City Seed

Farmers marketssince launching the City's first farmers market in 2004, we have grown a network of year-round markets that connect over 60 Connecticut farmers and producers to 60,000 customers, building inclusivity by accepting all nutrition support benefits and bringing markets to under-resourced neighborhoods. Cityseed's farmers markets offer a platform, along with subsidized vending fees and no cost market kits, for local businesses, entrepreneurs, and farmers to exhibit and sell their products, prioritizing those from new haven neighborhoods and thus circumventing barriers to entry that rising entrepreneurs, especially entrepreneurs of color, may face. In 2022, our markets redeemed $65,000+ in nutrition program incentives for vulnerable community members (seniors, children, mothers and low-income families); and launched the dixwell community house market in partnership with community collaborators to provide access to fresh local food, entrepreneurial businesses, and art in this underserved, black neighborhood.

Sanctuary kitchensanctuary kitchen supports refugee and immigrant chefs and food entrepreneurs resettling in new haven while building intercultural understanding in our community. The program hosts a social enterprise that provides professional culinary development and steady employment at a living wage, and culinary workshops open to the community led by refugee/immigrant chefs. Since launching, sanctuary kitchen has put nearly $600,000 directly into the pockets of refugee and immigrant participants - primarily women - including $180,000 in income in 2022. To date, sanctuary kitchen has 47 chefs in our network from 13 countries including: the dominican republic, afghanistan, syria, iraq, sudan, the democratic republic of the congo, mauritius and more of these, 90% are women, and for the majority, sanctuary kitchen represents their first form of professional/formal work in the united states.

Cityseed incubatescityseed incubates provides food business incubation services and access to commercial kitchen space. Incubates builds a pipeline for new businesses to enter the food industry; strengthens our local food system by connecting participants to farmers; and removes systemic barriers to food entrepreneurship, including lack of access to infrastructure and commercial kitchen space, the high cost of entry to food production and lack of start-up capital, lack of knowledge to navigate complicated licensing and regulations, and insufficient culinary training. Over 6 years, 500+ entrepreneurs in our venture network have attended incubates' free business and marketing workshops, accessed ingredients for their business from our farmer network, tested their menus at our farmers markets, developed recipes in our commercial kitchen spaces, or received 1:1 business development coaching. This network has grown 71% since the start of 2021. The 2022 cohort included new refugees and immigrants (25%), women (68%), people of color (83%, including 46% black, 24% latinx and 13% asian), and low-income populations (72%).