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Let’s say Grandma Flora has bequeathed to you her family favorite, secret recipe for apple butter. You own an orchard and want to figure out a way to produce and market Grandma Flora’s apple butter on the retail market. How do you go about it?

Folks at ACEnet’s Food Ventures program have the means, the facilities and the know-how to help you do just that.

Larry Fisher, director of Food Ventures for ACEnet (the Appalachian Center for Economic Networks), said the organization is unique in that "we’re in the middle of a strong farm community with a wide variety of clientele."

Fisher himself has a deep connection to agriculture and said the center’s staff is committed to helping producers look at alternative sources of revenues using their own farm commodities.

Fisher said Food Ventures, located in Athens, offers clients a USDA certified kitchen and production facility so producers can wash, grade and package products as well as prepare preserved or other value-added items.

So when you’ve got Grandma Flora’s recipe, "we can help that producer develop a recipe that would work on a much larger scale," Fisher said.

Recently Food Ventures received a meat license through the Ohio Department of Agriculture that allows producers to process meat products at the facility as well.

Some of the items Food Ventures is helping producers develop include bacon topping, sausage, deer and beef jerky, organic egg packaging, retail mushroom packaging, and a hot dog sauce that uses locally grown hamburger.

"Farmers can come to the center even if they don’t have an idea for some type of product," Fisher explained. Staff members sit down with the producer to evaluate what opportunities he or she has and help that farmer brainstorm how to turn those opportunities into revenues.

Fisher said Food Ventures has clients all over Ohio, but the organization focuses its efforts on producers within Ohio’s 29 Appalachian counties. A sliding fee scale is used based on location of the producer.

Food Ventures is one of three program areas that ACEnet focuses on. The other two areas are ACEnet Ventures, which provides loans and grants to businesses for technical assistance provided by ACEnet’s staff; and Technology Ventures, which provides start-up businesses with inexpensive rental space, office equipment, good business advice, access to computers, high speed Internet access and computer training.

ACEnet was created in 1985 by a small group of community members committed to economic justice and building a healthy regional economy in southeastern Ohio, according to the organization’s promotional materials Its mission is "to build the capacity of local communities to network, innovate and work together to create a strong, sustainable regional economy that has opportunities for all."

For more information about Food Ventures or to talk to a staff member about services Food Ventures could offer, call 740-592-3854 or e-mail larryf@acenetworks.org