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When Rebecca Tran first walked through the former Newport Station District School in 2019, it was an empty building but one brimming with possibility.

Alongside Heather Lunan, the pair set out to create the Station Food Hub, a space for food processing, production, distribution and storage.

They wanted to help push the local food movement forward, increasing domestic food consumed and produced in Nova Scotia, and provide customers with more transparency in terms of where their food comes from.

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Six years later, Tran is busy networking at SIAL Canada – the largest food innovation trade show in North America, pitching the company’s products to prospective distributers.

“I feel like we are on this big upward trajectory,” Tran said prior to attending the trade show in Toronto April 29 to May 1.

Now the sole owner/operator of the Station Food Hub, Tran said she never imagined the company would expand so quickly.

“We have come a long way,” she said.

“We’ve never wavered from the vision of supporting local and having more local food into institutions, schools, retail, wholesale customers and things like that.”

The company’s mission statement is to “provide enhanced quality food products for Nova Scotians by using imperfect produce and to increase the amount of local food served in local institutions with the goal of reducing food waste.”

Supporting local

The Station Food Hub has a contract with Nova Scotia Health to supply all of its seasoned mashed potatoes. The company has several products listed with Gordon Food Service and Sysco, which are then purchased by several businesses, hospitals and assisted living homes.

It currently produces seasoned mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, mashed turnip, diced onions and carrots.

The company also creates upcycle soups and entrees that are sold through smaller markets, like Noggins Corner Farm Market and the Falmouth Fruit and Vegetable Company.

“That’s what we want to do – we want to support our local farmers, bring back the economy,” Tran said. “We don’t glean; we buy. So we pay them for the product. We don’t take it. We pay them market value for their seconds and then we upcycle it and process it here.”

These seconds, as they’re called in the industry, are items that wouldn’t make store shelves. They’re often smaller or not as attractive to a consumer, but they’re just as nutritious. Often, seconds go to waste or are discarded. Through the Station Food Hub’s upcycling, those goods are transformed and brought to market.

“If we want to talk about volumes, we’re over a million servings of mashed potatoes,” Tran said, noting the company sends out, on average, 13,000 servings a week featuring local product.

The social purpose business employs eight people, which Tran said are vital for the Hub’s success.

“I feel like it’s important to highlight that our team is so dedicated in what we’re doing, and they all believe in the vision and what the Station can do. We wouldn’t be where we’re at today without the staff that we have here.”

West Hants Mayor Abraham Zebian commended Tran on the Station Food Hub’s success.

“They’re doing wonderful things. … From where it began to where it is today, it’s night and day,” Zebian said.

“The energy they exude, the effort that they’re putting in, the strides and successes that they’re making, it’s top-notch. I’m so proud to have them within our community. It’s just A1 work.”

Expansion plans afoot

New equipment arrived a few weeks ago that will see the Station Food Hub drastically increase its output of sliced apples.

“We’ve been wedging apples for the IWK for over a year now,” Tran said, noting employees have been doing the work by hand.

Tran, who is on the steering committee for the Coalition of Healthy School Foods for Nova Scotia, has been advocating to get more local foods into the school system. In the fall, Station Food Hub will be providing sliced apples for the lunch program.

The new machine, once it’s up and running, will be able to wedge 9,000 apples a day.

“That’s 1.8 million apples a year we would be able to wedge of Nova Scotia apples that would find their way into schools, hospitals, and facilities around Nova Scotia,” Tran said. “So we’re very excited about the apple line.”

While the outside of the building still resembles the former Primary to Grade 6 school in Newport Station, the inside has been transformed into an efficient production warehouse. There’s ample storage, and still room to grow.

“Infrastructure is a missing piece in Nova Scotia, and so the Station Food Hub is building that infrastructure and we’re putting the equipment in place and the processing equipment to be able to make that connection between the farms and the community,” Tran said.

In addition to production equipment, Station Food Hub has the ability to aggregate. They can collect food from farms and producers, bring it to Newport Station and store it. The facility is equipped with on-site dry storage and freezer and cold storage.

The company currently operates a refrigerated truck that helps with distribution.

“Our truck runs three routes. … We circle up through the valley once a week. We circle down to the south shore once a week, and we do Halifax/Dartmouth once a week,” she said.

“Distribution is also one of the missing pieces, so we’re able to solve that problem by doing that with our truck.”

With the tariff war highlighting concerns over food security, Tran said improving distribution systems and the infrastructure necessary to produce and transport food is vital.

“There’s been people working on it for a really, really long time, and we’re six years in and we have lots of capacity and room to grow,” Tran said.

“If we can do more to help, then that’s what we want to do. I think if more people knew about what we have to offer and what we’re doing here, then I think we would be able to grow even faster,” she continued.

“Because we have the space, we have the proper equipment in place, we could double our capacity and double our output tomorrow without any changes to equipment or staffing or anything. We have that capacity to grow without any more investment.”

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