Halifax Regional Food Hub: local food made easier

If you have ever wanted to buy more Nova Scotian produce but found the logistics of tracking down several different farms too much to handle, there is a new player in town making it simpler. The Halifax Regional Food Hub is a non-profit co-operative that connects local producers from across mainland Nova Scotia to wholesale buyers in the Halifax Regional Municipality — restaurants, retailers, institutions and community organizations. It officially launched operations on Monday, July 27, at 2 pm at its warehouse in Dartmouth.

The whole point is to solve a problem that has long sat between the farm and the kitchen. Many small to medium-size producers have the food but not the time or capacity to market it and handle the admin that comes with wholesale. The Hub steps in as the middleman, running a single online system where organizations can browse products from producers across the province, build one order from multiple farms, and have it all packed and delivered as a single invoice and a single delivery. The Hub handles the logistics, including bringing food from different producers to its warehouse in Dartmouth.

That warehouse sits in Burnside at 21 Williams Avenue, and it is where the Hub does its heavy lifting. The team behind it is well-connected to the local food scene: executive director Eli Milton leads the organization, Lil MacPherson, founder and co-owner of the Wooden Monkey restaurants, sits on the board, and Justin Cantafio serves as director of the food hub while also running Farmers' Markets of Nova Scotia. The project has been backed by C$850,000 from the province through the Department of Growth and Development's Community Economic Development Fund, with additional support from the Nova Scotia Co-operative Council's Community Impact/Social Innovation Fund and Feed Nova Scotia's Innovation Grant.

For the people on either end, the appeal is practical. Andrew Linton of the Warehouse Market and Abundant Acres Farm says the Hub lets them expand their wholesale program easily, saves time on packing and admin, and plugs right into their existing Local Line store. Malcolm Campbell, chef de cuisine at Mystic, says it makes the connections between chefs and producers more visible and accessible. MacPherson has called it a game changer for restaurants, arguing that it lifts a heavy administrative burden off farmers and makes finding farm-fresh food easier.

There is a bigger picture at play here, too. The Hub is part of Nova Scotia's Food and Beverage Strategy, and it arrives at a time when food security is firmly on the agenda. A 2023 report noted that Feed Nova Scotia saw a 68 per cent increase in food bank usage since 2021, and Halifax's Mobile Food Market is in the process of opening a permanent location in Dartmouth. Federally, the government recently released a national food security strategy with a 10-year, C$1-billion fund to set up and grow food hubs and terminals across Canada.

What comes next for the Hub is growth. The next stage is about widening the range of products, bringing on more producers from across the province, building a more diverse base of wholesale buyers and finding more efficient ways to move food from different regions of Nova Scotia into that Dartmouth warehouse. For now, the Hub is open and doing exactly what it set out to do: making it easier for Nova Scotian food to find its way onto Halifax plates.