Are you thinking about starting a food business; or are you a seasoned food business owner and planning to launch new products or pursue new markets; or maybe you’re somewhere in between. Farm Food Drink develops and facilitates sector-specific workshops to help you tackle your specific growth planning needs.
Understand that you need to regularly roll up your sleeves to determine the what and how you need to conduct business in order to prosper. Based on your experience, internal resources, and business skill set, we know you need targeted support at different times. We call it the business development continuum. So many things constantly change where you need to be informed, resilient, and flexible, so you can make intelligent decisions about your business to change or shift with each developing situation.
Farm Food Drink workshops are designed to help you solidify your path and process in reaching your business or organisation’s Vision and Strategic Objectives and arm you with the foundational knowledge, tools, and resources you need to become a viable and sustainable business. This learning prepares you for expansion, market growth, and sustainability.
Plot your business direction:
Farm Food Drink is known for our sector-specific workshops, historically aligned with the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture and Food. We are an authorized service provider and supplier for multiple programs such as Food Processor Business Planning Workshop, Food Business Refresh, and Lean Marketing Program.
Other workshop and program partners include:
Despite ongoing market disruptions, climate change challenges, a looming recession, and supply chain disruptions, the sector continues to grow. Farm Food Drink is committed to develop programs and workshops to enable you to tackle your exciting market opportunities and sector-specific challenges.
Farm Food Drink is also committed to our social purpose in capacity building, attaining sustainability and growth for the industry, local food systems and specifically, by offering specialised programs designed for small food businesses. These programs and resource materials are created to support you at different stages of your business development continuum.
This workshop series is for you if you are passionate about local food systems and interested in starting a career or your own business in the food sector.
This beginner’s level program is designed as an introduction to the agri-food sector. Participants are familiarized with:
This workshop series is for a more advanced audience including food or farm business owners, managers, and supervisors committed to starting or have already started an agri-food sector business.
While the content of the workshop is general for all the participants, there is a coaching component that is customised to suit the needs of the individual participants. The key goals of this workshop are to help participants:
This comprehensive, yet highly targeted program is designed to help rejuvenate small food business operators who have been impacted by market disruptions such as supply chain challenges, climate disasters, inflation/recession and those who have significant expansion or market opportunities. This opportunity is unique from other business support programs in that you’ll receive guided, hands-on support, tailored to your company’s situation and your objectives. This program will help you:
Within this collaborative planning process, you’ll work with your peers to better assess and establish your priorities, plus you’ll have access to specialised technical support such as food science, regulatory compliance, or digital marketing,
If you’re running an existing and growing food business, you could also benefit by investing some valuable time in one of our marketing workshop series.
The B.C. Ministry of Agriculture and Food has created funding for a B.C. Lean for Food Processors Program. Using LEAN business planning principles, this one-on-one consulting initiative focuses mostly on specialized business skills development for production capacity, operating procedures, and labour productivity. These learned elements will help food processors make informed business decisions to enhance their competitiveness in their market.
Lean principles at their basics means to cut waste, reduce complexity, and monitor budget management. Focus on the things that work and drop the things that don’t so you can manage changing priorities. It’s about being efficient, agile, and responsive to market shifts.
To further support our small food business community, Farm Food Drink is piloting a LEAN Marketing Program in a workshop format rather than a solo program. Lean Marketing, or Agile Marketing, is a customer-focused not product-focused approach. Creating product without consideration or feedback from the consumer can be disastrous. If you put your energy into producing an edible product without ongoing testing from your target audience, a whole lot of energy and money can be lost. These Lean Marketing Workshops can show you how to incorporate this method into your business.
When you participate in our workshops, you’ll be educated, engaged in the planning process, and save money by doing some of the work yourself. The workshops help you:
The efficiencies of virtual workshops have been proven over the past couple of years. Forced into them by pandemic necessity, they have become a regular means of engaging participants and disseminating information. Although exhilarating to meet in person, these face-to-face workshops often required 2-3 days out of the office or production facility, plus travel and accommodation time and expenses.
Farm Food Drink plans to continue with virtual workshops so you can enjoy less stress from:
Your path to success must focus around a business develop continuum. As we develop our workshop series, ask to be notified of upcoming events so you can be sure to evolve your business with thoughtful planning and resources.
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