Maybe your organization is interested in developing a kitchen incubator,

creating micro-processing capacity for your market vendors,

or identifying innovative strategies for

re-localizing your food and farm economy

The Appalachian Center for Economic Networks, (ACEnet) has over 20 years of experience with the formation of food sector incubation and agricultural enterprise development. Our consulting services can be scaled and customized to your community or organizational needs.

Since 1996, ACEnet has operated a shared-use food processing facility—The Food Ventures Center-- serving family farmers and regional food entrepreneurs with product development and access to market services.

A collaborative facility for value-added processing and other local food production can diversify the selection at your market and assist area farmers and food entrepreneurs to create niche products with local ingredients. Want to see our local food system model firsthand, we host tours and trainings on a regular basis.

To learn more about tours or ACEnet planning services, please call for a free service consultation

Contact Leslie Schaller

Facility Tours and Overviews

Both group and individual tours of the ACEnet facility, along with an incubator introductory presentation and a community tour, are available in daily time blocks. See our tour fee schedule for pricing information.

Replication Assistance

Interested in exploring how your organization may benefit from ACEnet’s experience? Maybe you are interested in building a kitchen incubator, initiating a regional branding campaign such as ACEnet’s Food We Love, or operating a business development center. As you begin to develop your plans, get advice and detailed assistance from the experienced staff who have helped to build ACEnet.

Presentations to Stakeholders

Need to bring everyone on board? ACEnet can help your organization to better communicate strategies and goals to your stakeholders, allowing everyone to have a clearer understanding of the project and the key challenges and opportunities involved.

Consulting

Ready to start putting the pieces together? Consultation services are available that can lead your staff through mission development to feasibility studies and business plans. ACEnet staff will walk you through the steps, increasing the thoroughness of your program development and chances of success.

Trainings and Workshops

ACEnet can help to communicate to your staff the most up-to-date trend information in any of our areas of expertise. Experienced educators use interactive techniques to promote learning. Trainings/workshops can be held at your facility or on the ACEnet campus. The web-based ACEnet Training Center is also available at a nominal fee for online, long-distance learning.

ACEnet offers a look into the ACEnet model for:

• Shared Use Kitchen Incubators
• Entrepreneurship
• Small Business Development
• Market Readiness
• Regional Branding / Buy Local Campaigns
• Community Foods: Markets and Gleaning Projects
• Value-Added Agriculture / Agritourism

Varying degrees of assistance from ACEnet tours to on-site consulting services are available to organizations for the investigation into the replication of many ACEnet programs.

Please call ahead to (740) 592-3854 for tour times/reservations or for more information on ACEnet Peer Consulting Services.