Think Globally, Act Locally

The creation of Boston-based Legal Sea Foods’ Summer Harvest Salad began when a chef met a farmer. To develop the East Coast chain’s first item made entirely of local produce, Chef Jeff Tenner, executive director of culinary operations, asked the farmer to plant Cherokee Red lettuce for its sweetness and color. Tenner then arranged for the needed volume with that Methuen, MA, farmer and several more.

In July’s final days, when the Red Cherokee salad was harvested, Legal’s 14 Massachusetts restaurants served it with New England-grown tomatoes and lemon-pickled zucchini. Legal’s seven restaurants in New York and New Jersey also used local Red Cherokee greens, tomatoes and zucchini on the salad. Its eight Mid-Atlantic restaurants made the salad with local tomatoes and zucchini.

“When you meet these farmers,” says Rich Vellante, executive chef, Legal Sea Foods, “you see their world is very much like the restaurant business, which is a labor of love. For whatever reason, the food just tastes better because you know who it’s coming from and who’s caring for it.”

The Red Cherokee is Tenner’s experiment in learning how to source and distribute one local ingredient through 33 restaurants in four regions. He is already working on next summer’s local salad.

LINKS IN A CHAIN

Conversations with farmers—often about plant varieties and animal breeds—are a regular part of product development for a few regional restaurant chains embracing local food. Companies with brands—and customers—that rely on optimum flavor and social responsibility are in the best position to make the investment local sourcing requires.

Regional ingredients don’t typically offer the consistent supply the food-distribution system favors. So finding a firm that will link regional farmers to the supply chain is key. Legal Sea Foods used Red Tomato, Canton, MA, a nonprofit that markets produce from Northeast and Southeast family farms to supermarkets and restaurants.

Local food is definitely something that consumers want, suggests Susan Porjes, analyst and author of “Fresh and Local Food in the U.S.,” a May 2007 report published by Packaged Facts, Rockville, MD. The local-foods movement is now reaching critical mass, she notes, and has grown to $5 billion, from $4 billion in 2002. Packaged Facts estimates it will reach $7 billion by 2007.

Spurring the trend is consumer backlash toward anonymous food, concern over climate change—food travels an average 1,500 miles from source to plate—and food safety. Local food provides a semblance of a more-personal connection to daily sustenance.

At farmers’ markets, consumers find “not nameless, faceless corporate farmers, but people who live nearby and are accountable for what they sell,” says Tom Vierhile, director, Datamonitor, Naples, NY.

Local has a literal and figurative definition: food grown or raised within about 250 miles, although the distance varies; or food connected to a specific place: Washington apples, Maine lobster, Vidalia onions. That connection to place is common in chocolate, wine and coffee, says Vierhile.

It also boosts consumers’ quality perception of the product, says James Richardson, director of cultural insights, The Hartman Group, Seattle.

The figurative definition of local is also the best opportunity for product developers to capitalize on the trend, says Porjes. “Marketers are going to have to react or act proactively to the trend, and they can do so by identifying where their ingredients come from,” she says. “That’s going to become increasingly important.”

In the retail channel, more local foods are showing up in perishables sections of regional supermarkets, but there is little activity among national chains. Porjes suggests product developers find ways to localize by creating a base product for national distribution with an element like a spice packet tailored to regional tastes.

“Taste is always No. 1. Period,” says Aaron Noveshen, president, The Culinary Edge, a San Francisco firm that provides culinary services for restaurants. “Things grown locally have a good chance of tasting better, because they don’t have to travel.”

WORKING EXAMPLES

This new twist on menu development takes the essence of ingredient-focused creation to a new level by really knowing the details—where it came from, who grew it, how it was grown or raised—and sharing that information with consumers.

At Burgerville, a Pacific Northwest chain of 39 quick-service restaurants based in Vancouver, WA, product development begins in the field and pasture with attention to the farm’s environmental responsibility, says Alison Dennis, director of supply chain management.

Fresh, local and sustainable are all part of the Burgerville brand. All its beef is local, hormone-free and primarily pasture-grazed, then locally processed by a co-op of family ranches in Oregon and Washington.

Burgerville also seasonally menus items made with local Oregon ingredients like fresh strawberry and raspberry milkshakes in the summer and a chocolate hazelnut milkshake in the winter. The Tillamook Pepper Bacon Cheese Burger is made with local cheese and bacon.

