Timeline
June 2016 - June 2019
Areas of focus
Branding · Service Design · Events
Team: Ryan Pierson, Ryn Adkins
Description
After starting Design To Table to use to design to help local farmers and producers, my studio partner Ryn Adkins and I wanted to make a larger impact in the NY farm to table scene. We joined Headwater Food Hub as their full service design & marketing team, using design and storytelling to help them grow and disrupt the local food economy of central NY.
Headwater was in the process of expanding their wholesale program, planning a variety of new projects and watching their direct to consumer project start to plateau. During my time there, I helped to model their current business activities, rebrand for clarity and recognition, build awareness through online marketing and events and create consistency with packaging designs, signage around the warehouse, work aids, and process guidelines. I also helped the direct to consumer brand, The Good Food Collective, adapt to a changing market by redesigning their program model and user experience. See more on that project here.
WHAT IS A FOOD HUB?
Food Hubs can take on many different models. Headwater connects 150+ NY farmers to both wholesale and direct to consumer channels.
Headwater Food Hub actively manages the supply chain logistics, aggregation, distribution, and sales of local, sustainable, source identified, top-quality foods from a network of partner farms and local food producers.
The Good Food Collective is a membership program that connects these same farmers to individuals and families in the greater Rochester community through weekly subscriptions and online ordering.
Mapping a Network
Overseeing different elements of marketing, sales and supply chain I mapped, cataloged, communicated with, had photographed, and maintained a database of 150+ farmers and suppliers across New York State. I also helped to developed processes and documentation for on-boarding, purchasing from and communicating with suppliers and internal supply team.
BRANDING A FOOD HUB
COLLATERAL
DIGITAL BANNERS & LANDING PAGES
POSTERS & FLYERS
BRINGING IT OUT TO THE COMMUNITY
SIGNAGE, LABELS & PACKAGING
To create consistency and aid efficiency around the warehouse I created dozens of job aids, signs, labels and standardized packaging. This served to both improve and clarify our internal processes for each activity and help us shine during chef tours and walk throughs.
A VALUES DRIVEN SUPPLY CHAIN
WHAT IS GOOD FOOD?
There are many labels that chefs and shoppers have to contend with when picking out the right ingredients. We don't believe any one will describe or delineate "GOOD FOOD", so we created these 8 criteria to help build our understanding of sustainable food systems and measure our progress against our vision statement.
LOCAL MEANS SEASONAL
To understand and communicate the seasonal nature of local food we created crop plans with farmers, menu plans with chefs, and simple visuals to show what is available when. This process also pushed us to work with more producers, extending the seasons both through value added products and more regional sourcing during slow periods.
TRACKING PROGRESS
I created data visualization and reports for both internal and external clients tracking Food System impact, member participation, lbs of organic veggies, subsidy impact, revenue per site and more.
EVENTS
During my time at Headwater I helped to plan and execute dozens of successful events such as 5 course popup dinners, farm tours, harvest celebration parties, concerts, cheese tastings and many more in collaboration with local chefs, breweries, farmers and business partners.
