VCA to host food showcase to connect vendors, customers

Rich Palzewic

Staff

July 13, 2026

GREENVILLE – Valley Cooperative Association (VCA) will bring together food, vendors and customers for its annual food showcase Aug. 25 at the Fox Cities Exhibition Center in downtown Appleton.

Marketing Manager Lindsey Perron said the event is designed to strengthen food supply chain relationships while showcasing a wide range of products and suppliers.

“This food showcase has been going on for as long as I can remember – maybe even two decades,” she said. “The event is only open to vendors we work with. Our customers and members come and sample new products, and we show what we have and what’s seasonal coming up for the winter months.”

Perron said about 70 vendors are expected at this year’s showcase.

Attendance, she said, has climbed back since the post-COVID years, when turnout averaged about 200 VCA members and customers, to roughly 400 in more recent events. 

Based on member feedback, Perron said VCA is adjusting this year’s showcase to better support multi-generation family businesses as they connect and network. 

“Some folks are getting ready to hand the business down to the next generation, and the next generation [may] understand the baking side, but they need help on the business side,” she said. “That includes building up their own network because they don’t have [the network] Mom and Dad do.”

To support those networking opportunities, Perron said VCA will bring in the Wisconsin Bakers Association (WBA) for a morning session.

Instead of focusing solely on food, ingredients and sampling, she said the WBA will highlight the business side of the industry.

“We’ll also have somebody talking about HR things,” she said. “We also work with several smaller micro-breweries. We’re bringing in four of them at the end of the day for a networking session. They’ll offer beer flights, and we’re going to pair that up with some bakery items.”

Since vendor food can’t be resold, Perron said leftovers from the event are donated to a local food pantry.

How the cooperative works

A cooperative, by definition, Perron said, is where members join together to achieve common goals they could not accomplish individually, pooling resources and sharing responsibilities.

In Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, she said if a business is involved with baking/a bakery, nine times out of 10, they are working with VCA.

Perron said the cooperative works alongside institutional food service companies, manufacturers, bakeries, restaurants, retailers and more, while also providing climate-controlled storage and transportation solutions.

“First and foremost, we are a food distributor,” she said. “We’ve been around since 1949. Our founder came back from World War II and was selling bakery ingredients. With price pressures coming out of the war, a lot of the little mom-and-pop bakeries couldn’t keep up with the prices and couldn’t buy in bulk like their competitors were.”

Because they couldn’t buy in bulk, Perron said smaller shops were forced to raise prices – which eventually led about 10 local bakeries to form the cooperative. 

“For example, they would all buy a pallet of flour together and divide it out amongst themselves,” she said. “Because they could buy the flour in a larger quantity, they could get a better price.”

VCA’s roots date back almost 80 years, but Perron said today’s version runs much the same way.

“Since then, it’s taken off,” she said. “We’re pretty much doing the same thing but on a much larger scale. With getting better prices on the goods, in turn, that means better prices for the consumers.”

With about 400 members in the cooperative, Perron said businesses don’t have to be members to utilize VCA’s services, but there are added benefits to being part of the group.

“Members get a percentage of the profits at the end of our fiscal year,” she said. “We’re not owned by some big CEO who is making a profit off all these bakeries – the businesses are truly investing back into their own businesses.”

With prices and wages increasing across all industries, Perron said the fee to join VCA is the same as it was in 1949.

“It’s always been a $500 buy-in, and that buys you your stock share,” she said. “The fee has never changed.”

At its large Greenville warehouse, Perron said the facility includes dry storage, refrigerated space and freezer areas.

With a fleet of its own trucks, she said VCA’s drivers navigate their way on about 30 routes around Wisconsin, the U.P. and a bit into the Minneapolis and Chicago areas.

Perron said VCA works closely with its buyers and sourcing managers to find what members are looking for.

“Then we’ll work on bringing what the members want into our warehouse,” she said. “Many of the mom-and-pop bakeries also don’t have a lot of storage, so, by bringing in larger quantities of goods, they can pull it from our warehouse as they need it.”

In short, Perron said VCA helps food businesses reduce costs and improve efficiency through shared purchasing, warehousing and transportation services. 

Some of its members, she said, include:

• Retail and wholesale bakeries

• Grocery stores
• Pizza restaurants
• Donut shops
• Artisan bread makers
• Food manufacturers
• Candy makers
• Craft breweries
• Institutional foodservice operations
• Other food-related businesses

For more information, visit valleybakers.com.