DETROIT LAKES, Minn. — From potatoes to peppers to tomatoes, the food grown by farmers near this western Minnesota town will soon be put to more and better use. Potatoes grown in the Red River Valley could be mashed and diced for school lunches. Peppers could become salsa and hot sauce. Tomato seeds could be harvested for the future.
Such are the possibilities are envisioned by members of Manna Food Co-op — which like other cooperative grocery stores is independently owned by local residents who run it and shop there — with the help of a new commercial kitchen.
Funded by a federal grant, the kitchen will strengthen Manna’s connection to local food producers, a core principle for co-ops. “Farmers can come and process food for themselves and their own separate business, or process something for the co-op,” said Zachary Paige, Manna’s board president.
Growing local food systems
Before Manna’s project, Bemidji’s Harmony Co-op undertook a similar expansion in 2012.
Adding a commercial kitchen was a fairly novel idea at the time, said Lisa Weiskopf, Harmony’s product manager. There was a learning curve, but also early success.
Local entrepreneurs used the space to brew beer, building up a business that became Bemidji Brewing. “That’s the archetypal reason that a co-op would want to start a commercial kitchen,” Weiskopf said.
Manna’s team, which visited Harmony, has this in mind for the new space. Its kitchen’s stainless steel surfaces and walk-in coolers look much like what you’d see back of house through those swinging doors at a restaurant.
Paige said he hopes Manna is a launch point for producers in Detroit Lakes, whether the end products end up being sold in the co-op or elsewhere.
“This could be a beginning step, and then maybe they’re off into Shark Tank land,” he said. “They could start here, hone in on the recipe, get a bunch of sales locally, get a bunch of sales regionally, and maybe they outgrow us.”
Education was and still is another important component of Harmony’s kitchen plans. University and health care educators use the space for nutrition courses.
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Compared with when Harmony built its commercial kitchen, Weiskopf feels like the landscape for the concept is more favorable now. More than in 2012, people are reckoning with the ways that climate change impacts food access. Empty shelves during COVID-19 further exposed fragilities in supply chains, an issue exacerbated by inflation and tariffs.
It all points to a need to shore up local food systems, Weiskopf said.
“The folks at Manna are so deeply enmeshed with the agriculture community in that area,” she said. “They’re a warmer region than ours with a larger agricultural base to draw from. I’m hoping that all aids them in this project.”
Manna grew out of a local farmers market, where Ryan Pesch has been a staple as a vegetable vendor. He and other locals started the co-op as an outlet for selling products outside of the market.
As Manna’s co-general manager, Pesch describes the co-op as a “boot-strappy, grassroots” operation. Through growth since Manna started in 2017, that approach has continued, along with its mission of connecting local producers to consumers.
“To me, a grower, the idea of having local products from local people in a retail establishment open seven days per week does a lot for positioning of local products in front of people in a daily kind of way. Otherwise, it’s a novelty,” he said. “A co-op allows people to engage with food on main street in a way that I think is meaningful.”
Manna used federal Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure (RSFI) program funding for its commercial kitchen. The Biden-era program, under the U.S. Department of Agriculture, funds infrastructure projects that strengthen local or regional food systems.
The co-op’s allocation is about $304,198. Despite a freeze on the funding by President Donald Trump’s administration, Manna’s money has so far come through.
The new kitchen is part of a larger expansion for the co-op. It moved into a bigger space downtown, using a fundraising campaign to cover the remainder.
Leading up to the new location’s Nov. 1 opening, Pesch, Paige and others were winding down the old space down the street. Even removing the commercial kitchen, the retail space is larger than what Manna was working with before.
Putting the co-op in cooperation
Continuing in the cooperative spirit of co-ops, Manna’s team took what it learned from Harmony in Bemidji and passed along advice to Madison Mercantile for its ongoing commercial kitchen project.
In a city surrounded by farming, said Madison Mercantile owner Kris Shelstad, focusing more on how to use and promote local products makes sense.
“We have the best dirt in the world, but we don’t grow a lot of food for locals,” she said. “We wanted to start learning more about local foods and local products because during COVID we learned most of our food doesn’t come from here.”
Shelstad initially thought the kitchen could be used to supply her coffee shop and cafe with local products. As she developed the idea, she learned storage was an impediment keeping producers from selling products at a local level. The Madison Mercantile kitchen would address this by offering storage and processing space.
Growers and buyers would find more avenues to sell their products, she said. A cottage license allows bakers to sell homemade goods at a market, for example, but getting into a commercial kitchen enables them to become a wholesaler.
Madison doesn’t have a bakery, but Shelstad said she knows it has bakers who can get their goods out to more people by using a commercial kitchen.
Shelstad didn’t get RSFI funding despite applying for it. Instead, she used funding through a separate federal program known as Regional Food Business Centers. Although the Trump administration terminated the program in July, she expects her $40,000 in reimbursements to come through.
Madison’s commercial kitchen could be ready by early 2026.
“I hope to be cranking out the first loaf of bread by the end of January,” Shelstad said.
A potato grower will be one of the first producers to use Manna’s kitchen. The co-op will do light processing, which the farmer can then more easily bring to buyers, Paige said.
Paige, an organic farmer in nearby Vergas, will be making use of the space, as well. He grabs handfuls of his peppers from the kitchen’s walk-in refrigerator to show what he’ll process in the kitchen.
His peppers will be made into hot sauce. Once bottled, his locally grown and processed product will be sold on shelves under the same roof.
The post A space for more: Co-op kitchens are helping local food producers to get creative appeared first on MinnPost.
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