Come and Get it! On-Farm Food Service Manual

Created with SARE support
Rachel Armstrong, Lisa Kivirist | 2019

As interest in knowing where your food comes from continues to boom, local food fans are increasingly flocking to on-farm dining experiences, from multi-course farm-to-table meals to family-friendly pizza nights. This movement opens up opportunities for farmers to launch dining experiences on their family farms and diversify income streams.

Come & Get It:  What you need to know to serve food on your farm uniquely supports farmers interested in understanding regulations and learning from other farmers seasoned in on-farm food service operations. Come & Get It, spearheaded by the Renewing the Countryside, supports farmers in Minnesota and Wisconsin eager to explore on-farm food service with resources including assessments, case studies, and research data to develop their own business plan.

Developed with support from an NCR-SARE Partnership grant, the five-part Come & Get It publication (over 120 pages total) offers an industry overview including how to determine if an on-farm food service business is right for your farm. Case studies of nine successful farm businesses in Minnesota and Wisconsin offer “behind the scenes” tips and first-hand experiences from farmers already running successful pizza nights and other on-farm food service events.

Download in five sections:

  1. Manual
  2. Case Studies
  3. Minnesota specific laws, rules and regulations
  4. Wisconsin specific laws, rules and regulations
  5. Customer Assessment

Want more information? See the related SARE grant:

This material is based upon work that is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture through the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture or SARE.