There’s an inspiring story in the New York Times today entitled Uniting Around Food to Save an Ailing Town. Years ago the granite companies that supplied many jobs in Hardwick, VT decided to pick up and leave. But instead of letting the town fall apart, they’ve rallied together and determined that food is the future. They’ve collaborated to create new businesses and 75 to 100 new jobs.

There has been so much doom and gloom over the past few weeks with all the discussions about the future of our economy that it was a welcome change of pace to read about something so positive. I truly believe small businesses are the future and when they work together each business has a greater likelihood to succeed. The sum is undoubtedly greater than its parts.

I started thinking about many of the producers I’ve met that have that same collaborative attitude as the folks in Hardwick. Adam from Grafton Village Cheese wants to figure out a way to help promote other small producers in Vermont by shipping their products out of one location to help boost individual orders from multiple Vermont vendors. Christina from Kika’s Treats helps to promote other small producers in California by using their ingredients in her graham cracker treats and lists them all out on her site to give them the props they deserve.

Enabling these same type of actions in the digital world is important to us; we want to allow producers to collaborate on Foodzie and share their collective wisdom. Whether it’s sharing tips on where to source ingredients and shipping supplies or promoting other producer’s products that are complimentary to their own, I believe they will all be more successful if we provide them a way within our marketplace to do much of what they are already doing…and that’s working together.