Fareway is preparing to coach its next cohort of food entrepreneurs who dream of placing their retail products on grocery shelves, with plans to launch by late spring or summer, company executives said.
The program is a partnership with the Iowa Center for Economic Success, a nonprofit providing small businesses with coaching, lending and tax services.
“Fareway is all about rural Iowa, supporting rural Iowa,” said Jake Moran, chief financial officer at Fareway. “But one of the attraction points was the Iowa Center. They’ve got a big focus in Des Moines, but they’ve got a much larger footprint across the state. Part of it was looking at the communities we serve. How can we give back to those communities?”
Moran said Fareway and the Iowa Center have hosted two cohorts: fall 2024 with about a dozen participants and a virtual session in spring 2025, which had about 30 participants.
Mark Juffernbruch, director of business coaching at the Iowa Center, said the coaching program came about because of the number of clients in the food space that were coming through the center’s classes. Iowa’s agricultural background leads to a “high proportion of clients” in the food production, food service and distribution space, he said.
Through the center’s connections with Fareway, Juffernbruch said they created the program to “give a little more structure and background to these small business owners that really wanted to expand and share their product with a broader community of consumers.”
Of the more than 40 program participants so far, three emerged that made it onto Fareway shelves, organizers said.
Those are Early Morning Harvest, an organic farm and grain mill, Hinterland Dairy and Ames-based Midland Co., which farms shrimp indoors.
“Those three were really at a very mature point of their business,” Moran said. “The participants in the cohort were from all levels. Some of them were just very early stages starting out.”
Jeff Hafner, owner of Early Morning Harvest, said the products from his Panora farm on Fareway’s shelves include cornmeal, rye, bread and general purpose flours. He said he’s in about 400 bakeries, grocery stores and restaurants across the Midwest.
“I would say that Fareway is a very genuine company,” he said. “When you’re dealing with them, they’re very personable, and one of the easier corporations and companies to work with.”
Colleen Krogmeier is co-owner and manager of Hinterland Dairy, which is located just outside of the city limits of Donnellson.
The dairy makes cheese curds, aged cheese and a fresh cheese called quark. The farm currently has products in a Fort Madison Fareway store, she said.
Krogmeier said she learned a lot from the coaching program.
“I think when entrepreneurs have a product, the first thing I want to do is get it on the grocery store shelf, but you don’t realize all [that] is involved behind the scenes before you can do that,” she said.
She learned she was not ready to expand to get into many Fareway stores.
“We market to our local store, which is great, but it’s a whole different ballgame if you are wanting to get into the Fareway warehouses and marketing with all of the Fareway stores,” she said. “Maybe my end goal was to get on the Fareway shelves in lots of … Fareway stores. We are not ready for that yet. … We have a perishable product, so we have to keep that in mind when we’re thinking of stocking a warehouse and the logistics of having it delivered there and expiration dates.”
Among the topics at the Fareway/Iowa Center classes are brand awareness, market strategy and promotion plans, inventory management and distribution, legal and food safety and accounting and finance.
“I think the most popular and eye-opening components of the syllabus were legal, food safety and insurance,” Moran said. “The other thing is … brand awareness, competitive space and promo plans. … You’re responsible for selling your brand. It’s not up to us to go out and advertise your flour. You’ve got to get out there. You’ve got to build your social media presence.”
A surprising part of the program was seeing entrepreneurs grapple with what happens after they make it into the grocery store, Juffernbruch said.
“There’s so much focus on that immediate piece of getting on a shelf or getting in Fareway stores that they’re not thinking what’s next, and what do I need to be doing to anticipate that,” Juffernbruch said. “We hear stories from Fareway … if somebody has a great product and they want to reorder, but you can’t … fill that reorder for two months, … that buzz for your product is lost, and it can be a make-or-break moment.”
Jose Venales, the Iowa Center’s director of credit and lending. also pointed to the Fareway fund, a revolving loan fund established by Fareway in spring 2024 with a $230,000 donation that entrepreneurs can apply for in regard to “anything related to a grocery store product.” It doesn’t have to be Fareway specific, he said.
For the next round of Fareway classes, Juffernbruch said they are considering incorporating an in-person workshop.
Other local retailers are also vying for new products on their shelves and creating pathways for that to happen.
Casey’s General Stores, the convenience store chain, holds an annual Innovation Summit, which focuses on finding brands with new, unique products to distribute across the retailer’s 2,900 stores.
Also, since 2022, Hy-Vee has held the Hy-Vee Opportunity Supplier Impact Summit, which includes a pitch competition where the grocery store chain gives out cash prizes, said Adriana Johnson, Hy-Vee’s director of community impact. The next summit will be held Sept. 9 and 10 at Hy-Vee headquarters in West Des Moines, she said.
Also, starting on Feb. 23, Hy-Vee will have a display at some stores featuring products picked from the last summit.
“When customers purchase from a local small business, 48 cents of their dollars stays right in that community,” Johnson said. “Two-thirds of all new jobs are coming from small businesses … As different generations come into the store, they have different needs and different wants, and small businesses … tend to be more innovative and more agile.”