Spotlight
Putting Local Food on Institutional Plates
June 15, 2026
WNC Food Coalition is building a 19-county network to shift colleges, hospitals, and other institutions toward buying local food.
I’m amazed at the unbridled passion coming from the woman sitting across from me. She has been talking for forty-five minutes straight about how institutional buying can transform the regional food procurement process in Western North Carolina (WNC). If it wasn’t for her own pregnant body slowing her down and reminding her to breathe deeply, I’m not sure anything could.
Allow me to introduce you to Dana Choquette. She is the Co-Executive Director at WNC Food Coalition, a nonprofit committed to building a strong local food system in WNC. WNC Food Coalition is working with numerous agencies to build an institutional buying network to shift food procurement patterns from national distributors towards local WNC grown and produced food. These institutions include colleges/universities, senior living facilities, jails, schools, hotels, hospitals, and more. Dana Choquette knows a coordinated effort across counties is needed in order to make this happen. WNC Food Coalition’s work includes securing anchor institutions to commit to local procurement and expand purchasing from the region, while also supporting the capacity of local growers.
"Just 10% of regional foods being purchased through institutional buying can transform the regional food procurement process in WNC." - Dana Choquette
To help create this coordinated effort, WNC Food Coalition is building a local food ordering platform, implementing both retail and charitable buying partnerships, and training farms on the benefits of institutional buying. One of the biggest hurdles to getting more of this implemented is fundraising.
Resilient Futures Co-Lab provided grant funds to WNC Food Coalition to hire an experienced grant writer to help pursue larger and more competitive pools of grant funding. WNC Food Coalition is targeting grant funding spanning several years to help provide the implementation trajectory needed to support a bigger institutional buying push in the region.
About the grant recipient:
WNC Food Coalition is a nonprofit committed to building a strong local food system in WNC. They work in 19 counties to ease hunger today, while also tackling larger systemic and political challenges in our region to ease future hunger and help make small farm businesses viable. http://www.wncfoodcoalition.org