Edible Economy Project Central Illinois Local Food Hub

The Ohio State University Extenion -- Food Industries Center provides the following equipment list for a food processing center:  http://foodindustries.osu.edu/industry-services/facilities/equipment-request.  This link includes descriptions of the fruit and vegetable processing capabilities of the Food Industries Center: http://foodindustries.osu.edu/industry-services/capabilities/fruit-and-vegetable-processing/

The following link for Oklahoma State University Food & Agricultural Products Center lists design considerations for a food processing facility:  http://www.fapc.okstate.edu/files/factsheets/fapc104.pdf

This link provides a detailed description and facility floor plan (including some room dimensions) for the Food Innovation Center at Rutgers:  http://foodinnovation.rutgers.edu/FacilityDescription.pdf

The Food Innovation Center is a unique business incubation and economic development accelerator program, which is part of the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station (NJAES) at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Our Center provides business and technology expertise to startup and established food and value-added agriculture businesses in New Jersey and the surrounding region, and we utilize our outreach capacity to reach the food industry throughout the world.  As a way to share our experiences with others, a complete overview of our Center can be found here:  http://www.foodinnovation.rutgers.edu/CaseHistory2010.pdf 

Incubator overview, including floor plan and photos available here:  http://www.foodinnovation.rutgers.edu/incubatoroverview.html

This organization started with a commercial kitchen located in a trailer, moved to a 600 sf kitchen in a local church, and has plans to move to larger space in a new food coop:  http://www.fairfoodmatters.org/candokitchen.php

WISCONSIN INNOVATION KITCHEN:  According to a conversation between Terra Brockman and Karen Lehman of Fresh Taste, who recently visited processing facilities in Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen in Mineral Point has four main lines of business:   

1)      Farmer brings in own veggies and makes a product himself to take back out and sell  (e.g. what Bill could have done with his carrots - washed, peeled, sliced - or what anyone could do with own basil made into pesto, own tomatoes made into sauce, etc.

2)      Farmer brings own produce in, and the Center staff makes into a product according to the person's recipe (e.g. what my sister does when she hauls her aronia berries up to Honor, Michigan for Food for Thought to do the custom processing into jam using her recipe)  

3)      Farmer brings in produce and sells it to the center (wholesale) and then the center uses it to make own line of product - e.g. their own label frozen tomatoes or whatever - which they market themselves.   Tom proc to make person's own recipe (custom proc)

4)      Event space for rental

The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen opened in July of 2010.  It is a 10,000 sf facility focused primarily on value-added processing.  It was founded by the Hodan Center, a rehabilitation center for developmentally disabled adults--and they use it to process a line of food products (Papa Pat's Farmhouse Recipe products) that provides employment for their clients.  However, the Innovation Kitchen is open to the entire community.  Karen indicates it includes two docks (one in and one out).  They do not seem to emphasize the "packhouse" type of services we are envisioning; however, their website includes quite a bit of information that could be useful to us.  Their facility layout, equipment list, and photo tour are especially interesting.