Want to start a local food campaign in your community? Interested in expanding your local food work or getting the information you need to be as strategic and effective as possible? We can help!

For more than a decade, ASAP has helped communities preserve their agricultural heritage, increase access to fresh, healthy food, and strengthen family farms. We’ve partnered with individuals, organizations, and farmers to become a national leader in the local food movement. We utilize a distinctively holistic approach that takes into account the people, practices, and policies necessary to build and maintain a strong local food system.

Creating a Local Food Economy In Your Community: Getting Started

There are many ways to expand local food markets—from creating a local food and farm guide; to establishing programs that bring local food into schools, restaurants, hospitals and universities; to organizing local farmers markets, and much more. ASAP can work with you to decide which components will make the most sense for your needs.

We recommend starting with a Local Food Assessment. An assessment will enable you to more fully understand the local food potential for your community. The ASAP approach focuses on the reality of your community’s demographics, particular farm and consumer trends, and markets. We provide a context in which to identify the greatest barriers and opportunities for building a thriving local food economy and the right progression of steps that makes sense for your region. See our primer Growing a Local Food Economy: A Guide to Getting Started  for more information.

If you already know what type of local food initiatives you’d like to undertake, we can help you with several, including:

Certified Brand for Local Food: A regional brand can be an effective way for local producers to differentiate their products, develop customer loyalty, and provide competitive advantages. We can work with you to develop a certified brand in your community, including a logo, user agreements, and slogan and message development, as well as the creation of a marketing plan to launch and maintain the new brand.

Local Food Guide: A local food guide educates consumers and visitors about local food, farmers, and the foods and traditions of a region. Be it web-based, print, or an app (or all three), ASAP can guide you in the process of developing and marketing a guide that includes listings and information about farms, farmers markets, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), u-pick farms, grocers, bakers, restaurants, caterers, and farms to visit, as well as advertising by local businesses.

Direct Markets for Local Food: Farmers markets, farm stands, u-pick farms, and CSAs can provide an easy starting point for farmers new to marketing, a direct connection between consumer and farmer, and a higher return to farmers when compared to other markets. ASAP can help your community develop any or all of these to create more viable opportunities for the sale of local food.

Farm Tours & Tourism: This rapidly growing economic opportunity adds to the visitor experience for locals and out-of-towners by highlighting farm tours, farm stays, food festivals, and other local food experiences. ASAP has a depth of experience working with economic development and tourism authorities to develop a strategic approach that raises visibility for local food in your community and generates more direct dollars for farmers while enhancing the overall visitor experience.

Farm to Community: Linking farms directly with businesses and institutions in your community can be an important part of building a stronger food economy. ASAP has created successful models for a number of these, including:

• Farm to School: The U.S. government’s new focus on fresher, healthier foods in schools presents an unprecedented opportunity for local producers and students alike. ASAP can work with your community to realize the goal of providing positive experiences with healthy foods by helping you develop and link four key components: farm field trips, nutrition education, school gardens, and local food in cafeterias.
• Farm to Chef: Engaging chefs and restaurants in a local food campaign provides visibility for locally grown food, allows chefs to participate in community education efforts, and helps brand the participating restaurants and drive sales. ASAP can help create a farm to chef initiative that could include marketing materials for restaurants that tout their use of locally grown food, local food cooking demonstrations, and the development of a farm-to-chef directory that enables better access to locally grown products.
• Farm to Institution: Hospitals, colleges and universities, and workplace cafeterias have the potential to serve as community role models for proactive healthy choices and markets for local food. ASAP has successfully developed initiatives that include a range of services to administration, staff, patients, food services, and the broader community, and we can help you do the same.

Local Food Campaign: A local food campaign combines initiatives such as a certified brand, local food guide, farm-to-school, and other tools for a more comprehensive effort to encourage consumers to buy local foods. The best elements for a campaign depend on a community’s goals and resources, and ASAP can help determine the best mix is to optimize your local food economy.

“ASAP’s expertise helped us think through the branding and marketing needs of our burgeoning local food program. ASAP’s expertise helped us target our outreach population and, through the process of meticulously focusing our efforts, goals and objectives, develop multiple branding strategies to reach our population. From this we have been able to develop into a highly recognizable brand.”

- Dr. Leslie Hossfeld

Program Evaluation: As you work to strengthen your community’s local food sector, it is important to understand what approaches are most effective. We can help you develop a customized evaluation program that will enable your community or organization to track and build on impact over time and ensure that resources and efforts you undertake are providing the highest value in building your local food economy.

Contact Us

Our team of consultants brings an in-depth knowledge of local food systems, experience in creating and implementing programs, and a proven ability to successfully manage and evaluate projects of all sizes. We would be happy to speak with you directly about how ASAP can help you build your local food economy.

Reach us at:
Email: Allison Perrett
Phone: 828-236-1282
306 West Haywood Street
Asheville, NC 28801