- Hey there.
Welcome to the Center for an Agricultural Economy,
and home of the Vermont Food Venture Center.
This is the last course objective,
and really there's only objectives
of following along with the tour.
Keep your hands, feet,
boogers inside of the vehicle at all times.
And if you can handle that, then we're good.
Behind me is honestly
the coolest painting I've ever seen.
It's the local food movement in color
and life in awesome art.
So, I want to kind of walk you through this
of how this matches and why this is
in the entryway to our facility,
really because it's who we are and what we've preached
and what we've done as an organization and as the CAE.
Where else better to start than the ground up, right?
You need good seeds, you need good soil
to produce good food.
Yeah, maybe a good tractor is helpful too.
Sometimes you got to rely
on some good-old hard labor out in the fields.
Occasionally farmers can sell off their farm stand
depending on regulation.
Maybe it's direct-to-consumer;
that happy dude with some lettuce.
Other times it needs to be trucked,
it needs to get somewhere farther than the farm itself.
That's where we think we start to come into play.
(machinery humming and clanking)
That's us, keeping hair nets sexy, hand sanitizer awesome.
Wash those hands and produce a value-added product.
Have it delivered to the door and like,
have Connor pick it up, look.
Dude's got a mustache for days.
I can't even turn my mustache ever again.
Anyways, back to the tour.
And hopefully it's going to this local person
that is buying that local product.
To then be able to make their local meal.
And yeah, if they don't eat it all,
put it in the compost, right back into the soils,
and right back where we began.
On the opposite wall we have posters
kind of telling you what else we do.
We're trying to help farmers.
We're trying to help food businesses.
And we're trying to help our local community.
And by showing you these posters,
you can see that we give farm financing,
food business development, place-based education.
And down on the right corner
is our Farm-to-Institution Program,
which is essentially a business of its own
that we as the Center for an Agricultural Economy
own and operate.
And we produce a local crop.
And we add some sort of minimal processing value to it
to sell it to that institutional market.
So as you see this poster, Lee is there being awesome
bagging up our locally grown carrots,
processed into carrot sticks and carrots shreds.
We work with 24 different institutional customers.
That's made up of hospitals, colleges,
schools, restaurants and retail stores.
We source from 18 different farms
and we have six good-faith agreements as of 2016.
Our numbers right now, we're projecting to process over
100,000 pounds of crops in 2017.
This is some awesome stuff.
Over here we have our product display.
This gives you an understanding of how many businesses
have come here so far.
How many product ideas those businesses had.
As well as the type of packaging
and the type of regulation that we face
on a day-to-day basis.
Shown to you on this table
is a wide range of FDA-regulated products.
You don't see any meat here,
you don't see any beef jerky here,
you don't see any soups here,
you don't see any raw processed cuts of meat.
We operate under strictly FDA regulation
in our three shared-use kitchens.
However, we do have a creamery within our facility.
But I'll add to that later.
With an incubator kitchen,
you can see a wide range of businesses that come to you
from all over the country.
To give you an example, up top here we have Purified Juice,
a Burlington-based company.
Wozz! Kitchen Creations, Bethlehem, New Hampshire.
Element Shrub, Arlington, Virginia.
Butterfly Bakery makes a mustard and a hot sauce
out of Montpelier.
Vermont Veggie Burger,
based out of Plainfield, made from here.
Some are cocktail syrups, some are hot sauces.
Some are dry packed, some are wet packed.
Depending on the equipment that we have out back,
we're gonna sit down and talk regulation with them.
We're gonna talk packaging with them.
We're gonna talk, what do you make?
How much have you made?
And we're gonna see if our facility
is the right fit for them
before they even step foot in our kitchens.
As you can see, shelf-stable
jarred products is what we do well.
Yeah, we can do some dry-goods packaging
but we don't try to overextend ourselves of what we do.
We know our sweet spots, we know our equipment,
and that's what we promote ourselves as.
We can help in other areas of business advising
and regulatory environment with other products
that we might not be able to process,
but really our sweet spot
is what is displayed in front of you.
Now we are in the warehouse.
As you can see behind me, here is a map of the facility.
Helps you understand the full 15,000 square feet,
giving you a snapshot of one,
two, three production kitchens.
Dry storage, freezer storage, refrigerated storage.
There's some conference room office areas
that we were just up in, where the mural was.
Our big driveway, loading dock access,
and then an anchor tenant built within the facility.
Monday through Friday is different week to week.
Some people are weekly, some people are monthly.
Some people don't come every three months.
So, having 40% of our facility chalked up to
a business being here all the time,
pumping, flowing, making cheese, storing cheese;
it helps pay the bills year round
to make sure this place is always open and operating.
Dry storage is offered at a monthly pallet rate.
Most people use it to start
shipping packaging material here, such as this pallet left.
It could be a pallet of cardboard.
Or they might be using it to store
labeled products ready to go,
to be shipped out of this storage to a distributor.
We offer frozen storage at a monthly pallet rate as well.
