Craft processor – farmer partnership to develop value-added local food

 A small southern Ontario craft food processor is offering fruit and vegetable farmers the chance to add value to their crops.

Rootham Gourmet from Guelph is well known for its award-winning brand of jams, jellies, chutneys, sauces and dressings made with local ingredients that they’ve been marketing for over 30 years.

Now, with Growing Forward 2 support for a new state-of-the-art packaging line, they’re expanding to add co-packing services for Ontario farmers who have surplus produce, or are looking for a value-added product to sell in on-farm stores or at farmers’ markets.

“We already work with restaurants, entrepreneurs and small food manufacturers but now we can also help farmers to have specialty food products made specifically for their business to help diversify their product lines,” explains owner Will Rootham-Roberts.

“We make all our batches by hand and specialize in high quality, local production. Our focus is on all-natural, gluten-free Canadian products made with seasonal and local ingredients,” he adds.

Rootham’s production is limited to small batches of 75 to 180 litres of product packaged in bulk or jar sizes for either food service or retail sales. That’s ideal for seasonal sales or for small product runs to use up surplus fruits or vegetables that can’t be sold on the fresh market.

And unusual for a small craft processor, the Rootham facility is federally inspected, meaning products they manufacture can be marketed beyond just farmers’ markets or on-farm stores and into retail outlets in Ontario, across Canada and even internationally.

They’ll handle everything from recipe development to product labelling and nutritional information, details many farm businesses have little experience with and even less time to try to sort out but are forced to pay attention to if they get into the food business, Rootham-Roberts says.

Source: Aginnovationontario