Bay Area Food Center Aims to Help Small Farmers Serve Large Clients, But the Reality Is Complicated
The Anchors in Resilient Communities (ARC) collaborative was founded in 2013 to figure out how Bay Area anchor institutions like hospitals could aggregate their purchasing power to transform the health, wealth and climate resilience of the East Bay. Over the years, that work evolved to address challenges presented by large-scale food procurement. And that process now has a home: the Union City Culinary Center, which opened this January about 20 miles south of Oakland. The center is a large-scale food production facility — vendors supply raw ingredients, and the facility produces up to 50,0...