On Thursday morning, a host of MRC employees and representatives of various organizations gathered on West Street in Shawville for the grand opening of the AgriSaveur commercial kitchen, a new processing facility where local agricultural producers can transform raw ingredients into marketable products.
MRC Pontiac warden Jane Toller thanked the attendees for their presence and explained that the kitchen is one element of the overall Agrisaveur project, which also includes the Shawville abattoir, as well as a boutique soon to be installed at the abattoir location to market local products.
“Today we are not simply opening a kitchen, we’re opening doors for entrepreneurs, we’re creating opportunities for local producers, we’re supporting food innovation, we’re strengthening food autonomy and we’re investing in the future of agriculture and economic development in the Pontiac,” she said.
MRC economic development commissioner for agriculture Shanna Armstrong explained that the MRC had initially planned to use an online booking system for renting the space to producers, but decided against it after discussions with potential users.
“We wanted to do a calendar online where it was all automatic and we quickly realized everyone has such specific needs that we’re going to work just with email and call and have anyone that wants to use it come and see the facility so they get a better understanding as well of what they could use, how long it could take [ . . . ] Right now we’re just really trying to customize it so it fits everybody’s needs,” she said.
Armstrong said that the kitchen was soft-launched and has been open for use since April, in order to better cater to clients’ needs and work out any kinks in the processes.
“We try to be here for their first use as well, so that if there’s questions, because there’s a lot of equipment, we’re on site and we can answer questions directly,” she said.
The kitchen has a wide variety of tools, from meat slicers and sausage makers to a dough roller and vacuum sealer. Armstrong highlighted the 10 rack combi-oven, which has a number of settings for different uses.
“It’s one of our favourite pieces. It really helps for efficiency too, if you’re doing pies for example, you can do 40 pies at a time,” she said.
The current rates for the kitchen are $30/hour with a minimum four-hour booking, with rates of $75 per 24-hour period for the freeze dryer and $120 per 24-hour period for the smoker.
Armstrong added that she couldn’t share much about the current state of the abattoir and boutique portions of the project, but said that the public can expect more news on that front in the coming weeks.
