Completed Project Report


Maryland Food Ventures Curriculum and Online Portal for Food Entrepreneurs

  • Award Amount: $26,672
  • Regional Center: Northeast Extension Risk Management Education Center
  • Grant Program: 2021 Education Projects
  • Project Director: Shauna Henley
  • Email: shenley@umd.edu
  • Organization: University of Maryland

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Project Overview

Overall, goal was to:

  • Provide a general overview of the nuances of starting a value-added agricultural business
  • Give instruction in the tools/strategies to mitigate the legal marketing and financial risks associated with developing and selling value-added agricultural products

Primary target audience:

  • Small farm/rancher
  • General public

What we did:

The prior in-person only program called “Food for Profit” required numerous revisions (e.g. new graphic designs, updated content to reflect changes to regulations and food safety recommendations, evaluation, record, edit, and closed captions to the  videos). We revised the educational materials and built out a brand new online, at-your-own-pace course named Maryland Food Ventures. 

Future work:

  • Add a cost to online self-paced course
  • Work with our Department of Health to co-teach the workshop 
  • Recruit more Extension colleagues to teach specific modules
  • Update recordings and handouts as new resources and regulations occur
  • Analyze evaluation data

Results: 

The online program launched for free, and 439 participants registered (two were paid registrations after 9/30/22). The number participants who only registered without participating further represented (n=314) 72% and 6% (n=27) completed the entire program. 

Respondents from our retrospective survey (n=24; 44.45%) had ideas for a food business that would fall under Maryland’s Cottage Food Business, and this program was their first step towards starting a food business (n=16; 29.09%) and first steps to start mitigation strategies towards various risks to their business (n=30; 54.55%), and some had an idea of how to mitigate various risks (n=16; 29.09%).

Number of Participants: 141

Outcomes

Project Steps

PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS

There are no promotional materials available for this project.

EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS

There are no educational materials available for this project.

REPORTS & EVALUATIONS

There are no reports or evaluations available for this project.

DELIVERY AREA

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