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Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP)

Mid-America Food Hub and Training Center, LLC, Achieves Success with a New Business Venture

With the help of: Missouri Enterprise

About

Mid-America Food Hub and Training Center, LLC, is a woman-owned company located in the small town of Pilot Grove, Missouri. Founded in 2017. The company started out as a group of local Missouri producers working together to ensure people knew where their food came from while offering a quality product. Those local meat, fruit, vegetable, and hemp farmers soon turned their ideas into Mid-America Food Hub and Training Center, working together dehydrating their products into delicious soups, entrees, and snacks that are shelf stable for up to five years.

 

Mid-America Food Hub is dedicated to providing the highest quality local fruits, vegetables, and meats for chefs and buyers. Mid-America Food Hub verifies their farmers so they can guarantee non-GMO, organic, close-to-organic produce and “never ever” antibiotics, growth hormones, or GMOs given to their livestock. Mid-America Food Hub strives to ensure their buyers know where their food comes from, directly connecting chefs and buyers with farm fresh foods.

The Challenge

In 2020 when COVID-19 began to impact businesses, Mid-America Food Hub lost a lot of that fresh food business. It became challenging for their business to stay successful, so they knew they had to change their business focus. To stay competitive and grow their business, they turned their focus to dehydrating food products but didn’t have large-scale equipment or plans for the future of this process. This is when Mid-America Food Hub turned to Missouri Enterprise, part of the MEP National Network™, to assist them with a business plan, marketing plan, and feasibility study. “I knew we needed to contact Missouri Enterprise because I was aware of all the great work they were doing.”

 

Without the assistance of Missouri Enterprise, when COVID-19 hit and we lost most of our business, our business would not have survived. Missouri Enterprise came in and helped us turn our whole business focus around, then assisted us with that focus. We are very grateful for the help Missouri Enterprise gave us.
— Sue Baird, CEO

MEP's Role

Missouri Enterprise is the perfect solution for manufacturing companies like Mid-America Food Hub and Training Center. Missouri Enterprise developed and assisted with implementing a business plan, feasibility study, and marketing plan that allowed Mid-America Food Hub to manage the growth and development of its business.

First, there was an initial assessment between Missouri Enterprise and Mid-America Food Hub to discuss goals, plans, and processes for the future. After discussing details, Missouri Enterprise was able to form these plans. Mid-America Food Hub then established that this new business venture was possible and has since provided success to their business.

Created January 31, 2023