These are most of our minimal-processed vegetables in here.
However, one of our entrepreneurs stocks
and sources local peppers, and is able to store them
throughout the year and then queue them up as she needs
for her hot sauce productions.
We're here now in the wet kitchen,
the most utilized space in the Food Venture Center,
mainly because of the steam kettle capacity that we have.
Two 40-gallon steam kettles and a 60-gallon steam kettle
can make a whole lot of wet products.
And yes, that's why we call it the wet kitchen.
Yeah, it might be wet right now,
but we really just make wet products in here.
Beverages, marinades, glazes, salsas,
hot sauces, chutneys, they all have a wet viscosity
and can be either homogenous
or un-homogeneous in their consistencies.
That's what dictates usually the filler
that we'll use to bottle that product.
We have two 40-gallon steam kettles
with a gas-operated steam generator to the right.
Both steam kettles are a little bit different
in their configuration; one has a smaller spout to the left,
one has a larger one to the right.
The right one also tilts.
But they both really serve a great purpose
of cooking these wet viscosity products
to a gradual temperature growth,
and being able to hold a certain temperature.
We have another stove top, six-burner.
Again, not as much used.
We do see people come in and use this
for their first couple of batches.
They're just not ready for the 40-gallon kettles,
let alone the 20-gallon in the other room.
They might just need these for a couple of runs
to understand what they need to do
to formulate their recipe and get a bit bigger.
We also have a 60-gallon electric steam kettle.
This steam kettle could move
to our multi-purpose kitchen as well.
In total we have five convection ovens,
three gas-generated Blodgett ovens,
and two electric Garland ovens.
In front of me is our four-head overflow filler.
From left to right, this machine operates where
you fit four bottles at a time,
manually place them on the banisters,
push them left or right, and these heads
go up and down with pneumatics.
They're gonna fill the bottle, pass to the right,
and then be capped with this going, pushing forward,
and capping them in the back.
This piece of equipment was purchased jointly
with the Center for an Agricultural Economy
and the Vermont Switchel Company.
Vermont Switchel Company came to us and said,
"I need more capping capacity
"to be able to produce more in a given day."
We knew that we were able to solidify grant funds
to be able to match her grand funds.
With that, the Vermont Food Venture Center
got this four-head overflow filler.
She then owns a four-head capper
that is specific to her product,
to her beer bottle crown cap, and it works great,
and she could expand into another line
if she needed to be able to.
As a whole, this piece of equipment can meet the needs
of multiple businesses in our operation,
but also be super efficient with this specific operation
of filling four at a time, capping four at a time,
and having two 40-gallon steam kettles
and a 60-gallon steam kettle of Switchel
being made all at once.
This grew incrementally.
Initially we only had one 40-gallon steam kettle
and a gravity filler with two valves on it
and a hand capper.
Then we grew to two 40-gallon steam kettles.
And that meant a lot of capping bottles!
But once we added this 60-gallon steam kettle,
we knew that we needed to upgrade
filling capacity and capping capacity.
Together, I think we've achieved that.
This is our piston filler.
It's a great piece of equipment for a community kitchen,
a shared-use kitchen.
Incubator style, co-packer all the way through.
It handles a wide range of
homogenous and un-homogenous consistencies.
It really can be set up in four heads, two heads,
or just this single-head operation that we have here.
(machinery humming and clanking)
We're in the raw kitchen,
where we do a majority of our farm-to-institution
minimum processing, which we call the Just Cut Program.
However, we could also have a chocolate maker in here,
raw veggie burger maker, sauerkraut,
value-added farm products because of all these wonderful
stainless steel pieces of equipment.
Out back we have a approximately
200-gallon vegetable washer.
So, that conveyor belt lays down into the trough here.
And with that, we have
a pump on the backside,
and that pumps circulates the water
up through these tubings here
that are then laying across the conveyor.
I'll show you that in action in another second.
(machinery rumbling)
This machine also operates with an air knife.
So, if we're potentially putting products through here
that being shocked versus just washed.
Say, being pulled out of a blanching basket
and then being shocked on here such as broccoli.
And we'll come up here and then hit this air knife
to be able to be dried before they're sheet-trayed.
This is our flop peeler.
We use it to peal our root crops,
mainly carrots, beets, and parsnips.
What it does is it uses this abrasive basket
with a water source on the top,
and it tumbles them around for about two minutes or so
depending on the volume in there.
And what that's doing is just kinda shearing off
the outsides of the skins.
Out back we have a salad spinner,
helping dry our cabbage products.
Maybe dry leafy greens that have been washed
through our vegetable washer.
In front of me I have a sorter.
So, when we roll all these products
through that food processor that turns them into diced bits,
when we put 'em in through this side on our left
and then roll them along to the right,
when they take a ride and journey along these rollers
with a water source, all of the imperfect shavings
of those diced bits are gonna drop out
through the rollers as they go along.
We'll put sheet trays on the bottom.
And I'll give you an example of those.
