I'm no expert, but from what I read, worms can process half their weight in food, sometimes more on a good day.

QE2, sounds like you need a few of the vermitopia flow through composters. If anyone in the ZFW group is handy with a saw they are easy to make. And you're right - if your group is willing to invest a few dollars into these, they could eventually make money selling both the vermicompost AND the worms. Vermicompost sells for about $10.00 a pound right now and worms are about double that. Actually, I wish I were in your shoes. I would LOVE to do this. Maybe I should talk to you about how your group got started
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~compost/binplans.html

Would a biomass of worms this large be able to survive 10-15 degrees below zero in the winter? Say, we planned an average of 50 pounds a day, so 100 pounds of worms total, in 3 separate 35 square foot bins bins, three feet deep. Is that enough mass for them to continue through the winter, with constant additions of food?

I am fairly new to vermiculture - so experts correct me if I am wrong - If you insulate the bins well, they might not freeze all the way through and some worms survive. However, if you want them to process food during that time, you will need to keep the bin not only from freezing, but probably up around 50-60 degrees or the worms will be mostly dormant and will not eat anywhere near 1/2 their biomass weight in wastes daily. If you want them to convert food waste, you will need to heat the bins - the decomposing food will add some heat, but I doubt that it will be enough and heat will be lost when bin is opened to add the waste.

Gene

you/they would be wasting your effort trying to keep up with that volume of food waste with worms unless you had some very spendy machinery or some dedicated knowledgeable people to manage the worms

OTOH, a hot compost setup of 2 bins of a cubic yard each [3x3x3] would handle more than that easily and take little supervision - it's what I've been doing for years with {{gwi:257816}}

Bill