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New crop of food businesses taking root at Western Fair's Grove

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When Growing Chefs began, well, growing, it was a challenge for the charity that teaches youth about food to do more at its small location at 460 King St. That’s when the Grove stepped up.

The Grove is an agri-food hub at Western Fair District that helps small food-related businesses and agencies start, grow and work with each other to scale up.

Growing Chefs began classes last week at the Grove, its first at the facility. The classes are full with more than 100 youths learning about food preparation, said Andrew Fleet, founder and director of Growing Chefs.

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The new, large classroom space at the Grove can handle more youths, and frees up Growing Chefs’ King Street space, formerly a restaurant, for events and fundraisers.

“We’re all in this space working toward building a food system that will sustain us into the future whether you’re a business, a producer or a consumer,” Fleet said. “Food is such a common driver of all things, our economy, our health and our environment.”

The Grove held a recent event to mark its first year in operation, two years since it was announced. In that short time it has landed new businesses. The Fritter Shop, Wormery and LiveFit Foods joins Growing Chefs at the Grove.

But the Grove also has signed three new businesses to open in the new year: Cafezia, which offers herb-infused coffee; Peacasa Snacks, a chick pea snack company; and Forest City Synbio, which engineers micro-organisms for agricultural product development – think of adding organisms to compost.

“The Grove has had a massive impact on our business,” said Kelvin Van Rijn, owner of the Fritter Shop. “This space is out of our budget but the Grove made this a reality and that means we grew faster than we would have. We didn’t have to spend money on leasehold improvements and could buy better equipment, hire more staff and make more fritters.”

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The Fritter Shop has two locations in London and has opened in St. Thomas and Hamilton. Van Rijn makes batter on-site at the Grove and fries fritters as needed at his locations.

The Grove has 60,000 square feet (5,600 square metres) in its location in the former Progress Building at Western Fair. The hub is opening a 560-square-metre incubator space in 2022 designed to help four startups.

“It’s about education, about food security, about understanding what’s local and sustainable and, for us as a community and a society, we need to think, where is our food coming from?” said James Smith, director at the Grove.

“That is the future of what we’re doing.”

The Grove has companies starting up and several more in the pipeline, Smith said. “We’re on track.”

The advantage the Grove offers small businesses is the opportunity to work together and share experiences, learning best practices. For example, the Fritter Shop discards its waste to the Wormery, a composting business.

Rents are kept at a reasonable rate, Smith said.

The Grove also works with the London Small Business Centre, London Training Centre, Fanshawe College and London Economic Development Corp. to support small business.

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As for Growing Chefs, it has six classes with about 20 youths in each, but it will have capacity for more than 30 students, Fleet said.

“We will change the way children learn about and develop healthy relationships with food and create a road map for other communities to do the same,” he said.

The program offers classes to youths aged five to 17. It also offers adult cooking classes.

“We can show children you can make from scratch food that’s good for you, but that also tastes amazing,” Fleet said.

In January, the federal economic development agency FedDev Ontario announced a $7.2-million investment in the Grove. That money went to renovating the space to accommodate more businesses, and to buying machinery and equipment. It also offered seed money for startups and funding to accelerate growth in small businesses, as well as to fund training and education programs.

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