Methodology

This study is essentially a field report on innovative CFEs throughout the world. To answer our four main questions—about the strategies, challenges, triple bottom line performance, and replicability of CFEs—we decided to undertake 24 case studies, 12 in the United States and 12 internationally. Literally hundreds of thousands of businesses, perhaps even millions worldwide, could qualify under our definition. Our challenge was to choose a handful of CFEs that were in some sense exemplary. Specifically,we wanted our examples to show:

• a range of ownership types, including private companies,publicly traded companies, various types of cooperatives, nonprofit enterprises, and public-private partnerships;

• a range of supply chain positions, including primary food growing and production, manufacturing and processing, distribution, marketing, retail sales, and restaurants;

• geographic diversity, which meant that no two U.S. examples could come from the same state, and no two international examples from the same country.
  

Additionally, because of our own interest—and that of our funders—in businesses with strong triple bottom lines, we looked for CFEs committed to fair food, which means that they aspire to embrace strong standards around labor, health, safety, and community responsibility. For us, an inherent part of fairness is inclusiveness. So we also sought examples that modeled the involvement of women and people of color as owners and leaders. To whittle down our list further, we added two other criteria. We tried to find unfamiliar case studies that deserved wider visibility, and good stories about interesting entrepreneurs.

We e-mailed requests for candidate businesses that met these criteria to 10,000 contacts, primarily people involved with local business development in the United States (the networks of the Training & Development Corporation and BALLE) and with development projects globally (the networks of Winrock International). Many recipients, to our surprise, treated our invitation as essentially an award nomination, and eagerly sent us their short list of “top” CFEs. We were deluged with hundreds of suggestions from over 60 countries.

Based on our preliminary research, we then approached our top CFE candidates and asked if they would be willing to be studied. No savvy businessperson, of course, turns down free publicity. But we also let each business know that we would be asking three potentially burdensome things from them: two or three extensive interviews, three to five years of their financials, and a filled-out survey that would assess their socially responsible behavior. In other words, we were asking for 20-40 hours of an entrepreneur’s time, and a disclosure of their company operations to a global audience. Some candidates, as they reflected on these requests, declined to participate. But, remarkably, most agreed to our terms. We should note here that this study would not be possible were it not for the generous donation of time by each enterprise covered. We sincerely thank them, and hope our readers will too.

We ultimately interviewed the founders and leaders of each CFE, primarily by telephone. For our international case studies, to bridge cultural and language barriers, we commissioned local researchers to perform on-site interviews. Each CFE profiled had an opportunity to read a draft and offer corrections or additions. We also commissioned independent reviewers to “ground truth” four of our international case studies. Finally, we circulated our draft report to our funders—the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation—and to select staff within Winrock International for final review.

Caveats and Next Steps

One of the challenges throughout this research has been not to bias our conclusions. We wanted to understand how well CFEs were competing, what challenges they were encountering, and how well they were meeting their triple bottom line objectives. This would mean studying failures as well as successes. Yet a failed CFE often leaves very little behind, including meaningful financial records. So we decided,

instead, to focus on businesses still operating and to capture honestly their historical successes and challenges. This choice, however, necessarily meant our looking at better than average performers, since the average small business (and the average CFE) fails within 5-10 years. And yet in each story, we found, and share, moments and sometimes years of setbacks, failure, and even disaster.

Those looking for a simple verdict CFEs can or can’t compete, for example will not find a satisfying answer. We believe this is the wrong question. What readers will find instead is a more honest, nuanced, and useful reflection on three more helpful questions:

• What are the circumstances under which CFEs can compete?
  

• And what are the main obstacles that a successful CFE must overcome?
  

• To what extent can successes be replicated in other communities and other countries?

We should add here that many of the businesses we didn’t study still deserve study. We sincerely hope that this project inspires others to come forward with similar business profiles. Our longer term mission is to create a virtual, open source library of promising small business models, not just of food enterprises but of all kinds of local businesses. In the short term we hope that this work: builds a global network among community food practitioners and thinkers; raises awareness among development specialists worldwide in government, industry, or philanthropy about the promise of local food businesses; and informs entrepreneurs in rich and poor counties alike of successful (and unsuccessful) local business models.