With current global supply chains in peril, and an impending food crisis due to inflation and food shortages, there is no better time to invest in the infrastructure of the local food supply. We connect local growers and producers to you the consumer, who loves fresh, local, delicious, organic, made-from-scratch food. And we deliver right to you.  In today's uncertain world, you want to know where your food comes from. We are all about local food, less traveled. Eat seasonal, eat local, help make the rural communities more resilient by supporting local growers and producers and help bring food security and food sovereignty to your community. Thanks for supporting us and living local!

Our budget for this project is $140,000.  With donations we have received and grants we have been awarded, we have already invested $117,000.  We are only $23,000 away from completing the project!  We still need epoxy flooring, a hood with fire suppression, a few doors, and the finishing touches on plumbing and electrical.  That's it!  All of that can be accomplished in about 30 days.  Will you help get us over the finish line?

When we meet our goal of $23,000 all donations will go to further upkeep and maintenance, as well as future projects and development!

Thank you!!

Community Teaching and Commercial Kitchen

Project Details

We are all about delicious, local, clean food!  We are currently in the process of creating a community teaching and commercial kitchen.  Phase 1 is complete and phase 2 is underway!  Our projected grand opening is Spring of 2022!  And we can't wait to serve Beatrice some of the best tasting food around!  We will be preparing, cooking, and delivering meals as well as hosting food classes for adults and children.   Farm-to-fork!  Delicious, local food starts here.

Benefits of a Community Kitchen

There are many benefits to Community Kitchens including that they:

• increase access to healthy meals
• help the community to develop life skills such as growing of fresh food, budgeting, meal planning, cooking and social skills
• support members of the community to connect and start new friendships

Community teaching and commercial kitchen

Project Details

Our farming operation has grown successfully over the course of seven years, enabling us to provide farm-fresh products to community members and organizations via our large garden, orchard, berry patch, free-range chickens and pasture-raised cattle.  Over the years, we've ventured into providing value-added products, such as preserved foods and baked goods.  We have also learned through our strong ties to the community that people are not just hungry for fresh, local food.  They are hungry for education in nutrition, culinary skills and life skills.

With this is mind, we have been working hard to build a community teaching and commercial kitchen on our property.  This labor of faith and love was initiated from our desire to provide help and support to individuals looking to learn safe food preparation and preservation methods, to gain invaluable life skills both in and out of the kitchen and to get more family meals on the table throughout our community.  We've seen firsthand the transformation that can happen in a person's life when they are equipped to make better nutrition choices for themselves and those in their care.

Community Teaching and Commercial Kitchen Objectives:

• Help community members of all ages and backgrounds grow, find, afford, choose and use healthy foods to enhance their quality of life.
• Strengthen the connection between area food system leaders and educational and health care professionals working to improve the lives of community members.
• Support fellow local food professionals by providing access to a commercial kitchen in an effort to improve the health of our people, our economy and our environment.

Our building project to provide a local learning lab for life skills is currently underway!  We are raising funds through the Big Give to outfit the community teaching and commercial kitchen with appliances and supplies.  Thank you for supporting this worthwhile project!

Post harvest production area, community kitchen and resource center.

Project Details

UPDATE!  BREAKING NEWS!  The top donor to Food 4 Hope during the Big Give will receive an exciting airplane ride over Beatrice!*

Having a post harvest production area and community kitchen and resource center is vital to the long term vision we have for the local food movement in Gage County and the surrounding area.  This facility will allow Food4Hope to reach the fullness of our potential and maximize the impact we have on our community. The community kitchen will be a food hub networking the local community with cooks, growers, students and others interested in the local food movement. It will also be a place where people are taught about quality food, from nutrition, to growing, preparing, preserving, and beyond. We will be a food hub for the area where people in the community can come to cook, store, and learn about food and food systems. It will be a place to educate on healthy food preparation from scratch. Education efforts will target adults as well as children.

Our goal is to raise $25,000 for phase 1 of this project.  The major items included in Phase 1 of our project include:

• Plumbing - $6500 trenching and installing in and out plumbing

• Electric - $1500 upgrading and updating the electrical system

• Propane - $2000 installing 500 gallon tank and pipelines

• Concrete flooring - $5000 foundational floor work

• Walk-in cooler/freezer $10000 (used) The walk-in cooler/freezer will give us more food storage space, which in turn will give us the ability to plant more, harvest more, produce more food and feed more people.

*Minimum donation of $500 to qualify for the airplane ride