Gibron Jones on Clubhouse

Bio

Gibron Jones is the Executive Director of HOSCO SHIFT a non profit local food cooperative business incubator with a focus on redesigning local food systems to be more equitable and healthier.

HOSCO started in 2010 after Gibron decided to return to his hometown of St Louis from New York and become a farmer. Little did he know where that road would take him. Since that time it has grown to a regional leader in food production and distribution with its 3 part model that addresses farming, food processing/packaging and wholesale distribution to the public.

HOSCO maintains a 240 acre farm that produces a variety of crops distributed with the Midwest region and a $1.2 million commercial kitchen and Food Hub.
With the opening of the North Sarah Food Hub on March 22nd 2020 Gibron lead a staff of 20 into developing creating over 200,000 meals for seniors and families in need. In addition, under his leadership the North Sarah Food Hub has also distributed 640,000 lbs of food last year and has an annual operating budget of $1.6 million dollars.

Currently Gibron is developing the business model according to the company philosophy while focusing on establishing the incubation and management of local food cooperatives through it's Agricultural and Culinary workforce training program through the United States Department of Labor.

The focus of his work first and foremost is to tackle food access through increasing local food production in low income urban and rural areas through sustainable ecosystem based practices and by increasing healthy food cooperatives and nutritional food product offerings.

This spring he will launch a brick and mortar retail grocery cooperative to go with the organization’s online grocery distribution called Copia.

Develop agriculture based curriculum for students in Saint Louis Science Center's Youth Exploring Science (YES) program

Build community relationships with non-profit organizations and sustainable food projects.

Gibron experience in food allows him and his team to create non traditional economic models for non-profits to help sustain programming and institutional goals.