The Yellowbird Foodshed co-founder Benji Ballmer

Mount Vernon, Ohio - The Yellowbird Foodshed

a box of produce from yellowbird foodshed

The Yellowbird Foodshed collaboratively collects food from Ohio growers, a foodshed is the geographic region that your food comes from. Where it’s produced, where it’s consumed, as well as the route that it takes to get there. The Yellowbird Foodshed is based in Mount Vernon, Ohio and they’re going into their 10th year this year.

Top 3 reasons Yellowbird Foodshed is better than a grocery store

  • Their customers want to know where their food comes from. Who grew your food?

  • The food speaks for itself, it’s fresher and tastier. Also, with Yellowbird Foodshed you know where your food comes from, it’s mainly from farmers they know in Ohio. If it’s from outside of Ohio they’ll let you know where it’s from. Each product they provide has been sustainably raised, harvested, and transported.

  • Yellowbird pays a higher percentage to growers, for example at a major grocery store for every dollar spent on a head of lettuce the grower might see 6 cents but at Yellowbird Foodshed the grower sees close to 65 cents.

Top 3 Central Ohio Restaurants

High quality, farm fresh food makes it hard to go out to eat. Going out to eat can be very average especially compared to the freshest, highest quality, local produce and meats. 

1 Pizza Nerds in Newark

2 Ghostwriter Public House in Johnstown

3 Harvest Bar & Kitchen in Clintonville

Vegan meals vs. Meat meals and I’d rather have a B rated meat dish than an A rated plant-based dish.

Local food near me?

What defines local? Countless restaurants claim to be local but actually use food sourced from all over the world. A restaurant might say they’re local, but they’re using the same food from Sysco or US Foods. 

Film feast. The best representation of food in a movie or tv show. Benji’s answer is Meet Joe Black and the cake scene. Benji’s favorite snack is homemade popcorn. He’ll take Ohio butter and maple syrup and mix those together, pour it over local Ohio popcorn, and a little bit of salt too. Sweet and salty, sounds like a delicious snack to me. Top 3 Ohio popcorn producers are Shagbark, Till, and Clutter.

This was a really fun podcast episode. 614 feast podcast is available on my website, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and more.