Project Pickle is the community-engagement and producer-development model of GOTURSIX’s South Central Missouri Foodshed Project.
PROJECT PICKLE: Building the Missing Middle
Listen locally. Grow enterprise. Build together.
Project Pickle creates three connected entry points into a local food system:
COMMUNITY → PRODUCER → LEADERSHIP
Each workshop asks a different question of the same food system. Together, they help us understand what people know, what producers want to build, and what conditions could help local food enterprise thrive.
The workshops create immediate value for participants while also generating community knowledge that can inform local action, regional collaboration, and future Missing Middle investment.
1. LISTEN LOCALLY: Community Kickoff Workshop
Time: 2 hours
Audience: Anyone in the community
Capacity: Up to 25 participants
Requirement: Shared community kitchen
Featured Experience: Show-Me Local Food Tasting, created by Chef and Master Forager Rachael West of Springfield Community Gardens
Purpose
To build the Missing Middle, we first need to figure out how to meet there.
We don't begin by teaching people what their food system is supposed to look like.
We begin by discovering how they currently experience it.
Participants taste foods sourced from local producers, hear the stories behind those foods, and explore where they would go to find food that meets their own family's needs and preferences.
Research Questions
1. What does the community already know about its local food system?
Where do people currently find locally produced food, and which producers, markets, businesses, organizations, and informal sources do they know?
2. How well does the current food system support people's real-life needs and choices?
What happens when someone needs food that is affordable, local, culturally familiar, medically appropriate, SNAP/WIC accessible, convenient, or otherwise suited to their household?
3. Where does community knowledge or access begin to break down?
What do people wish they could find, understand, purchase, or access more easily?
Participant Experience
Participants:
Taste locally produced foods.
Meet or learn about the people who produced them.
Explore how food moves from producer to plate.
Work through real-life food purchasing scenarios.
Identify resources they already know and discover resources shared by others in the room.
Build a personalized food-system map based on their own household's needs, preferences, and choices.
Participant Takeaway
My Local Food Map
Each participant leaves with a customized resource they can continue using to find and support local food across the foodshed.
The goal is not to tell someone where they should buy food.
The goal is to increase the choices they know are available.
Project Learning
The workshop also reveals:
What local food resources people already know.
Which resources are well connected to the community.
Where information is difficult to find.
What consumers are looking for.
Which producers and food entrepreneurs people already rely upon.
Where additional connections, education, or infrastructure might create opportunity.
Community Output: Local Food Guide + community food-system insights
Guiding Question: What do we know about local food here?
2. GROW ENTERPRISE: Producer Workshop
Time: 2 hours
Audience: Current producers, aspiring food entrepreneurs, cottage food producers, growers, makers, farmers, restaurant owners, and people wondering whether something they already produce could become income.
Purpose
The Community Workshop tells us what people know and want.
The Producer Workshop asks:
Who could help meet those needs, and what would help them do it?
Participants begin with something they already have or want to create:
Fresh eggs.
Cucumbers.
Mushrooms.
Honey.
Bread.
BBQ sauce.
A family recipe.
A farm stand.
A piece of land.
A skill.
Then we follow that product toward enterprise.
Research Questions
1. What does success mean to this producer?
Supplemental household income? A retirement business? A farm stand? Wholesale accounts? A full-time livelihood? Something else?
2. What stands between where they are now and where they want to go?
Regulation, licensing, processing, capital, customers, pricing, infrastructure, marketing, transportation, time, knowledge, or connections?
3. What could help them take the next step?
Which barriers can the producer solve? Which require technical assistance or relationships? Which point toward a larger Missing Middle infrastructure need?
Participant Experience
Participants choose a real product or business idea and begin building its pathway:
WHAT I HAVE → WHAT I WANT → WHAT I NEED → MY NEXT STEP
They learn from other producers, identify questions, connect with available resources, and determine what they need to investigate next.
Nobody leaves with someone else's definition of a successful business.
The producer defines success. Project Pickle helps illuminate the pathway.
Participant Takeaway
My Producer Pathway
A first-stage action plan identifying:
Where I am now.
Where I want to go.
What I already have.
What I need to learn.
Who could help.
What barriers stand in my way.
What I can do next.
Participants interested in continuing can move into a longer Project Pickle Producer Cohort, where the pathway develops into an actionable business plan.
Project Learning
Across producers, individual questions begin becoming patterns.
If one producer needs commercial processing, that's a producer problem.
If twelve producers need commercial processing, that may be a Missing Middle problem.
That distinction is what Project Pickle is designed to uncover.
Producer Output: Producer Pathway + pipeline for continuing producer development
Guiding Question: What could success look like for me, and what would help me get there?
3. BUILD TOGETHER: Local Leadership Workshop
Time: 2 hours
Audience: Local Leadership Team members and invited community partners
Purpose
The first two workshops create two different views of the same food system.
Community tells us: This is what we know, use, need, and wish we could find.
Producers tell us: This is what we're building, where we're going, and what keeps getting in the way.
Now local leaders ask:
What do we do with what we've learned?
Research Questions
1. What patterns are emerging across community and producer experiences?
2. Which assets already exist that could be better connected or supported?
3. Which recurring barriers require collective action rather than another individual solution?
Leadership Experience
The Local Leadership Team brings together:
Community workshop findings.
Producer workshop findings.
Existing local and regional data.
Available programs and resources.
Local organizations and institutions.
Regional partners and technical expertise.
Instead of beginning with a list of projects to fund, the team begins with evidence about what people are trying to accomplish.
Then it asks:
What can we connect?
What can we strengthen?
What is genuinely missing?
Leadership Takeaway
Local Food System Priorities
The workshop establishes an initial set of community priorities and questions for continued Local Leadership Team work.
The team can then continue meeting over the following months to develop the community's Food System Action Plan.
Project Learning
Local findings can also move upward into the South Central Missouri Foodshed.
One county may identify a processing problem.
Another may identify transportation.
Another may need market access.
But if the same barrier appears repeatedly across counties, it may point toward a regional Missing Middle opportunity.
Leadership Output: Local priorities + foundation for the Food System Action Plan
Guiding Question: What could we build together that makes success more possible here?
THE PROJECT PICKLE LEARNING LOOP
The three workshops are not separate programs.
Each one informs the next.
LISTEN LOCALLY
What do people know, use, need, and want?
↓
GROW ENTERPRISE
What are producers trying to build, and what stands between them and success?
↓
BUILD TOGETHER
What can the community connect, strengthen, or build collectively?
↓
ACT
Connect resources. Support enterprise. Invest in the Missing Middle.
↓
RETURN AND LISTEN AGAIN
That creates the Project Pickle learning loop:
LISTEN → GROW → BUILD → ACT → LEARN → RETURN
Because the goal isn't to arrive in a community with an answer.
The goal is to create a repeatable way for communities to discover their own answers, while giving regional partners better information about where investment can make those answers possible.