Welcome to the Good Food purchasing initiative’s Guide for Growers & Food Businesses!

This resource was developed by the Chicago Food Policy Action Council and partner organizations for people who are growing food or running food businesses to learn about new, emerging market opportunities being created by the Metro Chicago Good Food Purchasing Initiative (GFPI) and the Good Food Purchasing Policy resolutions adopted by the City of Chicago and Cook County. We hope you find the information useful as you consider selling food to community nutrition programs that serve students, seniors, hospital patients, and other residents. The guide will also be useful if you are interested in selling food to food concessionaires (restaurants or caterers with public contracts) or publicly-run food festivals (e.g., Taste of Chicago).

If you have questions or suggestions for other resources to add to this guide, please contact the GFPI Supply Chain Development Specialist, British Griffis at british@chicagofoodpolicy.com

Table of Contents

ACknowledgements

Funding for this project was made possible by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service through grant AM190100XXXXG135. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the USDA.
The Chicago Food Policy Action Council would also like to thank the Illinois Specialty Crop Block Grant and the Chicago Community Trust/Kinship Foundation’s Food Land Opportunity Grant for funding to support the development of this resource. Many partners have informed and contributed to this resource, and we want to acknowledge staff from Urban Growers Collective, Advocates for Urban Agriculture, University of Illinois Extension’s Local Food & Small Farms, and Illinois Stewardship Alliance for all their valuable input. A special thank you to Kathryn Pereira, Local Food & Small Farms Educator, University of Illinois Extension, for her development of Pt. III: Business Planning to Sell to Institutional Markets and to Paul Dietmann of Compeer Financial for his review of this section.
This guide was designed by Rachel Hoffman with beautiful, original collage illustrations. To learn more about Rachel’s work, please visit www.therachelhoffman.com.