Acadiana Food Hub

With yearlong growing seasons and a deep agricultural history, Acadiana has no shortage of local foods producers and artisans as well as locavores who love them. But creating these goods in compliance with state and federal food laws isn’t always so cut and dry.

“The Cottage Food Law is widely misunderstood,” said Chef Jeremy Conner, owner of Cellar Salt Co. and coordinator of the Humble Fish pop-up dinner series. The small and restrictive legislative window allows local foods artisans to create certain items to sell at food stands and farmers markets; but they must earn less than $20,000 annually on their wares, be the sole producers of their products, and have no pets in their home, among other restrictions. In practice, this law limits food makers, especially those wanting to make their unique offerings a primary source of income. 

“When I started, I operated my business under Cottage Food Law, but really needed a commercial stove and hood vent to boil off the water and create the salt,” said Conner. “So I started manufacturing the salt at Bread & Circus Provisions. My product got a lot of press in a short amount of time, which prompted the [Louisiana] Department of Health to visit the restaurant and inspect my operation. I was at my day job, and they told [the chef] that the salt would have to be destroyed because I wasn’t a licensed food manufacturer and the Cottage Food laws didn’t cover me because I wasn’t manufacturing the product in my home. In the end, they seized my inventory.”

Two years ago, a group of sustainably minded citizens and producers began planning a food hub in Lafayette’s old Coburn Supply building that was slated for demolition. The mission was two-fold: to save a historic building and to provide long-overdue commercial kitchen space and food storage solutions for local food producers in the region, where compliance with the Cottage Food Law would no longer be a problem. 

The Coburn Supply building food hub didn’t come to fruition; and the commute to Baton Rouge or New Orleans, where commercial kitchen facilities did exist, was out of the question for Conner. Fortunately for Cellar Salt and other Cottage Food Law delinquents, Zack McMath entered the picture. 

McMath, former business partner of Evolve cold-pressed, locally made juices (now Emerge Juice), was in on some of the early talks for the Coburn building. When that plan failed, he took the creation of an Acadiana incubator kitchen into his own hands. This wasn’t the first time McMath had advocated for something he believed should exist. As an LSU undergraduate studying business, history, and political science, he petitioned the university to create an interdisciplinary entrepreneurial degree track and then went on to graduate in that very program. 

McMath established the McMath Food Group and got to work on the kitchen, which expanded into a 6,500-square-foot local-foods incubator for small businesses in a building owned by Lafayette real estate agent Hammy Davis. “Now we have a warehouse for e-commerce distribution, aggregation of produce, cold and frozen storage, and will have a business support center and two kitchens … an incubator kitchen and a commissary kitchen,” said McMath.

Essentially, Acadiana Food Hub will be a one-stop shop for local foods businesses looking to develop and sell a product. 

During the evolution of the business plan, the McMath Food Group has been working closely with Davis and attributes the development of the project to its partnership and to Davis’ willingness to work with and support McMath, as a tenant, in the design and build-out of the business space. In the creation of it all, McMath found himself wading through often confusing food regulations and learned that, by law, the venture must operate as three different businesses: Acadiana Food Hub, Acadiana Incubator Kitchen, and Acadiana Commissary Kitchen. 

Acadiana Food Hub will serve as a business resource for local foods producers, purveyors, and artisans and provide warehouse space for the storage and distribution of their goods. The McMath Group will broker food sales and facilitate business relationships between food makers and food buyers (e.g. restaurants, grocers, food delivery services). Through this business, McMath is working on the development of branding, marketing and sales, website development, and more between a group of pre-selected, participating consultants and the producers. Essentially, Acadiana Food Hub will be a one-stop shop for local foods businesses looking to develop and sell a product. 

Acadiana Incubator Kitchen will be a U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved creation and test space for artisans, rented in different time increments as needed, to develop products to sell in wholesale markets and retail businesses. 

Acadiana Commissary Kitchen will serve as a commercial kitchen space for caterers, food trucks, and the like. Food delivery applications, like Waitr, will be a sales and distribution avenue for folks using this kitchen space (i.e. consumers can order items produced in the kitchen space and Waitr will deliver to their doorstep). McMath sees the potential for chefs using the commissary space (with the help of food delivery applications) as a market-testing tool to gauge interest in a new product or restaurant concept. For food truck business owners using the space, Acadiana Commissary Kitchen provides secure parking out back.  

As McMath tells it, the possibilities are endless; and he’s eager to evolve the business to meet the needs of the producers he is serving. “We have the approved building plans and will open our doors in about two months, definitely in the fourth quarter of this year, 2016,” said McMath. “Once we get everything implemented, we are going to explore other ideas, like creating food growth and distribution centers in our community through Helical Holdings hydroponic greenhouse systems. We have several locations identified where we can set up these greenhouses and use the system as a storefront for local foods.

“It’s all about helping the community gain access,” he continued. “There is so much potential, and I’m looking forward to helping make it all happen within my community.” 

Visit mcmathfoodgroups.com for general information and to apply for membership to the Acadiana Food Hub.