Business & Tech

Which Restaurant Is Gardening With A Purpose?

Broder's is looking for help feeding the poor.

It all started as a small graduate school project.

Travis Dahlke wanted to try to grow food for a local food shelf, and asked his parents for help. They let him use an acre of land, from which he and volunteers were able to coax 12,000 pounds of potatoes (That's about 1 semi-trailer and "several" pickups full of the tubers, in case you're wondering).

Fast forward two years, and Dahlke has turned his project into the inspiration for a nonprofit that helps supply seven food banks from Gaylord and Glencoe to Minneapolis and Minnetonka. And now, local restaurant is getting in on the action as Dahlke and Hands for Harvest look to move their growing operations into the city, to be closer to their volunteers.

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Hands for Harvest's schtick is simple: snare volunteers who're passionate about local food and feeding the hungry, and giving them the tools—like tilling and training—to make their own charitable gardens thrive.

"For us to do it all ourselves, it's not plausible, especially if we want this idea to grow," Dahlke told Patch. "We want people to take ownership of their own land and invest in it themselves."

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Broder's employees will join forces with Dahlke and Hands for Harvest to start their own garden somewhere in the Southwest Minneapolis area. So far, they haven't announced where there garden will be yet, but Dahlke said he and the Broder's employees are excited to get started. 

"We're all really pumped up," he said. 


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