Food Connects is thrilled to share the increased growth of our Food Hub family. As our team has established more partnerships with food hubs across New England, we’ve onboarded 35 producers over the past 18 months. These new producers represent an increase our diversity in products, ensuring our wholesale customers see Food Connects as a one-stop-shop.
Producer Spotlight: Joe's Kitchen
It’s soup season and we are ready to celebrate one of our newer producers—Joe’s Kitchen at Screamin’ Ridge Farm. Joe makes delicious soups that will certainly warm you up on these cold fall days. Read more to learn about Joe and his soups!
Can you share a little about Joe's Kitchen and the farm?
Joe's Kitchen was founded 15 years ago. At the time, our family farm—Screamin’ Ridge Farm—had grown from a small truck farm to a 250 member CSA, delivering produce to many of the major employers in the Montpelier and surrounding area. We had an idea to create a healthy, value-added product from our surplus produce—soup! We began including soup within the CSA shares (as well as our passive solar spinach). It was a huge winter market hit! Soon after, Red Hen Bakery asked us to make soups for their cafe, becoming the first big wholesale customer for Joe’s Kitchen.
What inspired you to start making soups?
Soup is healthy and nutritious, and it aligns perfectly with the cycle of farming. In the middle of winter, even far outside the growing season, storage vegetables can be used to make delicious and hearty soups. Soup also stirs a bit of nostalgia. I have many childhood memories of my grandmother's soups—she was a great cook. I imagine most of us have comforting memories attached to bowls of soup.
What makes your products unique?
The taste really separates our products from other soups. Our lists of ingredients are simple and clean. We take the time to develop the flavors in the key ingredients, ao we can use a minimal amount of salt and still pack a ton of flavor. We even make our own stocks. For example, our Ginger Chicken soup actually tastes like ginger and chicken, nothing artificial. We also believe it is important to purchase ingredients locally—not just vegetables, but our meats, tortillas, tofu, tempeh, butter, cream, and (of course) cheddar cheese. Purchasing locally not only supports our local farmers and businesses, which is a mission of ours, but it ensures that fresh ingredients are used in our soups. We know that fresh translates to a better quality, better tasting, healthier soup.
What is one of your favorite soups (we know it's hard to choose)? Or one you highly recommend our customers to try?
It’s nostalgic, but for me it’s the Split Pea soup. it reminds me of my mom’s, with the big smokey ham hock she used to add to it. I love it with oyster crackers and some extra black pepper. It’s perfect in the middle of winter.
Why is selling locally and the local food movement important to you?
It's really about community and supporting the local economy that we’re a part of. We sell locally and employ locally. A large percentage of our activity is spent locally. We also contribute quite often to help the food insecure in our local community. Community is really integral to how we operate Joe’s Kitchen.
How does working with Food Connects help your business?
As a like-minded organization, working with Food Connects has provided an awesome opportunity to access the southern part of the state, connecting us with like-minded customers. In particular, it has connected us with the public schools. I used to be a local school board member, and I am very aware of the challenges faced by local school nutrition programs.
Any events coming up or fun facts about your business?
Soup season is here! Between October and March, our sales usually increase by 500%. We are so excited to be working with Boyden Farm this winter for our beef supply. We make over 35 different soups, as well as some really great Macaroni and Cheese (including a Gluten-Free variety). We have started doing research with smoked meats, as well.
Anything else you would like me to feature? Anything that you are doing to respond to the COVID-19 crisis?
COVID-19 has posed an extreme operational challenge, not only for us, but for many businesses across the state. At Joe’s Kitchen, we require vaccination of our employees, and we follow very strict sanitation protocols in our kitchens. I would like to take this opportunity to urge people to get vaccinated.