Open Access was developed by Food & Society at the Aspen Institute, which aims to help food entrepreneurs navigate the many challenges to financing and business ownership in the food sector. With funding from the Walmart Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (the views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundations), the Food & Society team created the open-source web code available at no-cost to cities and other organizations to launch portals to help food entrepreneurs in their communities.

The portal structure was inspired by the business portal projects designed and built by Code for America and Long Beach i-team, and the template content was modeled on and drawn from the Franklin County Food Business Portal, Minneapolis Small Business portal, and the Long Beach i-team portal.

Determine the Food Business Type

Leverage your skills and resources to create your food business type.

Determine the food business type you want to start

Restaurant or cafe

A place where people pay to sit and eat meals that are cooked and served on the premises.

Food truck

A large vehicle equipped with facilities for cooking and selling food.

Private label

Goods that are retailed, packaged, and sold.

Farmers Market

A reoccurring, public assembly of farmers and artisans selling food they produce directly to customers