We love it when nonprofit organizations’ good works can dovetail one another to foster the Vermont local food economy, like helping Vermont Bean Crafters grow its business. There are many grants available to Vermont farmers and food producers, allowing these businesses to be reimbursed for capital investments. The gotcha for business owners, like Joe Bossen at Vermont Bean Crafters, is that they have to come up with the money in advance of the project, working capital that startup businesses may not have on hand.

Though Vermont Bean Crafters (VBC) has been on a steady upward trajectory, it’s still running as a bootstrapped organization. Joe and his handful of employees have been doing their best over the past several years to build the market for locally raised legumes. By providing delicious and highly nutritious, value-added bean-based products like bean burgers, falafel, spreads, etc., VBC is expanding the market for soil-building crops, making them more profitable for local farmers to grow.

Looking to the future, Joe was able to secure a reimbursable grant for $13,600 from Vermont Farm Viability to build VBC’s infrastructure for aggregating; cleaning and storing dry beans and other staple crops. As buying this equipment outright would have crippled VBC’s cash flow, Joe applied to the Vermont Farm Fund for a $10,000 Business Builder loan this past spring. With the quick loan approval process and supplemental capital from other organizations, VBC was able to take advantage of the grant and invest in the post-harvest processing equipment.

We are grateful the VFF has made it less onerous for us, as a relatively young business, to borrow money, particularly at an interest rate that’s at least half that of other sources we found.

According to Joe, not only will the purchased equipment help make VBC more efficient and profitable, he is counting on the increased processing capacity stimulating growers to more than double the amount of beans and staple foods grown in Vermont.