What chefs want

The farm-to-table movement has altered the way consumers eat and the way chefs cook. Local produce has never been more popular, and restaurants have never felt more pressure to source their fruits and veggies from regional growers. For some dining operations, that presents a challenge. For growers, it presents an opportunity.

Microgreens are in high demand. Tomatoes are one of the nation’s favorite fruits. Cucumbers, peppers and a whole assortment of other crops are in high demand from chefs around the nation. If you’re looking to supplement your existing revenue, convert your business, or something inbetween, then you’ll need to know what chefs are looking for and how to develop relationships with their kitchens.
 

Desert produce

Mark Estee is all about local produce. It’s part of what defines him and his business. He says that he’s been a practicing member of the local food movement since 2000. Estee studied for a few weeks at Chez Panisse under Alice Waters (the founder of the local food movement). And he brought his local-first mentality to Nevada where he opened a series of restaurants in Reno and Lake Tahoe, Nev.

“If you look up Reno food, my name and what we do pops up in the search and local food is tied into that. We’re big proponents of local food,” Estee says. “To me, using local produce is how it should be. The demand is huge.”

All of Estee’s restaurants utilize locally sourced ingredients. He says they currently have active partnerships with 47 ranchers and farmers from across the region. “Growers tell me what they have and then we build our menu around that, so we sort of turned the model upside down,” he says.

Estee’s participation in a pair of regional networks helped him locate his growers. Estee joined a Restaurant Supported Agriculture (RSA) group and utilizes the Great Basin Community Food Co-Op.

“[The Co-Op] has a really great thing called the Drop Program where farmers and ranchers list their products on the website and then customers and chefs have access to the website,” he says. “Then we can purchase — in real time — the products that they have available. This happens 52 weeks a year, twice a week. So we’re not just buying this things at Farmer’s Markets, or seasonally.”

Estee says there are three reasons he uses local produce:

1. It keeps the money local. “I’m all about local business,” he says. “I’m a local businessman, after all.”
2. The product is fresher.
3. It’s celebrating where he’s from. Reno has a plethora of ranchers and farmers, and Estee wants to use their food.
    

While he mostly relies on what growers can produce, he has had growers turn the tables.“We’ve had growers ask us what they could grow for us and I might have them try some really unique items. I might say, ‘Try to grow Lamb’s Lettuce’ or a number of different rarer crops, things that people aren’t normally growing or we might be unable to find,” he says.
 

From chef to consumer

Back-and-forth communication between growers and chefs is especially important for Andrea Golcher, recipe production manager for HelloFresh, a meal delivery service that produces healthy recipes and user-friendly preparation guides. HelloFresh recipes and ingredients are sent to customers’ homes, so it’s important for produce to be fresh and the presentation to be flawless.

“We have one time to make a great impression on a customer,” Golcher says. “We get [the produce] in, package it and send it straight to your door.”

And not only must the produce look immaculate, but it must be perfectly ripe by the time it arrives at a customer’s door.

To find new suppliers, HelloFresh chefs take trips to the local produce market, where they talk to growers about how their crops are harvested and try samples. Once they choose a grower, they talk frequently to stay updated with the status of the crops so they know when the crops are at peak freshness and quality.

“It’s really trying to look for the peak-of-season, and the best lemon that’s there to get all the juice, or getting avocados that are triggered perfectly, so by the time you get them in your home, it’s ready to go [and you can] just slice them,” she says.

Golcher is based out of the Linden, N. J. office, one of three of HelloFresh distribution centers in the U.S. She does business with about five or six local growers who supply produce like zucchini, artichokes, lemons, avocados, lettuce, Brussels sprouts and more.

In each recipe, she tries to incorporate one seasonally fresh item. Last October, Golcher wanted to work with fresh figs for a roasted pork tenderloin recipe with balsamic-fig sauce, and she was in contact with her local supplier constantly until she could finally acquire the perfect, peak-of-season figs.

