By Stephen Smoot
From his hometown “Vagabond Kitchen,” to competing against stars on the Food Network to shaping up the menus throughout the West Virginia State Park system, Matt Welsch’s passion for all things culinary shines through.
Now, with support from a Resilient Foods Infrastructure Program grant, Welsch and his team can harvest the best of home grown, crafted, and produced foods and agricultural goods to connect them with a global marketplace.
“I love to travel,” shared Welsch. “I have always been ignited by wanderlust at every age.” He added that his goals always lay in “living a life of no regrets.”
Welsch’s roots run deep into the land. He shared that while growing up “we were subsistence farmers” in the fashion of being able to take care of most of their own needs. They grew a lot of their own food and Welsch’s father, an avid hunter, often brought home bounty from the forest.
“I grew up steeped in this culture of relying on the land,” he said.
Surrounded by the fruits of the land and raised with an appreciation of them, Welsch developed a love of cooking early on. As he tells it, one day he had a friend over to his home. The friend got hungry, so Welsch opened a can of soup and heated it up. The friend showed amazement that he knew how to do it and Welsch never left behind the warm and exciting experience of feeding someone delicious food.
He said he also loved the “DIY” (do it yourself) aspects to cooking.
He broke into the food industry not as a high-flying chef, but as a dishwasher in a cafeteria. Over time he worked his way up, impressing the head chef. Welsch shared how he felt at home in a kitchen, because every “kitchen is the island of misfit toys,” bringing all sorts of people with all sorts of quirks together to create great food.
“We all just fit together,” he said.
Welsch described cooking as an art, a craft, and a science, but also stated that “now I tell stories with my food.” Through his Vagabond Kitchen in Wheeling, he and his team, as the website reads, “honor these traditions by elevating the recipes passed down through generations. Using locally sourced produce, proteins, and breads, we change our menu with the seasons, staying true to our roots. We take pride in what we do and why we do it.”
He also has a series of You Tube videos detailing culinary adventures across the state of West Virginia and through his travels, he has worked to extend the impact and reach of his ideas.
One of the early episodes of his online video series “Recipes and Roadmaps” took him to Wardensville Garden Market. “We loved our visit to Wardensville,” he related, adding that he had lived in Canaan Valley and had traveled through the North Fork area. He said of Wardensville that “it’s so beautiful, so unique, so many great things are coming together,” noting the blend of ideas of newcomers from DC as they engage with natives.
He said that he had seen that passion and excitement even extending as far west as Rowlesburg in Preston County.
And now, that energy and enthusiasm has found direction with the Appalachian Cellar program.
Welsch knows the growing appeal of West Virginia to people in other areas, despite the history of negative stereotypes. Moreover, “people come to West Virginia and take things home with them . . . a tactile piece of West Virginia.”
“Appalachian Cellar is the face of Mountain State Co-Hop,” explained Welsch.
The Mountain State Co-Hop brings together the talents and products of 30 members who bring to market approximately 300 products. Many come from, as Welsch describes “the next generation of farmers and artisans that work in this space.”
Co-Hop members, thanks to the grant, have Appalachian Cellar as their online marketplace, but it does more than that. Not unlike how Wal Mart works with small business suppliers, the Co-Hop provides support in areas where needed. This mentoring could help with social media marketing, making a product to a certain scale, business administration, and more.
An overarching goal, Welsch shares, is to help small scale entrepreneurs and producers put their best foot forward against the billions in advertising spent by big business to dominate the market.
Currently one of the apparent barriers to sales expansion lies in the wholesale nature of the business. For example, as Welsch described, “you can’t buy a jar, but you can buy a case.” He suggests, however, that another Appalachian traditional practice could help.
Often, friends or family will pool their money to purchase a beef or a pig, then split the meat fairly when they receive it. Those who wish to purchase for their families would likely find this the best strategy at this point. They almost always save money buying in this fashion over purchasing for just their own households at a grocery store.
Grant funding received by Appalachian Cellar came from the United States Department of Agriculture through the West Virginia Department of Agriculture. As a WVDA website reads, funding will “focus on the infrastructure grant activities that expand capacity for processing, aggregation, and distribution of agricultural products to create more and better markets for processors.”
For Welsch, it all comes back to the deeply rooted traditions of food and how people come together to produce and consume it, along with stories shared. His mission, as he puts it, is to “get all these people trying to do these great things together.”
