A space for more: Co-op kitchens are helping Minnesota food producers to get creative

From potatoes to peppers to tomatoes, the food grown by farmers near the western Minnesota town of Detroit Lakes will soon be put to more and better use. Potatoes grown in the Red River Valley could be mashed and diced for school lunches. Peppers could become salsa and hot sauce. Tomato seeds could be harvested for the future.

These possibilities are envisioned by members of Manna Food Co-op with the help of a new commercial kitchen. Funded by a federal grant, the kitchen will strengthen Manna’s connection to local food producers, a core principle for co-ops.

“Farmers can come and process food for themselves and their own separate business, or process something for the co-op,” said Zachary Paige, Manna’s board president.

The concept isn’t entirely new in Minnesota. Bemidji’s Harmony Co-op undertook a similar expansion in 2012. Adding a commercial kitchen was a fairly novel idea at the time, according to Lisa Weiskopf, Harmony’s product manager. Despite a learning curve, the initiative saw early success.

Local entrepreneurs used Harmony’s space to brew beer, building up a business that eventually became Bemidji Brewing. “That’s the archetypal reason that a co-op would want to start a commercial kitchen,” Weiskopf explained.

The Manna team, which visited Harmony to learn from their experience, has similar aspirations for their new space. Its kitchen features professional-grade stainless steel surfaces and walk-in coolers typical of restaurant facilities.

Paige envisions Manna as a launch point for producers in Detroit Lakes. “This could be a beginning step, and then maybe they’re off into Shark Tank land,” he said. “They could start here, hone in on the recipe, get a bunch of sales locally, get a bunch of sales regionally, and maybe they outgrow us.”

Education represents another important component of these kitchen initiatives. University and health care educators use Harmony’s space for nutrition courses, creating additional community value beyond food production.

Weiskopf believes the landscape for commercial kitchen projects is more favorable now than when Harmony built theirs in 2012. Growing concerns about climate change’s impact on food access, empty shelves during COVID-19, and ongoing inflation have exposed vulnerabilities in traditional supply chains.

“The folks at Manna are so deeply enmeshed with the agriculture community in that area,” Weiskopf said. “They’re a warmer region than ours with a larger agricultural base to draw from. I’m hoping that all aids them in this project.”

Manna grew out of a local farmers market, where Ryan Pesch has been a staple vegetable vendor. He and other locals started the co-op as an outlet for selling products outside of the market’s limited schedule.

As Manna’s co-general manager, Pesch describes the co-op as a “boot-strappy, grassroots” operation. Though the co-op has grown since its 2017 founding, that approach continues alongside its mission of connecting local producers to consumers.

“To me, a grower, the idea of having local products from local people in a retail establishment open seven days per week does a lot for positioning of local products in front of people in a daily kind of way. Otherwise, it’s a novelty,” he said. “A co-op allows people to engage with food on main street in a way that I think is meaningful.”

Manna’s commercial kitchen was funded through the federal Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure (RSFI) program. The Biden-era initiative, administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, funds infrastructure projects that strengthen local or regional food systems.

The co-op received approximately $304,198. Despite a recent freeze on the funding by President Donald Trump’s administration, Manna’s allocation has so far been delivered.

The kitchen is part of Manna’s broader expansion into a larger downtown location. The co-op used a local fundraising campaign to cover additional costs beyond the federal grant. The new location opened on November 1, offering significantly more retail space than their previous facility.

In the cooperative spirit, Manna’s team is sharing what they learned from Harmony with Madison Mercantile, which is developing its own commercial kitchen project.

In a city surrounded by farmland, Madison Mercantile owner Kris Shelstad sees clear benefits in promoting local products. “We have the best dirt in the world, but we don’t grow a lot of food for locals,” she said. “We wanted to start learning more about local foods and local products because during COVID we learned most of our food doesn’t come from here.”

Shelstad initially conceived the kitchen as a way to supply her coffee shop and cafe with local products. She later realized that storage was a major obstacle preventing producers from selling at the local level. Madison Mercantile’s kitchen will address this by offering both storage and processing space.

Though Madison Mercantile didn’t receive RSFI funding, Shelstad secured $40,000 through the Regional Food Business Centers program. Despite this program’s termination by the Trump administration in July, she expects to receive the promised reimbursements.

Madison’s commercial kitchen is targeted to open by early 2026. “I hope to be cranking out the first loaf of bread by the end of January,” Shelstad said.

At Manna, a local potato grower will be among the first producers using the new kitchen. The co-op will provide light processing that makes it easier for farmers to deliver their products to buyers. Paige, who farms organically in nearby Vergas, also plans to use the facility to transform his peppers into hot sauce that will be sold on the co-op’s shelves – a perfect example of the farm-to-table model these kitchens aim to support.