How Mill Village Farms in South Carolina Is Feeding Families Through Culinary Concerts
Necessity is the mother of invention, so they say. Never has that been clearer than in 2020, which has seen countless stories of people and business shifting their approach to not only survive but thrive through a global pandemic. One such story: Dan Weidenbenner, executive director of Mill Village Farms in Greenville, South Carolina, and his brainchild, Culinary Concerts.
It all started out of a great need to keep raising funds for FoodShare Greenville — the farm’s fresh food box program that works in partnership with FoodShareSC to distribute healthy, fresh foods to community members in need — at the start of the pandemic. “When COVID hit in March, we were charged with a lot of responsibility to meet the growing needs in our community, as more neighbors were furloughed, lost income and/or had additional kids at home to feed,” says Weidenbenner. Prior to March, the nonprofit was supplying about 300 boxes of food to families biweekly; now, that number has grown to more than 1,000 boxes. “The need to help financially support this work is that much greater,” Weidenbenner adds.
Looking for ways to creatively drive more donations, Weidenbenner and his team thought about what their donor audience liked. They knew they loved to support local restaurants, which at the time, wasn’t even possible, so the next step was cooking at home. Then, they thought about incorporating music into the experience, and the concept of the Culinary Concert series was born.
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How Culinary Concerts Work
“[Cooking and music] are both art forms, and they go hand-in-hand for experiencing a culture,” says Weidenbenner. His Culinary Concert series includes sending participants a box of ingredients to cook live alongside well-known chefs while listening to a performance by a regional band.
So far, Mill Village Farms has held two of these virtual events, with a third slated for Oct. 26 at 6:30 p.m. ET streaming from the private community of Haig Point on South Carolina’s Daufuskie Island. Chefs Sallie Ann Robinson, Shaun Garcia and Traylor Griffin will demonstrate how to make shrimp and blue crab burgers, country chicken stew with Carolina gold rice, and sweet potato cornbread, all to the soundtrack of Ranky Tanky, a Grammy-award-winning band from Charleston, South Carolina. This event is extra special because it will spotlight the cuisine of the native Gullah-Geechee people while benefiting families in need across the state.
Here’s how the Culinary Concerts work: Anyone interested in participating can register and purchase a box of food for $150 online. The first two concerts were local to Greenville only; the third event is open to any resident of South Carolina. There are two food box options, depending on your dietary preference (meat/seafood and vegan/vegetarian). You pick up your box at a designated location in your community the day before the scheduled event, and it’s filled with everything you need to make a three-course meal for two. (Weidenbenner describes it as “Hello Fresh meets cooking masterclass.”) The box also includes a bottle of wine and a cocktail kit (sans alcohol), full instructions, and table décor like cloth napkins, a candle and other fun surprises.
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On the day of the event, chefs demonstrate step-by-step how to make the evening’s meal, while a local band performs in the same physical location, providing a robust live streaming experience. The actual feed is streamed via Facebook, but participants are also able to view it through the Mill Village Farms website and ask questions through a chat box or text questions to organizers. The menu is different each time, but items are sourced as locally as possible.
In addition to the price of the box, participants also have an option to donate more to FoodShare upon checkout, or during the event. As a fun incentive, those who donate are given a live shoutout, telethon-style, Weidenbenner says.
Adjusting and Improving
More than 500 people participated in the first culinary concert, which was planned in less than three weeks. “It far exceeded our dreams for the event,” says Weidenbenner. “We realized people enjoyed this far more than we thought they would.” They also realized that they’d need to get more professional with the virtual element and work out kinks with streaming (especially after the Internet crashed in the middle of the first event). Now, they’re working with an AV production team dedicated to ensuring the highest quality streaming available for the Daufuskie Island event, for which they’re expecting to reach about 1,000 people.
They’ve also decided to switch up the format to make it more like an in-person dining experience. In its first iteration, the event was an hour of cooking followed by an hour of music. Now, the experience will be more integrated and fluid, resulting in what Weidenbenner hopes to be a more entertaining and dynamic evening: Making the first course, enjoying a song or two, making a second course and having wine, then more music, and so forth.
Making a Difference
Since starting Culinary Concerts, Mill Village Farms has raised more than $150,000 to help families in South Carolina — making an incredible impact through food. “When you hear stories of people being able to get high-quality food, and the health benefits they receive through eating great food, that’s what’s really transformational,” Weidenbenner says. “Equally as amazing is how community members with resources have stepped up to help meet the need — they might not be able to come volunteer [in person] right now, but they want to invest in this work.”
South Carolina residents can still sign up to participate in the October event here. A Christmas-themed culinary concert is also being planned for Greenville audiences on Dec. 10 with a festive menu – a consolation, Weidenbenner says, for all the local Christmas parties that will be canceled this year. “[Culinary Concerts] have been a huge blessing for the work we’re doing,” he adds. “We’re just helping to give back and have a good time.”