Our vision is a food system that is:

  • Sustainable – supports a healthy environment, healthy people and a resilient community
  • Just – makes nutritious and culturally appropriate food accessible and affordable for everyone
  • Vibrant – protects and nurtures food culture, celebrates diversity and builds a sense of community

Project Recommendations

Project Overview

Community food hubs are an emerging model which can provide an inclusive and supportive setting for people to access nutritious food, with a particular focus on people lacking food security.

Council commissioned a feasibility study in 2020 on establishing a community food hub in the north of Merri-bek which has some of the least food secure communities in the municipality. The Community Food Hub feasibility outcomes and recommendations led to the formation of the Food Leadership Action Group (FLAG) to determine the best collective approach to improving food security through a community food hub model. A Project Coordinator was recruited in late 2023 to lead the research, project experiments, partnership and business development throughout 2024.

Council's project funding and the coordinator role finished at the end of 2024. The Community Food Hub Project - Final Report was released in April 2025

Project Phases

2020 - 2021

  • Received feedback and ideas from over 75 local food leaders and residents, including over 27 self-identified key stakeholders through 5 interactive co-design workshops and surveys
  • During the COVID-19 pandemic these stakeholders mobilised resources and volunteers and worked together to move and supply food to feed their community to respond to this urgent need.
  • This created an accelerated testing ground for rapid Community Food Hub prototyping / experiments which clearly demonstrated the understanding, leadership and commitment these groups have for providing culturally appropriate and nutritious food in safe trusted and supportive environments.
  • Feasibility study recommendations released October 2020 and endorsed by Council in May 2021

2021 - 2023

The Feasibility Study recommended a Collective Impact approach, with Council’s as partner, facilitator and investor. The project focussed on creating and sustaining discreet but interlinked work areas or stages to enable community stakeholders to lead implementation of the Community Food Hub project:

1. Set up a Collective Impact approach

  • Create the Food Leadership Action Group with funded support
  • Develop Collective Impact Shared Measurement Framework
  • Disperse funding and measure the impact of on-the-ground activities to build the case for a Community Food Hub
  • Create a Community Food Hub Project Officer (external) position to coordinate the implementation of the project

2. Support 2 or more Community Food Hubs to increase their scale and sustainability

  • Invest in the proven public facing (front-end) premises
  • Support innovation, prototyping and ‘lean experiments’ to evolve / adapt Food Hub model
  • Develop business case for logistics hub (back-end support for front end premises)

3. Establish a Logistics Hub that supports community and micro food hubs

  • Develop a collaborative proposal for a (back-end) Logistics Hub in the north of Merri-bek to overcome logistics constraints (storage, refrigeration, vehicle costs) of community and micro food hubs.

4. Activate Council infrastructure and seed community projects

  • Council facilitates infrastructure use for food projects
  • Establish a community food enterprise innovation program to test and surface early-stage ideas and people with potential to support food security outcomes.

5. Develop a big bold vision

2023

  • FLAG recruited a Community Food Hub Coordinator
  • Conducted in depth food security needs assessment to inform project design to test solutions to meet identified needs
  • Coordinator also managed and ran the measurement, evaluation and reporting processes while project partners delivered the projects

2024

A Food Hub model centred around Merri Food Hub was tested through 4 activities:

  1. Merri Food Hub weekly subsidised medium density market in Glenroy and Fawkner
  2. Voucher program - partnerships with food relief organisations, community health, and schools to engage food insecure cohorts and distribute voucher subsidies for Merri Food Hub markets
  3. Merri Food Hub subsidised fresh produce distributed through food relief organisations
  4. Tested centralised procurement and logistics through a wholesaler versus Merri Food Hub procuring directly from producers for the markets