The pioneering farm-to-table nonprofit Vermont Fresh Network has quietly gone dark just shy of its 30th anniversary. In lieu of any official announcement, board chair Cara Chigazola Tobin, chef/co-owner of Burlington’s Honey Road and Grey Jay, confirmed that the organization has been forced into an indefinite hiatus. She cited the lack of funds to hire a new executive director and time constraints on the all-volunteer board, which has dwindled to three members.
Chigazola Tobin said she has had no luck finding new candidates. Vermont Fresh Network might be able to continue, she suggested, if a volunteer raised enough money to reinvigorate the organization.
The confirmation of Vermont Fresh Network’s likely end coincides with this week’s launch of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets’ free nine-event series Local Food in Practice. That project started as a collaboration with the Vermont Fresh Network — just one indication of the nonprofit’s lasting impact on the state’s food landscape.
Vermont Fresh Network was founded in 1996 as a partnership between the now-shuttered New England Culinary Institute and the Agency of Agriculture to help local farmers and food producers sell directly to chefs. Over a quarter of a century, the nonprofit ran many programs and events that supported the growth of the state’s farm-to-table movement.
Restaurants proudly posted their green-and-white Vermont Fresh Network membership plaques featuring a classic Vermont farm landscape on a plate. New farmers and food entrepreneurs credited the network with helping them grow their businesses.
Vermont Fresh Network’s annual forum dinner was its highest-profile public event. Held at Shelburne Farms, it drew several hundred paying guests who grazed on dishes created by partnered pairs of chefs and food producers. The last forum dinner, the nonprofit’s 26th, was held in July 2024.
Though Chigazola Tobin expressed regret over the nonprofit’s fate, she said she and fellow board members wonder if it has served its purpose.
“The mission was to connect farmers with people to buy their stuff,” the chef said. “Twenty-five years ago, that was really important and it really did a thing. But now there’s the internet, and all of that has gotten a lot easier.”
Vermont Fresh Network’s decline paralleled rising challenges to the restaurant sector, Chigazola Tobin said. The nonprofit supported its work with a mix of grants, event income and annual membership dues, which ranged from $50 for a farm to $240 for a restaurant to $500 for a distributor.
“It was never the same after COVID. No one had any money,” she said. Membership slid from 305 in 2019 to 224 in December 2023.
“You had to literally chase down every member to pay their dues every year, and a lot of sponsors dropped off because they didn’t have any money either,” Chigazola Tobin said. The organization experienced a final blow in 2025, she said, when President Donald Trump’s administration froze, then ultimately canceled, a $25,000 federal grant it had received.
Ironically, federal funds support this week’s launch of Local Food in Practice, which continues the work of “strengthen[ing] partnerships between farmers and restaurants to make it easier for them to work together,” said Kristen Carrese of the Agency of Agriculture. “Restaurants represent a significant and underutilized opportunity,” she continued, while noting that seasonality, scale, logistics and pricing all pose challenges.
The $130,000 project was underwritten by a U.S. Department of Agriculture specialty crop block grant and has been in the works since before the fall 2024 departure of the last Vermont Fresh Network executive director, Tara Pereira. Pereira now works as an independent consultant with the state ag agency to design and execute the series.
Preparation for Local Food in Practice involved research with farmers and chefs to identify barriers and opportunities around local food purchasing. The project will generate a set of tool kits for future use. Planned events include networking gatherings, webinars, and farm and restaurant visits. All are free but require registration.
The aim, Pereira said, is for the two groups to interact directly and better understand each other’s goals and needs.
“What would the farmer want a chef to know? And what would a chef want a farmer to know?” she said. “We can always learn from each other, and you’re not going to do that until you’re actually in the same room.”
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