W.E. knew this burger would be a big hit — and not just with her newly vegetarian family. She decided in that moment to take her mushroom burger to market.  

But there was a problem: W.E. and her husband and co-founder, Dominique, had recently moved to Detroit. It was the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, they were preparing to have their third child, and they had no family and no connections in their new hometown.   

And also no experience in the food industry.  

That’s typically a space where ideas — no matter how good — are buried.  

Enter the Michigan Good Food Fund. Since 2015, Michigan Good Food Fund has been connecting Michigan food and farm businesses with the support they need to thrive. In nearly a decade of work with food entrepreneurs, W.E. and Dominique’s plight has been a refrain: Food entrepreneurs have the ideas. They recognize that starting a food business is both challenging and rewarding. And they’re willing to hustle and make the necessary sacrifices to make their business work. What they lack is experience and the connections to the financing and services they need to turn their idea into a viable business opportunity. “We got started launching the Mushroom Angel Company and we had one question that was answered, but it unlocked a series of questions that we didn’t have answers to,” said W.E. “You just don’t know what you don’t know.”  

That’s where Michigan Good Food Fund comes in. Its network of lenders and business specialists knows what budding food entrepreneurs do not, from how to scale a recipe from a home kitchen to a factory, to distribution logistics, to how to write a business plan or obtain licensing. “There is always a solution to a problem,” said W.E. “You may not have the resources needed readily available, but you know someone who knows someone who does. You’re always one or two people removed from your next breakthrough or opportunity.” Yet it’s most often a lack of connections to food business expertise — and not the viability of their product — that keeps food entrepreneurs on the sidelines.    

This “failure to launch” phenomenon is more than just a personal loss for a budding entrepreneur; it’s a loss for the whole community. Michigan Good Food Fund sees food as an essential lever to creating change, for individuals like W.E. and Dominique, and for communities, as well. “Every community has a food economy,” said Aaron Jackson, Director of the Michigan Good Food Fund at Fair Food Network. “And one of the most exciting ways we are creating vibrant communities is by investing in food businesses.”  

Michigan Good Food Fund eschews a conventional top-down model, building equity in communities and shifting power to community voice through its 21-member Stakeholder Board. The Board guides the shared vision of the collaborative, helping businesses access the critical resources they need to grow. In addition to technical assistance, food business owners need capital to feed their communities and be additive to the local economy. But as was the case with W.E. and Dominique, many food business owners don’t “fit the mold” for traditional financing. “Inability to secure financing is one of the primary reasons so many restaurants and food businesses fail within their first year,” said Jackson.   

To fuel the success of food businesses, Michigan Good Food Fund supplements technical assistance with creative, catalytic capital that meets entrepreneurs at all stages — from start-ups to growing enterprises to mature food businesses. Whether a term loan or a credit enhancement or microloan, Michigan food businesses seek Michigan Good Food Fund financing for everything from infrastructure enhancements to equipment purchases or to hire more employees, and so much more.   

To further stimulate investment in food businesses, Michigan Good Food Fund inaugurated the Seed Awards program in 2023. Seed Awards provide a pool of funding directly to Stakeholder Board members, allowing them to award grant funding to the food businesses they believe have the greatest impact on the communities they serve.  

Dynamite Hill Farms, in L’Anse, Michigan, was one of the 11 awardees in 2023. Utilizing their Upper Peninsula acreage, owners Jerry Jondreau and Katy Bresette engage in sustainable practices like wild rice harvesting and maple sap collection, honoring their profound connection to nature and their Ojibwe ancestry. “By maintaining our business, we are able to serve our family, our communities, and the region with food that sustains our health, and the health of the surrounding ecosystem,” said Jondreau. 

By developing innovative and creative capital solutions that create deeper connections with food entrepreneurs, Michigan Good Food Fund is increasing the collective impact of investors, business assistance providers, and food and farm entrepreneurs who are giving back to their community and providing opportunities for food entrepreneurs to, as Dominique would say, “live at the level of their consciousness rather than their circumstances.”   

In 2024, Michigan Good Food Fund will continue its nearly decade-long service to the region, cultivating meaningful change in communities from Detroit to the Upper Peninsula.