Startup Food Biz Gives Food Entrepreneurs New Online Resource to Learn Food Laws and Regulations

NEW ORLEANS, November 5, 2018 (Newswire.com) - The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) understands the need to educate food entrepreneurs, which is why the agency awarded a $100,000 grant under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program to Startup Food Biz to support legal and regulatory education for food entrepreneurs.

When entrepreneurs begin a food-based business, whether that business is a running a restaurant, operating a food truck or selling a product made in a home kitchen, they need to consider many legal and regulatory issues that other entrepreneurs don't. For example: how can I protect my recipe? Can I call my product "natural"? What licenses do I need to operate?

The correct answers to such questions are hard to find online. If they exist at all, they're typically found on poorly designed state or federal agency websites and written in complicated legalese. Meanwhile, budding food entrepreneurs typically don't have the funds to hire specialized legal counsel, and informational seminars held at universities cannot reach everyone who wants to learn this information.

Based in New Orleans, Startup Food Biz is an online platform that delivers video courses and other tools and resources to the food industry through its website StartupFoodBiz.com. The objective of the grant is to grow the local food economy by expanding access to legal and regulatory education for rural entrepreneurs and small farms.

"This grant will enable us to build and refine an educational product we know food entrepreneurs desperately need," said Patrick Morin, President of Startup Food Biz. "Through our partnerships with Michigan State University's Product Center and Louisiana State University's AgCenter, we will be able to identify and develop courses on topics important to their customers. We believe this will be a key driver to our success and we look forward to collaborating with the staff at both institutions."

The SBIR program at the USDA offers competitively awarded grants to qualified small businesses to support high-quality research related to important issues and opportunities in agriculture that could lead to significant public benefits. Once a small business receives a Phase I SBIR grant, it becomes eligible to apply for a Phase II grant of up to $600,000.

Source: Startup Food Biz