Local food was on the menu (literally) at the bigBANG2001! social entrepreneur conference at Union Station Dallas Friday where produce grown by Paul Quinn College's Food For Good Farm and a garden at Youth Village Resources of Dallas (YRVD) was served at lunch.
Foundations, corporations, local non-profits and investors enjoyed the lunch and heard rapid-fire presentations/solicitations from 20 “social innovators," five of them directly involved with local, sustainable food efforts. All presenters had to plead their case in less than seven minutes using 20 slides, each of which remained on the screen for only 20 seconds.
The presenters in the “Nourish” area included:
Chef Chad Houser of Parigi Restaurant, who asked for $225,000 in start-up capital to fund a permanent home for Café Momentum, a restaurant/training center for high risk kids. The kids (and some of the food for the restaurant) would come from YRVD and its garden. YVRD works with juvenile offenders, ages 10 to 17. Café Momentum got its start as a pop-up restaurant series and held its first dinner earlier this month. The dinner was held at the Milestone Culinary Arts Center and provided restaurant experience for a dozen kids. The next dinner is July 10.
Blair Back, Director of Operations for the Dallas Farmer Market Trust, who asked for support for the Trust’s proposal to the City of Dallas to privatize the Dallas Farmers Market (DFM) and investors to help fund the operations. The Trust is the only group that responded to the City’s requests for proposals for the privatization. Black said there are six members of the Trust, whom he didn't name, but said they have experience in the food and restaurant businesses and in real estate development. The trust is promoting a “public-private partnership” which calls for the City to subsidize the Trust for $640,000 for the first year, $450,000 for years 2 and 3 and $250,000 for years 4 and 5. According to Black, the DFM has averaged $840,000 in losses over each of the past three years.
Michael J. Sorrell, President of Paul Quinn College, who asked for some $150,000 to build a greenhouse, buy a tractor and clear three acres of land adjacent to the College’s Food For Good Farm. Noting that there is no grocery store within six miles of Paul Quinn, Sorrell said that with the donations and the amount of food the expanded garden could produce, Paul Quinn would be able to open its own grocery store to serve the neighborhood. The Food for Good Farm is located on the what had been the college football field and is a joint venture of the college and PepsiCo.
Ronda Rutledge, executive director of the Sustainable Food Center in Austin, who was seeking $3.5 million to build a training facility and a 2.3 acre community garden to expand the capacity of the Center’s current programs which target economically disadvantaged neighborhoods in Austin. The programs include Grow Local, Farm Direct, The Happy Kitchen and Sprouting Healthy Kids.
Brian Johnson from The Movement, a personal training studio, who was asking for support for a series of hyper-loca community stores that would provide a retail outlet for local food producers and increased access to local food for consumers. Johnson, who also runs a local food coop from his McKinney Avenue studio, said that the stores would not only support local farms, but would enable more people to have access to local food.
In addition to the Nourish Track, the conference featured the Empower Track which focused on issues affecting women and girls, the Teach Track which involved learning opportunities and the Serve Track which focused on North Texas’ corporate social responsibility programs.
The conference was organized by Dallas Social Venture Partners. It was originally scheduled for Thursday but was moved to Friday due to the Mavericks Celebration parade.