Community and Cultural Entrepreneurship and Value Co-Creation in the Local Food Marketscape

Local food entrepreneurs are confronted with unique challenges when it comes to sustaining their firms and scaling their pro-community impact within geographically confined marketspaces. Yet, the strategies for overcoming these challenges remain under-studied within the community development and local food literatures. The current study addresses this scholarly gap through a qualitative case study of a southern Arizona artisan baker who follows a community-supported business model that strategically engages customers as value co-creators and stewards of a sustainable and scalable local consumption space. The study is conceptually framed by a set of principles that span community entrepreneurship, cultural entrepreneurship, and value co-creation. Data include semi-structured interviews with the baker and a sample of customers (n = 31), 20+ h of direct observations, and 3419 posts made within the bakery’s social media environment. The findings inform the theoretical development of a novel local food value co-creation model.