Walla Walla Sweet Onions from Oregon and Washington are typically available from the end of June to early September. To offer them as single ($1.29), three-piece ($2.69) or five-piece ($4.19) orders of onion rings, Dennis secured about 160,000 lbs. of onions through a firm that represents seven Walla Walla farms. This past summer, she coordinated with farmers to secure enough berries for next year’s milkshakes.

Product development becomes “intrinsically ingredient-focused and demands flexibility and a certain compassion,” says Dennis. “Because when you’re dealing with local ingredients, the same things aren’t always available.”

Burgerville has figured out how to turn this inconsistency, frowned upon by many restaurant chains, into an advantage. “All of that makes the raw ingredient and the product more special. It’s part of the story our guests ultimately respond to.”

An executive chef over each of the eight Chicago-based Big Bowl restaurants allows that Midwest chain, a Chinese and Thai casual concept owned by Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, to source local produce items for its stir-fry bar, heirloom varieties of pork, and salmon farmed in Puget Sound (the closest source of farmed salmon).

Dan McGowan, president, Big Bowl, says 60% to 70% of the ingredients it sources are local or organic. He is committed to serving food at Big Bowl that meets at least two of his criteria: local, organic or natural.

Duroc—an heirloom breed of pork—is raised on Minnesota farms for three Minneapolis Big Bowls. Niman Ranch, San Francisco, representing 500 family farms, supplies the four Big Bowls in Chicago and one in Washington, D.C. All the pork is raised on small farms, with no hormones, no additives and vegetarian feed.

Beyond geography, ingredient quality plays into this equation. “It was more expensive, but we didn’t care because it was better,” says McGowan.

The Big Bowls use about 40,000 lbs. of pork annually, and the cost of sourcing local, sustainable pork was about 50% higher than the conventional pork. The chain’s customers are well-educated, food-savvy and don’t mind paying a bit more, so some, but not all, of the increased cost was passed onto customers.

Comparing costs of conventional versus local, environmentally responsible food simply is not apples to apples, so to speak. “I just can’t measure the taste of a fresh, ripe, good strawberry picked yesterday from a field in Oregon in pennies per taste,” says Dennis.

NATIONAL CHALLENGES

Yet, local sourcing is still too much for any company with national distribution to pull off. Just consider who’s not sourcing local food, including Chipotle Mexican Grill, Denver, one of the most-progressive casual restaurant chains, partially based on its seven-year-old “food with integrity” pledge.

The chain, with 600 locations in 30 states, sources hormone-free pork, chicken and beef for most of its needs. Half of its beans are organic, and the sour cream has no growth hormones. But local-food sourcing is too unwieldly.

“With our size and fixed menu, doing local is very, very difficult,” says Chris Arnold, spokesman, Chipotle. “It’s not really practical for someone our size to have relationships with dozens and dozens of farms.”

And therein lies the challenge and liability of this trend for companies developing products for national distribution. However, Porjes notes that the most creative ones will adapt.

Product developers of processed foods must take the challenge seriously, says Vierhile, since a recent survey found most consumers intend to consume less processed food. “Processed food may be safe and convenient, but it is increasingly perceived as boring, tasteless and not very healthful,” he says.

Perhaps a local twist is just what these products need.

Lisa Duchene is a freelance journalist and editor specializing in food, business and the environment. She is based in Bellefonte, PA, and can be reached at lisa@ecowriting.com.

 Local and Regional on the Rise

Several factors are pointing toward the increasing importance of local and regional foods:

• A 2004 poll of 1,000 adults conducted by the Roper Center for Public Option Research, Storrs, CT, for Organic Valley Family of Farms, LaFarge, WI, found 73% of consumers believe it is important to know whether food is grown or produced locally, and 38% said it was very important;
• According to Packaged Facts, Rockville, MD, the number of farmers’ markets nationwide grew 40% between 2002 and 2006;
• As reported by Datamonitor, New York, a 2006 consumer survey found that 63% of U.S. consumers said it was either “important” or “very important” to reduce consumption of processed foods and drinks to maintain a healthy diet;
• Packaged Facts reports that the market for local food is expected to reach $7 billion by 2007;
• U.S. retail sales of grocery products making some form of ethical claim reached $33 billion in 2006 according to Packaged Facts, a 17% jump from the prior year, and sales of such products are expected to maintain double-digit growth, reaching at least $57 billion in 2011;
• Datamonitor notes that local sourcing food is one of the top trends to watch in packaged foods.