Short Food Supply Chains in Urban Areas: Who Takes the Lead? Evidence from Three Cities across Europe

Core Ideas Local intermediaries can stimulate innovative organizational models in short chains. Leadership in short chains determines prioritization between sustainability goals. Trust and communication, more than distance, are short chain key elements. Flexible regulation can contribute to speeding up development of innovative partnerships. Qualitative research can support SMEs with an integrated vision of their supply chain. Short food supply chain (SFSCs) initiatives have developed throughout Europe as an alternative to the long industrialized chains characterizing the contemporary global food industry. They are often driven by small‐scale actors belonging to different phases of the chain (producers, retailers, consumers) and rooted in specific territorial contexts. Innovative organizational models of SFSCs are attracting interest in the academic field (Jarosz, 2008, Khan and Prior, 2010, Aubry and Kebir, 2013) and beyond (RUAF, 2015). This work contributes to the debate with a focus on the logistics of SFSCs in urban and peri‐urban areas across Europe, specifically on the role of local intermediaries in facilitating connections between urban consumers and peri‐urban and rural farmers. The structure of three small/medium enterprises (SMEs) acting as local SFSC intermediaries has been analyzed by a research network involving researchers and entrepreneurs in a mutual learning process. The aim was to identify the main business objectives of local intermediaries in SFSCs, the elements that from the SMEs point of view characterize SFSCs and their vision of sustainability. A simple theoretical model has been developed to look at leadership of SFSCs in urban and peri‐urban areas. The research process provided interesting insight into the contribution that qualitative research can give to SMEs’ reflection on their organizational model (Zakic et al., 2014).