★ ★ ★ ★ ★
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Property Acquisition,
Design & Planning
Beaver County, Pennsylvania
Beaver County
Food Hub
A transformative Food Hub, built on a former brownfield along the Ohio River, that will redefine access to food, workforce training, and economic opportunity for generations to come.
A region
ready to
rise
Situated within the rapidly growing Borough of Ambridge, and mere minutes from the Allegheny County line, The Hub will serve residents, entrepreneurs, and farmers in numerous southwestern Pennsylvania communities.
The Beaver County Food Hub is a clear solution to glaring problems in our local food system.
Ambridge
Beaver County, Pennsylvania
The location of the Beaver County Food Hub was determined through extensive research and stakeholder consultation. Ambridge represents the perfect mix of need, opportunity, and alignment with municipal priorities.
Why Ambridge?
The Food Hub is the first new construction project to emerge from Ambridge’s federally funded EPA Area-Wide Plan. As the planning documents below demonstrate, The Hub will kick off an estimated $100M+ in future investment in downtown Ambridge and beyond.
Six facilities
One ecosystem
The Hub is a fully integrated facility — not a collection of unrelated programs. Each element was designed to address a specific, documented gap in Beaver County's food system, and each one strengthens the others.
Training Kitchens
State-of-the-art culinary workforce training, hands-on farm-to-fork education with placement pipelines into the food industry
Commissary Kitchens
Modular professional kitchen space for food entrepreneurs launching and scaling local food businesses
Food Business Incubator
On-site retail space for emerging food enterprises to test concepts, build a customer base, and grow financial sustainability before launching a stand-alone business
Indoor Farmers Market
Year-round indoor market selling local produce and value added food products — all of which are SNAP-accessible
Indoor Agricultural Space
Four-season growing, agricultural education, and community cultivation connecting the region to locally grown food year-round
Community Event Space
Dedicated event space available for community gatherings, educational programming, and civic collaboration
$6.815 million
for a county
of 160,000
Nearly two thirds of our total project budget has already been raised from a mix of local, philanthropic, state, and federal sources.
Our budgetary gap is clear and our target is within sight.
Federal partnership completes the picture.
Projected Total Project Budget
Community Support
People across the state are standing behind this initiative. Join the growing movement demanding investment in Beaver County.
Returns on
investment
- Shoppers, farmers, and vendors at a permanent year-round indoor farmers market
- Workers trained through state-of-the-art culinary workforce programs
- Food entrepreneurs launched and scaled through business incubation and retail space
- Students and community members engaged through agricultural education and four-season growing
- Residents gaining year-round SNAP/EBT access to locally grown food for the first time
84 jobs created during the construction phase of the facility. 57 permanent and induced jobs resulting from ongoing operations.
The total value of all economic activity the Hub generates in a year — wages, local purchases, farmer revenues, etc. and the ripple effect of that spending through the local economy.
State-of-the-art training kitchens creating a skilled, employed food workforce — from entry-level culinary skills to advanced food business management.
A permanent indoor farmers market with SNAP/EBT accessibility opens up more than $40M a year in Beaver County SNAP benefits to be spent on locally produced food.
Trusted
Experienced
Ready
Real transformation requires real partnership. The coalition behind the Beaver County Food Hub — spanning municipal government, nonprofits, farmers, entrepreneurs, and residents — didn’t happen by accident. It’s how The Hub was designed from day one, and it’s what sets this project apart: a community of leaders who are serious, committed, and prepared to manage this exciting project to completion.
Founded in 2019, Crop & Kettle has spent seven years combating community food deterioration through workforce training, economic development, and agricultural education. Timothy’s farm-to-fork program combines rigorous technical culinary training with life skills, moving individuals from poverty toward self-sufficiency. The Hub is the organization’s most ambitious vision yet — and its most necessary.
RiverWise exists to organize community voice and power so residents can shape the trajectories of Ambridge and surrounding communities. Daniel serves on the boards of over thirty nonprofit and civic organizations, writes a regular column on community integration, and brings the network and strategic experience to make this project a landmark for the region — and a replicable model for the nation.
As Borough Manager of Ambridge with over 3 decades of experience in municipal government, Mario Leone has spent the last five years engineering one of Western Pennsylvania’s most-watched municipal turnarounds — attracting 50+ new businesses and earning a top-five rising SWPA municipality ranking. Mario’s partnership on The Beaver County Food Hub is itself a statement: proof that when civic and municipal leaders align behind a shared vision, transformative projects become possible.