It’s widely understood in economic development circles that
if you want new entrepreneurs to start up and grow, a good strategy is to bring
them together and let the creativity roll.
A good
example is People’s Pierogi Collective, which grew in one year from a startup
hot food cart at Detroit’s Eastern Market to contract talks with local and
regional grocers and requests to franchise nationwide.
Founder Kimberly Stricker is
keeping the franchise potential in mind as she ramps up her new business,
currently at nine part-time employees and growing. People’s Pierogi Collective
produces pierogis (filled dumplings) for retail outlets and for food cart sales
at farmers markets and locations around southeast Michigan.
Peer Power. Stricker attributes much of her success so far to the
diverse community of customers, other small businesses, and related resources
she has found in and around Eastern Market, a retail and wholesale hub for
fresh food sales and local food enterprises since 1891.
Just as economists predict, when
similar businesses cluster together at places like Eastern Market, new
products, sales, and needed facilities and services emerge.
“Eastern Market has really been
pivotal,” Stricker says. “It’s a big part of what changed us into a real
business.”
Making sure more Michigan
communities have districts like Eastern Market, where food entrepreneurs can
connect and innovate, is a powerful way to accomplish the job and economic
development potential of the growing local and regional food sector. Such
districts can provide valuable business-to-business synergy and stimulate development
of new enterprises to fulfill needs many local food entrepreneurs have in
common, such as smaller-scale food processing and distribution.
Frank Gublo, a business counselor
with MSU’s Product Center for Agriculture and Natural Resources, often points his
clients in the direction of Eastern Market and other places where they can hook
up with and learn from other small businesses, and conduct low-cost market
research and product development.
“I tell clients, before they
launch, they should really be engaged in a community like that at Eastern
Market, he said. “Even though they might not sell there for very long, people
there know how to do things. It’s where they can go to learn and connect.”
Toolkit in the works. Michigan communities will soon benefit from a
2012 USDA-funded project to provide guidance on what such districts look like
and how to develop them locally.
The Northwest Michigan Council of
Governments, in conjunction with the C.S. Mott Group for Sustainable Food
Systems at MSU, will lead the effort to build a toolkit of effective planning,
zoning, and economic development approaches to fostering the growth of “food
innovation districts” in Michigan.
For more information about that
effort, contact Sarah Lucas of NWMCOG (231.929.5034,
sarahlucas@nwm.cog.mi.us)
or Kathryn Colasanti at the Mott Group (517.353.0642, colokat@msu.edu).
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