In just a little more than two years, the Spokane Valley-based Local Inland Northwest Cooperative has grown from a handful of farmers to almost 50 whose produce is now being bought by restaurants, school districts, and universities.

Beth Robinette and Joel Williamson cofounded the for-profit cooperative and operate it out of 10,000 square feet of space in the Spokane Business & Industrial Park, at 3808 N. Sullivan.

LINC bills itself as a co-op providing quality, sustainable produce, meat, dairy, eggs, grains, and legumes. The co-op’s farmers don’t use chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, or genetically modified organisms, says Dan Jackson, LINC’s director of sales and marketing, who also is a small farmer in Spokane Valley and sits on LINC’s board of directors.

Including its founders, LINC has two full-time and two-part-time employees, Jackson says.

Robinette says revenues continue to rise. Last year, the cooperative generated $150,000 in revenue, and this year it might exceed $350,000. Profits are shared between the LINC’s employees and its member growers, she says.

In April, LINC also began malting locally grown barley for area beer brewers in an effort to expand business. Williamson, who attended the Malt Academy at the Canadian Malting Barley Center in Winnipeg, Manitoba, says LINC has the capacity to malt four tons of grain per week.

After LINC secured $300,000 from investors, the Working World, a nonprofit in New York, provided an additional $300,000 to help start Palouse Pint.

Palouse Pint is the marketing name for LINC’s malting effort and not an official business name, Jackson says.

LINC’s brewing customers include Black Label Brewing Co., Perry Street Brewing, and the Steam Plant Brewing Co., according to Williamson.

As for LINC’s produce side, every Tuesday and Friday morning in downtown Spokane, Robinette, Williamson and Jackson meet on average with a dozen farmers to collect produce for delivery.

Farmers bring their products to LINC, which delivers it to the co-op’s customers.

LINC’s client list includes the school districts of Spokane, Mead, Central Valley, East Valley, West Valley, and Cheney. Right now, Spokane Public Schools purchases roughly 2,600 pounds of small potatoes and carrots from LINC each school year, Jackson says.

Gonzaga just reached an agreement with LINC under which the cooperative will provide the university with at least 20 percent of all its produce by 2020.

Other universities that buy produce from LINC include Eastern Washington, Idaho, and Whitworth. 

Spokane restaurants, including The Wandering Table, Ruins, Stacks at Steam Plant, The Blackbird Tavern & Kitchen, and Tomato Street, also are among LINC’s clients.

Jackson says the region’s climate generates an overabundance of crops that can be stored, such as potatoes, carrots, cabbage and squash, all of which can be sold year round.

Robinette, 28, and Williamson, 34, say they are committed to local sustainability and want to continue to help small farms place more products across the Inland Northwest.

The pair met at Pinchot University—formerly Bainbridge Graduate Institute in Seattle—while completing their MBAs in sustainability roughly four years ago.

“We’re from Spokane. We’re both fourth-generation Spokanites and have a shared interest in our family histories and in agriculture. We also wanted to come back to Spokane and make a difference,” Robinette says.

Her family has a history of raising beef cattle, while Williamson’s family grows roses. She says she developed a “chip” on her shoulder while living in Seattle.

“My classmates would say, ‘Spokane sucks,’ I’d fight back and say, ‘Seattle sucks.’ So there was a real strong desire in me to make something unique happen in Spokane,” she says.

Upon returning here, Robinette and Williamson spent a year researching the idea of a sustainable farming cooperative.

“We probably interviewed more than 100 farmers and restaurateurs about the challenges they face in getting produce to markets and receiving produce from small, local farms,” Robinette says.

“So the goal became to help them to get their products directly into the hands of the surrounding market,” she says.

Molly Patrick, who co-owns The Blackbird with Patrick McPherson, says the restaurant began purchasing its produce from LINC not long after opening in June of 2015.

“It just makes life a whole lot easier for me. Instead of having to buy from six or seven different farmers six or seven times a week, I can get everything I need through LINC just once a week. LINC brings it all together,” Patrick says.