The Northwest Connecticut Food Hub connects regional farmers with wholesale customers, even during these winter months when local food is harder to come by.
Farmers list available items each week on the hub’s online platform — at this time of year mostly roots, squash, apples, mushrooms and greens. Restaurants, schools, grocery stores, and food pantries can go online and order aggregated items from multiple farms for delivery.
If one farm only has butternut squash left in storage from the fall harvest, another might be flush with arugula coming out of a winterized greenhouse, while another still has beets in the cooler. Alone, each crop might be hard to sell or hard to use, but put them together in a restaurant’s shopping cart through the Hub’s online platform and you have a winter salad special on the menu.
The Food Hub is a locally developed spin on a more typical industrial food distribution model where large farms that specialize in one item or another ship their crops to warehouses to be repackaged and trucked off to retail grocery stores or food service venues.
By the very nature of our region’s topography, farms are relatively small and far from customers. Valleys and slopes don’t make for wide, expansive fields, and quiet windy roads often set farmers at a distance from population centers. Growing a diverse range of crops is good for the soil and for business resiliency — if a crop is a flop one year, there are others that likely did well. All of these factors make for colorful, bucolic farm landscapes throughout Northwest Connecticut, but they also present local farmers with a significant marketing challenge, and local buyers with the significant logistical question of how to access fresh, local food.
The Food Hub began operations in 2017 as a project supported by the region’s economic development plan to help bridge these gaps between the unique growers we have in our region and potential customers. It is an initiative of the nonprofit Partners for Sustainable Healthy Communities, whose board oversees operations. Day-to-day management of the Hub falls to Renee Giroux, a farmer herself who knows firsthand the challenges and opportunities of farmers in the area.
“The Hub helps with distribution while lifting everyone up,” said Giroux. “It isn’t a place where farms are in competition with one another, but rather gives them an additional outlet to expand their businesses into.”
Photo by Janna Siller
Locally grown produce aggregated at the food hub for delivery to a local food pantry.
While some buyers, like restaurants and grocery stores, pay full wholesale prices for the farm products, others have their deliveries subsidized by different grants. The Hub cobbles together a number of funding sources to allow them to work with schools, food pantries and health care facilities. Ed-Advance, an education nonprofit, helps fund farm-to-school initiatives facilitated by the Hub. A community wellness grant allows diabetes patients to receive produce prescription deliveries through Hartford Healthcare. Community foundations support food pantry purchases.
“Individual farmers don’t have time to navigate all the potential funding sources that can help expand their markets,” said Food Hub board member Jocelyn Ayer. “That’s where the Hub comes in. We work with partners to secure funding for a wide range of projects.”
On a frigid December day, Susan Zappulla-Peters arrived bright and early at the Hub’s Torrington warehouse with a delivery of radishes and scallions from the farm her son manages, Maple Bank Farm in Roxbury. “The first time I delivered here, I was so inspired by what Renee is doing that I asked if I could help. Now I volunteer every week after I drop off Maple Bank’s produce.”
Zappula-Peters spent the morning receiving produce off farmers’ pickup trucks and compiling orders as generated onto lists by the online purchase platform. The pallets quickly filled up with food, including apples from March Farm in Bethlehem; carrots and cabbage from Vibrant Farm in Bantam; and sweet potatoes and potatoes from River Bank Farm in Roxbury. Zappula-Peters helped Giroux and driver Stuart Rabinowitz load a van headed for a delivery route that included Charlotte Hungerford Hospital, the Corner Food Pantry in Lakeville, and Fishes and Loaves Food Pantry in North Canaan.
“I love that this food, the best our region has to offer, is reaching people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to access it,” said Zappula-Peters in between moving pallets.
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Co-owner Lenore Mallett
The Colonial Theatre has been a part of North Canaan’s downtown since 1923. Its latest chapter began in 2023 when Lenore and Mark Mallett joined Dave and Stacy Fiorillo to purchase the long-vacant building with a vision of restoring it as a gathering place.
“We wanted to pay honor to its past,” Lenore Mallett said. “It was such a lovely gathering space for so long that we all felt a calling to bring that back to the community because it’s such a gem and it should be shared.
The owners’ vision was clear – revive the building’s exterior and get people in the doors.
Their first order of business was to provide the theater with what they described as a much-needed facelift.
From the street, the building appeared neglected, Mallett said. Peeling paint and a faded marquee masked an interior that she said was surprisingly well preserved after a major renovation in the early 2000s.
Focusing on curb appeal, they repaired the marquee, painted the whole building, and brought back some of the “vibrancy.”
The result, Mallett said, was a transformation that brought a diverse range of vendors, renters and tenants to the building and its two first-floor retail spaces. Since reopening, the building has housed a bakery, a photography studio and a children’s arts and crafts center while hosting movie nights, birthday parties and private events.
A collection of posters and newspaper clippings.Photo by Aly Morrissey
The history
The Colonial Theatre’s history is as interesting and diverse as the many nooks and crannies within the building itself.
Built in 1923 by hotelier Seth Moseley as a gift for his wife, the building was originally known as “The Casino.”
Mallett said his wife often traveled from New Haven and grew bored of rural living, prompting Moseley to build her a three-level entertainment space.
“Downstairs had the bowling alley, the main floor had the theater, and upstairs was a dance hall,” Mallett said, adding that the main floor had air conditioning, a rare luxury at the time.
The bowling alley had eight alleys and advertised a “fully equipped soda and snack shop to refresh you.”
The Casino was sold in 1929 to businessman Anthony Boscardin, who modernized the building, changed its name, and created the art-deco interior that The Colonial Theatre is still known for today.
Old ticket stubs can still be found in the attic showing movies that cost between 15 and 25 cents during the early days.
The theater struggled financially and closed in 1997. After undergoing a roughly $1 million renovation in the early 2000s, it shuttered its doors in 2010 and remained closed for a decade until the Mallett and Fiorillo families purchased it.
The future
Although the owners are ready to step aside, they hope the building’s next chapter builds on the foundation they’ve laid.
“We think the next steward, if they came in and were passionate about entertainment or food and beverage, this could certainly get taken to the next level,” Mallett said.
The theater will continue to operate with its regularly scheduled sponsored movies and private events while the owners search for a buyer.
“We’ve greased the wheels,” Mallett said. “We opened the doors, launched the business, created a website and built a booking and ticketing system. We have all the nuts and bolts, so if there was someone willing to take it on, it could really be something special.”
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