Building Local and Regional Food Systems - Part One
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
Local food has been a trend for decades now, and demand soared during the pandemic. This was especially true for local meat, and Walden Local Meat Company was well-positioned to capitalize. Here’s CEO Philip Giampietro.
Giampietro… “It became much more clear to people as we went into the pandemic, that those regional food systems are critical and we've all but killed them. So we were able to not just survive, but to thrive during the pandemic. And when I say we, I'm not talking just about Walden, I'm talking about our farming partners. It was their time to shine.”
Walden has built up a loyal following of customers in the Northeast by delivering meat door to door. They’ve built a model for local food production and delivery that Giampietro says can scale to other parts of the country.
Giampietro… “We can't turn around and be a huge system tomorrow, but I think we can grow responsibly. And I think growing responsibly is enough to change the way that people eat. And I think growing responsibly into new geographies, you know, as unintuitive as it may sound, is a way to kind of make this system even more local. Because you think about our supply chain and that bubble starts to grow out as we start to serve new geographies, and then we get big enough where we can pop that bubble into two smaller bubbles. So we can actually get more local as we scale, and that's what we've done from a Walden perspective”
Tune in tomorrow to learn how these local and regional food systems are being built.