(fingers snap)
(machinery humming)
We can actually bag those byproducts up
and use it as a mashed pureed mix to be sold.
But really the benefit is that we have
a more consistent quality product
ending up into the barrels.
Here we have our packaging table.
You can see, we have a scale in the top-left corner
and two chutes if we needed to operate two scales at a time.
But generally we fill this table with vegetables
in its diced form, and then we package them up
and through these chutes in a five,
10 or 20-pound increments.
So, all we're doing is using the scale from there,
being able to package it in a more institutional manner.
(clattering)
(packaging crackling)
Stainless-steel heaven again.
We have big stainless-steel tables, a bay sink,
a hand-washing sink, a compressed-air source,
and adequate floor drains.
(packaging crackling)
Now we are in the multi-purpose kitchen.
We call it a multi-purpose kitchen
because we use it in a couple of different ways.
We have our wet kitchen and we have our raw kitchen
that serves cooking capacity or raw vegetable capacity.
This room has a little bit of both.
So, as we go around the room,
we have our generic four-burner stove top
with a couple of food processors sitting on top.
Really just as a table top.
We have a 40-gallon capacity tilt skillet
with a direct method of heat underneath the bottom
for rapid boiling, shooting off the pectins,
trying to get any sort of caramelization on flavors.
This piece of equipment is key.
The key to some of this equipment
is its awesome quick disconnects in the back.
So, as I go along now back here and look down the hallway,
there are disconnect valves here.
And run all the way along the back here,
which allows me to disconnect my gas
from each one of my convection ovens
and roll 'em down the hallway.
Along this side of the wall, we have two different sealers.
One is a vacuum sealer.
It has two bands.
One on this side, one on this side; you can double load it.
Truly is developing a vacuum
and taking out oxygen out of the bag.
Does have nitrogen-flush capacity.
Our veggie burger producer uses this
to seal up his two burgers.
However, in our minimal-processing program,
as you'll see in the other video,
uses a vertical band sealer.
So, this machine is simply working from right to left
and then going, that conveyor rolls
and then they get sealed across this bar sealer here.
(packaging crackling)
(clattering)
It does come with a printing setting
where we can actually put a spool
and we add our farmer name, use-by date,
so on and so forth identification tag
for our packaged produce.
(packaging crackling) You wanna see it?
Oh, wonderful!
Now, this gives you a good example of when I said
we have a little bit of the wet kitchen
and a little bit of the raw kitchen in this one room.
We have the electrical capacity
to be able to add our 20-gallon steam kettle
as well as our 60-gallon steam kettle in this room
for a total of 80 gallons of capacity.
However, we could just be a vegetable processor
in here as well.
So, these two obviously being on wheels,
and as long as the electricity is in each room, which it is,
we can use both of these Robot Coupe food processors.
The one on the left is a slicer, dicer,
shredder, Julianne cutter.
As you can see, as I zoom in on this
that it has many different blades that can go to it.
And it's simply the CL-60 configuration.
And then a blade sits into there
properly with the right head
and then it's able to process and dice and shred
and do those types of things when assembled properly.
Here is another Robot Coupe CL-60,
a newer model with a higher profile off the ground,
but same setup: slicer, dicer, shredder, you name it.
The benefit of having two of these is for an example,
if say (fingers snap).
(machinery humming)
Or say Wozz! needs to use it for making salsa,
we can both use them at the same time in different rooms.
And then in the corner over here is a 60-quart Hobart mixer.
So, really this room could serve as a bakery purpose
of having convection ovens,
potentially all five in here, if need be,
or just the double stack along with a 60-quart mixture.
A lot of cookies, brownies or breads
could be made in this capacity.
Last but not least we have windows in this room.
Oh my gosh, isn't that amazing?
Most kitchens, especially industrial ones
and restaurant ones don't see the light of day.
You just work, work, work, and you make food,
and then you go outside when you're done for work.
So, this one actually gets a nice little view
of our Hardwick Junction Road coming in here.
We are now in the cheese cell,
where you can see this beautiful mural
depicting where cheese comes from.
Grass is only as good as the soil it's grown from.
A cow's diet is only as good as the grass it eats.
Which then produces good milk.
And really good cheese is only as good
as the milk it comes from.
(soft background pop music)
So, that was only the production room
that you just saw, right there.
As you can see, they have cold storage, washrooms,
salting and hasting rooms,
as well as their own boiler setup.
They take up 6,500 square feet of this 15,000 square feet.
And again, are an anchor tenant paying a monthly rent here.
And now that you've seen the cheese cell,
you've seen our three production kitchens,
you've seen our dry and cold storage,
you've really seen it at all.
15,000 square feet of food-production facility.
Thanks so much for your patience along this tour.
I know I'm an amateur.
I know the footage, the sound, the corny jokes,
they're all just really amateur status.
However, I hope you learned a little bit about what we do,
why we've set this place up the way we did.
And if you need any other questions answered,
feel free to reach out to us.
Thanks so much again.