A former farmer, Mountain Food Products Owner Ron Ainspan developed his organization about 40 years ago in an effort to help area producers get their products to local individuals and businesses in and around Asheville. Since most farmers need to focus their time on growing and production, delivering their products can be a burden. Mountain Food Products was born to help farmers distribute their goods.

“At that time, grocery stores would take products through their back door,” Ainspan said. “It wasn’t all through big distributors. Soon after I began these deliveries, I would hear people asking for certain products, and I’d drive to go pick them up, and slowly this demand took off.”

With the continuous intention of promoting local food, delivering fresh produce was the original focus. As the number of restaurants grew quickly in Asheville, MFP easily grew to include warehousing and distributing a variety of local food products to these businesses.

“Earlier this year, TripAdvisor released a ‘Top 10 Food Destinations’ blog,” Ainspan said. “It was mostly bigger cities, and it included Asheville. It seemed like the main reason Asheville made it to the top 10 was the availability of local foods, so I guess we have been pretty successful in helping to make that happen.”

Ainspan said his business model has consistently been more about community-building than building a business. From being a former grower himself to participating in tailgate markets throughout many years, building his network of farmers with available produce happened organically. Now located inside the WNC Farmers Market, he continues to come into contact with more and more growers from around the area, creating additional mutually beneficial connections to deliver products to local consumers.

MFP sells for about 150 different growers over the course of a year. With a definition of local food as anything grown within 100 miles of Asheville, Ainspan said his buyers know his definition of local has truth in its meaning.

“‘Local’ can mean a lot of things to a lot of people,” Ainspan said. “The word itself is not protected in any way. ‘Local’ can mean ‘the Earth’ if you want it to, so when we promote stuff as ‘local’, it’s powerful.”

While MFP distributes produce for local growers, they also encourage growers to sell directly to restaurants, even if it means MFP doesn’t  get that particular sale. Ainspan believes promoting the concept of local direct sales and supporting local can boost the entire community. 

Restaurant-farmer relationships are important, though when a restaurant’s preferred grower doesn’t have a product ready when it’s needed, the organization can often find another source so the restaurant can still purchase locally.

At times, Ainspan and his team are actively searching for growers to invite to their programs, but usually growers find them. Their available products are incorporated into MFP’s list, which can be viewed by their 100 or so restaurant contacts. Restaurant leadership tells MFP what they’d like, and MFP ensures the restaurants’ orders are packed and ready for delivery within a couple of days. 

About five years ago, MFP also began a CSA program — essentially a contract between a grower and their customers. Growers offer memberships for a set dollar amount, and customers receive a weekly box of produce they pick up at the market. Since a wide variety of growers are involved with MFP, they began a multi-farm CSA, and distribute about 100 boxes of food to area individuals each week.

“We fulfill a lot of needs, and we don’t have any contracts with any growers or any restaurants,” Ainspan said. “It’s all based on the quality of our relationships and the quality of service people are getting. We are vulnerable in some ways, but because we’ve been doing it a long time, we’ve been able to easily maintain our business. Over the years, Asheville has been such a strong supporter of ‘local’ and people really fight for that, and it’s been rewarding to be part of the whole area’s consciousness around that movement.”