A Three-Step Recipe for Sourcing Local Foods
April 2008
By Suzanne Welander
You’ve heard the buzz about local food. Tastes good and makes you feel good for eating it, too. It’s a great story that many customers are hungry to eat up.
The reality behind the happy story boasted by the “locally raised vegetables” on the menu is that local farmers and the restaurants near them – while not separated by distance – are in reality rather far removed from each other. Buying locally produced foods takes heavy lifting due to the lack of infrastructure, skills, and sufficient supply needed to build the bridge connecting the two. It’s not as simple as calling in your weekly order to the distributor. Regardless, any restaurant can add locally grown food from nearby farmers to their menus today.
1. Decide your strategy.
How central are local foods to your restaurant’s marketing strategy? If you’re trying to attract customers interested in sustainability issues as well as food quality, the local food message has power. Capitalizing on it, however, doesn’t mean sourcing the entire menu from local farms, says Chef Gregg McCarthy of Atlanta’s Murphy’s restaurant. “I want to provide a good representation of local foods on the menu, but to source everything locally? We just can’t afford to do that.”
Murphy’s Chef Greg McCarthy
Photo Credit The Reynolds Group, Inc.
Over the years, Chef Michael Tuohy’s locally sourced offerings have migrated to center stage at Woodfire Grill. “At first, we bought just enough for the specials. After working with some of these farms for fifteen years, menu IS the specials.”
To start, take it slowly by purchasing one item from a local farm. Some items, like Georgia milk from Sparkman’s Cream Valley dairy in Moultrie, is now distributed by Destiny Produce. Sweetgrass Dairy cheeses, Savannah Bee honey, and White Oak Pastures grass-fed ground beef are also available through distributors year-round.
2. Forge a farm relationship.
Georgia is not exactly crawling with sustainable growers; currently, less than 1% of the agricultural acreage in the state is certified organic. Most farms are small producers with only two to five acres. They do not have excess capacity in their product mix. Building relationships with farmers takes some ingenuity, legwork and, most importantly, social skills.
The first point of reference is Georgia Organics’ Local Food Guide. The guide lists over 100 farmers, located throughout the state. It can be downloaded at www.georgiaorganics.org. Even though there is complete contact information in the guide, you still have to do a bit of legwork. Chef Derek Smith of Organic Gourmet Express found building farmer/chef relationships can be a lot of work, “I can’t get them to return my calls,” says the organic chef.
This is where the legwork comes in. Since the availability of supply is far less than the demand, many growers sell their produce at retail prices to customers at farmers markets. Meeting growers on their turf is one of Chef Tuohy’s key tips for restaurateurs. “Visit a local farmers market near you and introduce yourself to the farmers. Tell them who you are and what produce you would like to incorporate into your menu.” Talking with growers face to face is invaluable for both parties. Events such as the Celebration of Georgia Grown Show serve to benefit both parties. Producers meet and show off their samples to meet restaurateurs instead of cold calling them one by one. Sandy Miller of Crystal Ponds Seafood in Statesboro says, “we’ve got the product, we just have to let them (chefs) know it’s here.”
Finding that perfect source for a local item sometimes involves good old-fashioned networking.. Farmer Relinda Walker, of Walker Farms in Statesboro, was introduced into Savannah’s Local 11 Ten restaurant with her pristine spinach. Soon Chef Keith Latture was asking what else could Walker supply?
Farmer Relinda Walker and Chef Keith Latture.
3. Be flexible.
In the early days of farm-to-table connections, buying locally meant taking whatever the farmer had available that day to deliver. “Farmers wouldn’t always show up with what they said they would, but you took what you could get,” says Tuohy.
Now there is a much greater control over ordering as supply increases and communication increases. One unavoidable and critical factor still dictates supply: seasonality. Some customers celebrate seasonality variations as a means for cultivating a closer connection with the natural world. Others pine for summers’ tomatoes in the dead of winter, forcing restaurants to rely on paler versions shipped in from the tropics. When dealing with local produce, it is simply not possible to coax summer fruits out of winter soil. Chef Tuohy councils, “you must cook with what’s in season! Don’t expect strawberries or peaches during the winter.”
The flexibility required goes beyond simple seasonality. With direct farm relationships, the restaurant becomes sensitized, and in some cases directly affected by the growing conditions at the farm. A drought or a hard freeze can wipe out the crops that the farmer was planning on delivering next week and the week after that. Having “Plan B” is imperative, especially when more significant portions of the menu depend on locally grown fare.
Worth It?
Local farms will never be able to match the low prices or the volumes of mass-produced crops, but that’s not their aim. Though it costs more, freshness alone has a positive impact on the restaurant’s bottom line because local products have a longer shelf-life therefore creating less waste. In addition, quality and taste keep customers coming back.
Farmer Celia Barss of Winterville’s Woodland Gardens prides herself on quality customer service. “Be available, and consistently deliver what you say you’re going to deliver,” counsels Barss.
Restaurants putting the “face of the farm” into menu’s and training the wait staff on the farm story provides an intrinsic value to customers. They are typically willing to pay for that value.
Every purchase helps keep the cycle alive. If chefs purchase at least one or two items from local farmers today, they provide critical encouragement (and income) to farmers for production expansion, meeting the supply needs of tomorrow.
Suzanne Welander is the Communications Director for Georgia Organics, a member-supported nonprofit organization working to integrate healthy, sustainable, and locally grown food into the lives of all Georgians. www.georgiaorganics.org.
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