People: Food Hubs and Aggregators

It can require too much additional effort for distributors and foodservice companies to work with multiple, smaller suppliers to source local food.

Read Local Food Solutions Vol. 18 - People: Food Hubs and Aggregators

Access: Rebates 101

Rebates can create supplier lock-in by providing deep discounts to customers. 

Read Local Food Solutions Vol. 17 - Access: Rebates 101

People: Organizational Culture

Organizations have internal cultures and routines that often present barriers to making changes to buy and use more local food.

Local food initiatives sometimes struggle to reach their goals because it can be difficult to create the organizational conditions necessary for sustained changes. Too often, a new initiative is at odds with the ingrained practices, attitudes and reward structures of the existing organizational culture.

Read Local Food Solutions Vol. 16 - People: Organizational Culture

Access: The Price of Local Food

Assumptions around price can make institutions and businesses cautious about buying more local food.

Many institutional food buyers assume that local food is generally more expensive. The reality is often the opposite.

Read Local Food Solutions Vol. 15 - Access: The Price of Local Food

Product: Meat Regulations

To no one’s surprise, food service operations in the Broader Public Sector (BPS) purchase a lot of meat products. In fact, the category of meat products often constitutes the largest food spend within the BPS after dairy and value added entrées, such as shepherd’s pie, lasagna,  and macaroni and cheese. Given the amount of money that is spent on meat products in the BPS, it would seem that Ontario’s livestock farmers and independent meat processors would be keen to become a supplier for this market. However, to date it has been difficult for the province’s smaller processors to tap into it.

Product: Food Safety and Local Food

Food safety often comes up in conversations about local food, and for many, proving that food is safe is a pre-requisite to doing business with the Broader Public Sector (BPS). 

Policy: Rules and Regulations in the BPS

The Broader Public Sector (BPS) has many rules that affect food procurement. Previous Green Papers have already explored some of these, but there are a number of other rules that have implications for local food procurement.

Policy: What Exactly Is Local Food? 

Defining local food can be a difficult task, because it often means different things to different people. In general, when people are looking for local food they are looking for products that shorten the distance between where it was produced and where it is eaten. It gets tricky when trying to draw the line for what is in and what is out. Indeed, if you ask consumers how they define local, you are bound to hear everything from product of Canada to food from within 100km.

Policy: How Food is Purchased in the Broader Public Sector

The way food is purchased in the Broader Public Sector (BPS) ranges from simple to complex. At its simplest, institutions such as schools and daycares “shop the specials” and buy food at grocery stores. At its most complex, institutions such as hospitals and universities have multiple food outlets, each operating under different purchasing conditions.

Policy: Trade Agreements

Trade agreements are used to reduce barriers for trade between two or more regions.