“If we sent out the recipe a week earlier, they wouldn’t be as ripe as we wanted them, and if it had been a week later, it just would have been too late,” she says.

Golcher says not only does she ensure ripeness and appearance, but how the produce holds up in transit. HelloFresh packages items like herbs in a “little clam shell,” so chefs can ensure that any of the other produce in the bag will not crush or damage them, Golcher says, and all items are shipped in insulated boxes with frozen water bottles to keep food at the right temperature. But produce still has to stay ripe enough through delivery to still be fresh by the time it arrives at the customer’s door.
 

North of the Border

Chef Darren Brown has had a storied career. Starting as a chef in Vancouver, British Columbia, he eventually made his way around the world as the personal chef on Merv Griffin’s yacht, before working with Mandelay Bay in Las Vegas, China Grill in New York and a host of other large-scale restaurants. Brown somewhat recently relocated to Vancouver where he opened his own consulting agency and works as a chef at Village Farms.

For him, local sourcing is almost old news.

“I think local is becoming the expectation. If you’re not providing that, you’re falling behind the curve. That’s super evident in restaurants and I think it’s becoming more evident in hotels,” he says. “There’s better awareness. The consumer has a higher expectation. It’s very frequent, as a chef, that I’m being asked “Who grew this? Where did it come from?” There’s a real expectation for that information on a source.”

The problem for venues that serve mass quantities of food each and every night (like hotel chains), is scalability. Local produce providers are usually unable to provide the sheer volume of product needed to sate the hotel’s hungry customers. So, larger growers with a sustainable focus are needed. For Brown, that meant a partnership with Village Farms.

“With Village Farms, I saw the chance to do local at scale. Because ultimately, you can find your small purveyors — and that’s fine — but once you start doing volume or any scalability, the opportunity to use a local producer gets a lot more difficult,” he says. “With Village Farms, I saw the opportunity to be sustainable, to be local, and still manage the volume.”

Brown helped integrate Village Farms products into the hotel chain Fairmont.

“The last iteration of local is in the hotel world, and that’s harder to accomplish at volume. So I think hotels are the last to embrace it but we’re starting to see local at hotels. They’re the last ones to be really jumping on it because of the scalability,” he says, adding that larger growers like Village Farms will make local increasingly popular even at large-scale venues.
 

New York, New York

The Big Apple is known for being one of the cultural touchstones of America. The trends that dominate the five boroughs will likely leak down the coast, across the prairie and infiltrate the City of Angels. Home to some of the most discerning palettes in the U.S., food trends face a particularly rough uphill climb there. They say it about people, but it’s true for trends too, “If you make it there, you can make it anywhere.”

Chef Natasha Pogrebinsky has made it there. The executive chef of bear restaurant (which does not capitalize the b in bear), she is a model of the American dream. A Ukrainian immigrant who was raised in Cleveland, Ohio before moving to New York, her restaurant is known for cooking “Modern Russian Cuisine,” a trend that Pogrebiksy says she invented.

And all of her dishes feature locally sourced, organic and seasonal ingredients. “All of our fruit and vegetables come from local farmer’s markets,” Pogrebinsky says.

“I base my menu around what is available in the market. When it’s corn season, we make beautiful corn chowders and risotto for our seafood dishes when it’s tomato season. When you pick out your produce — by hand — at the market you can instantly tell by smelling it — by holding it in your hand — if it is ripe,” she says.

Pogrebinksy works with farmers so they know her menu and cooking style. She then meets with them each season to go over what she’s looking for and see what they’re growing. Close communication and good planning are of paramount importance to her and her restaurant.

That emphasis on communication has helped her develop lasting relationships with farmers.

“When you establish good communication with your farmers, it’s rare that you get a bad product. There has to be a high level of respect on each side. I know that I can’t always get what I want because the weather, land and many other factors affect what crops will be available and in what quantity and quality. I have to be flexible. If I know we can’t get our standard of squash, I will be open to suggestions for substitutions, within reason, from the farmers,” she says.