Cultivating a Values-Based Supply Chain of "Good Food" at Headwater Food Hub

[0:45] Chris' non-traditional path:
-Passion to teach youth: "preparing citizens to be meaninfully participating in and stewarding the democracy that we have."
-Working on a farm with high school kids
-Experience at the Harley School around environmental sustainability
[4:30] Early influences from parents - "A sense of success for me very much includes the impact on the community I'm having."
[6:45] Developing consciousness in youth - finding and cultivating their innate curiousity
-"If our report cards included a broader sense of metrics in the same way that if our business bottom lines included the triple bottom line, we would lean in that direction naturally."
-"It's good business too. It's a good brand. It's a good culture. It's good practice. I believe it's not about sacrificing growing a successful business and making good money doing it, but it's toward that same end as far as how you're producing value and building your organization."
[11:00] Moving off the farm and into the city, starting the South Wedge Farmer's Market and the start of a business idea
[14:30] An active research project to co-create a definition of "Good Food" practices - agricultural practices, health, diversity, economics
[19:00] Educating and incentivizing farmers to evolve toward more sustainabile agricultural practices
[21:00] Headwater Food Hub beyond the Good Food Collective program - a values-based supply chain organization
[25:00] Moving toward measuring the true cost of industrial agriculture
[27:45] New York incentives for "Farm to School" food
[30:15] Starting a for profit business rather than a nonprofit, then becoming a B corp
-"Local businesses as tools for community revitalization...if this is going to work, it has to be economically viable and it has to be durable"
-"We have this business commerce sector that creates a lot of negative consequences and then we have this not for profit philanthropic world that's supposed to deal with the negative implications. How do you create a business sector that doesn't have to have a sector to fix the negative things."
-"We want to do good work in this world, we want to do it as a business and we want our business to be a part of creating new systems and new models."
[35:00] Solidifying purpose and other lessons learned in the process of becoming a B corp
[37:45] Building the culture at Headwater and the difficulty of evolving the culture as the company grows
[41:15] Chris' skills and training as an educator being applied to building corporate culture
[44:30] Celebrating failure to encourage experimentation and risk-taking
[47:45] Advice for other leaders on the evolutionary journey of "conscious" leadership
[53:00] The value proposition for purpose-driven business and the growing market demand
"It's not like you need to eat cardboard to save the world, we're talking about the best damn food out there...Yes, this is about creating a more conscious world and having stronger, healthier communities, but this really is about doing good business."
[58:00] The EVOLution of Headwater and the local food system - "The current national and global optimized, hyper-efficient food system that we've developed...it's unbelievable what we've accomplished using the success metrics that we've put out there...we're really innovative in all kinds of interesting directions...how do you take that system and start to rethink it in innovative and creative ways that would allow for more regional and distributed but equally optimized networks of producers that flow into collaborative structures that not only feed into their local surrounding community, but feed into the broader system and network...slowly and durably and sustainably replacing our current approach to food production, distribution and consumption and provide for this sustainble future food system."

"Economies of collaboration that can compete with economies of scale."

Restaurants that want to access this network, farmers that are growing Good Food or want to start aligning their practices to do so, employers interest in being dropoff locations for the Good Food Collective, or consumers that want to eat Good Food, "anybody producing, eating or selling food that is interested in understanding a supply chain that they connect with that is aligned with their values" can learn more at:
http://headwaterfoodhub.com
https://thegoodfoodcollective.com/