Back Pocket Provisions
Specialty Food Artisan
About
Back Pocket Provisions is a mission-based craft beverage brand in Richmond, VA. Back Pocket works with a network of Virginia farms to turn fresh fruits and vegetables into a line of award-winning cocktail mixes. Our mission is to make life more delicious, healthy, honest, and fun by helping small farmers succeed.
Our work is centered in the belief that small farms are the foundation of a food system that builds stronger communities, ecosystems, and local economies. However, the current industrial food system, along with racial and economic injustice, catastrophic climate change, and the hollowing out of rural communities, have made it harder than ever before to make a living as an American farmer.
We can’t solve these problems ourselves. But Back Pocket is committed to living our mission by designing innovative products that create new small farm opportunities; redesigning supply chains until they treat farmers as partners, not costs; and demonstrating a new kind of food economy in which we can all act locally to build collective impact.
Programs and Partners
Location
Richmond, VA
Manager
Will Gray has been working as a local food system practitioner and advocate for over 10 years. He is the founder and CEO of Back Pocket Provisions, a social enterprise in Richmond, VA on a mission to make life more delicious, healthy, honest, and fun by helping small farmers succeed.
Will also sits on the leadership team of the Mid-Atlantic Food Resilience and Access Coalition (MAFRAC), a stakeholder-led network working throughout Virginia, Maryland, and the DC Metro area to resource, redirect, and reconnect myriad agents in the regional foodshed. MAFRAC coordinates a community-awarded microgrant program, serves as a regional clearinghouse for excess food, and fosters connection between growers, philanthropy, hunger relief organizations, food businesses, and community leaders. Will also served on the board of the Virginia Food Systems Council in 2019-2020.
Prior to Back Pocket, Will was a Program Officer at the Wallace Center in Arlington, VA, a national nonprofit working to make the food system more healthy, green, fair, and affordable. There, he led the Wallace Center’s Regional Food Economies portfolio. Along with the rest of the RFE team, Will worked to develop a business environment within the food system that enabled the success of mission-based farm and food enterprises as they balanced performance, sustainability, and impact.
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