A Training program for Community-Supported Businesses in the Food Industry
Freiburg, 11/02/2025
In the KoWerk training program, local companies and initiatives spent ten weeks learning the foundations of community-supported entrepreneurship.
Climate change, farmer protests, labour shortages, and a great demand for organic food – the food industry is under pressure. How can farmers, food retailers, or restaurateurs act sustainably but also live well from their work in the future? To address this question, the KoWerk training program focused on community-supported entrepreneurship. Thirteen participants from seven companies and initiatives grappled with forms of cooperative entrepreneurship on ten afternoons between September and November 2024. The training program was organized and held by Nick von Andrian, researcher at the newly established Humboldt Professorship for Sustainable Food Economics at the University of Freiburg.
The research and teaching of the Humboldt professorship focuses on community-supported economics, among other topics. The initiative for KoWerk came from Prof. Dr. Arnim Wiek, holder of the Humboldt professorship. Wiek successfully introduced a similar training program together with Thrive Consultancy in Phoenix, USA. He had the intention of transferring the program to Germany from the outset. ‘Cooperative or community-supported entrepreneurship has the potential to make food businesses in Germany fairer and more resilient – if training programs impart the necessary knowledge and motivations to entrepreneurs and consumers,’ says Wiek.
“Cooperative or community-supported entrepreneurship has the potential to make food businesses in Germany fairer and more resilient – if training programs impart the necessary knowledge and motivations to entrepreneurs and consumers.”
Prof. Dr. Arnim Wiek
Holder of the Humboldt Professorship for Sustainable Food Economics, University of Freiburg.
KoWerk’s cooperation partner was the CSX network, an association for community-supported economics. Via the Ernährungsrat Freiburg & Region, KoWerk is also involved in developing a food strategy for Freiburg and the region, which is being funded by the badenova innovation fund.
Community-based or community-supported entrepreneurship is a centuries-old practice that has been revived in the past decades through ideas like community-supported agriculture and food cooperatives. In a food co-op, a group of members gets together to fund a company. Rather than paying the particular purchase prices, as in a supermarket, they pay a compulsory membership fee at regular intervals, which gives the company financial stability. In addition, the members can get involved in other ways, such as by helping out with operations or with developing the product range. Members and entrepreneurs thus share the financial risks and in some cases also the responsibility for business decisions. ‘The fixed membership fees make it more feasible for community-based businesses to do things like expand their range of organic foods. This also makes it easier for food-processing companies to use production methods that are perhaps less profitable but more environmentally friendly’, explains von Andrian. However, the concrete implementation involves a lot of work: the legal form must be clarified, the business model adapted, and, last but not least, members attracted and retained.
A toolkit for implementing principles of community-supported entrepreneurship
‘The objective of KoWerk was to give the participants a toolkit they can use to tackle their own business ideas’, emphasizes von Andrian. To adapt this toolkit to local conditions, von Andrian met in spring 2024 with actors from the Freiburg region who had already been applying community-supported entrepreneurships for a long time. ‘This direct exchange with practitioners was very important for us. We explicitly did not intend to leave it at our own questions and our own knowledge but to hear from industry actors: What did you initially need to get started? What did you learn in the course of time? What would have helped you at various points in the process?’ These insights were complemented by discussions and resources from the Germany-wide research and consultancy landscape, which is organized in the CSX network. Practice partners were also integrated into the training program as experts and gave insight into their experiences.
Thirteen participants from seven companies and initiatives took part in KoWerk. Photo: Humboldt Professorship for Sustainable Food Economics
“The objective of KoWerk was to give the participants a toolkit they can use to tackle their own business ideas.”
Nick von Andrian
Researcher at the Humboldt Professorship for Sustainable Food Economics, University of Freiburg
Initiative in Bollschweil aims to preserve local grocery
The participants included companies and initiatives with a wide range of questions and needs. For example, there were three people from the ‘Alte Markthalle’ initiative in Bollschweil, a small town around ten kilometres south of Freiburg. They want to preserve the old covered market in their town as a central location to buy groceries. A local garden sells fruit, vegetables, and flowers there – but it is set to close in 2026. ‘A community-supported financing could allow us to preserve the Alte Markthalle as the only shop in Bollschweil and enhance it by adding a cafe as a meeting point’, says Peter Gißler, one of the active members of the ‘Alte Markthalle’ initiative. In his view, KoWerk provided valuable impetus. Particularly helpful was the personal exchange with other groups that are already further along in their development. ‘Now we have formulated more clearly what, exactly, we as an initiative mean when we speak of a community-supported project – from the actual organization to the question of who should have a say and in what form.’
Giving members insights into kombucha production
Luna Waitkuwait from the St. Ferment kombucha brewery had already answered these basic questions before the training program began: ‘I took part in KoWerk because I hope to achieve greater planning certainty for my company through community-supported financing.’ However, approaches like a subscription are not easy to implement for a beverage like kombucha. ‘For me it was particularly helpful to get to know several different forms of community-supported entrepreneurships so that I can refine my own concept. In future, for example, I’m going to try to give members personal insights into the production process in addition to the product itself’, says Waitkuwait.
Piluweri vegetable garden on the way to becoming a cooperative
The Piluweri vegetable garden from Müllheim had a somewhat different concern. The company has been in operation since 1997, and the present partners are approaching retirement. In the future, the company is to be organized as a cooperative. ‘We want to introduce more co-determination so that individual people no longer always have the final say’, stresses Fabian Winkler, who participated in KoWerk for Piluweri. In addition to the content of the learning workshop, Winkler praises its methodology in particular: ‘Check-Ins, different formats for Q & A sessions, a meeting agenda with fixed times – I learned a lot about leadership culture and about how co-determination can succeed.’
Creating an additional decentralized digital offering
The training program has not yet been evaluated. The Humboldt Professorship for Sustainable Food Economics will publish a report in spring 2025, and a final event is scheduled for April 2025. ‘KoWerk was a pilot project with which we wanted to find out whether our plans will work as intended’, says von Andrian. ‘In the long term, our goal is to offer and permanently establish a similar program throughout Germany. To this end, we’re now also developing decentralized digital learning units to reach as many people as possible.’