Despite its higher costs, more and more metro Atlanta restaurant operators say they now get the majority of their food from local farmers instead of the big national commercial growers.
What started out almost a decade ago as a trend commonly known as “farm-to-table” among a handful of dining establishments has become the norm for the area’s independent restaurateurs. The operators say that as much as 90 percent of their menus are locally-sourced, up from 10 percent to 15 percent 10 years ago, chefs and restaurateurs say.
The move is boosting the numbers of small farmers, keeping food dollars in local hands, and driving diners who demand the freshest ingredients and are willing to pay more to get it.
Recognizing the potential to promote state farmers, the Georgia Department of Agriculture, with the help of the Georgia Restaurant Association, launched in February an effort to match Georgia growers with local restaurateurs. With more than 16,000 eateries in the state, the Georgia Grown Restaurant Program is hoping to boost the number of establishments using state products, including olive oil from groves on the outskirts of Lakeland in South Georgia or goat cheese in Madison.
But chefs said there are challenges. Local food can be as much as 50 percent higher because most of the farms are small and lack the scale to compete with the big national distributors. The seasonal nature of the food also means a customer’s favorite dishes are not always available.
“It’s an expensive way of doing business,” said chef Josh Hopkins of White Oak Kitchen & Cocktails in downtown Atlanta. Making the task easier has been consumer interest in the food television, with TV shows such as “Iron Chef” and “No Reservations,” which educate diners about the seasonality of produce and the side effects of hormone-injected proteins, restaurateurs said.
Customers also are nostalgic for the freshness of staples such as tomatoes and spinach that many complain has been lost in the quest to have every food item available on demand at any time of the year.
“I won’t even serve a tomato out of season,” said Joe Treux, chef at Buckhead’s Watershed. “When you serve a locally grown ripe tomato, it is an event.”
For farmers, the push to source locally has brought new life to Georgia agriculture, the state’s No. 1 industry. Community gardens to one- or two-acre tracts have given smaller farmers a steady income feeding chefs committed to fresh ingredients on their menus.
Bigger operations run the gamut from Decimal Place Farm, a producer of goat cheese just minutes south of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, to the 30 acres used to grow organic produce at The Veggie Patch at Bouchard Farms in Commerce.
“This is about setting that freshness standard,” said Veggie Patch farm manager Andrew Evans. “You can’t get that with food that has to be trucked across the country over four or five days.”
Using local supplies can be competitive. For instance, area chefs are working the phones to get ramps, a spring vegetable that has a short six-week growing season, said Shayne Vaughan, a chef at Eleven restaurant in Midtown’s Loews Hotel. That has operators bargaining for supplies and farmers, who have to forage for the plants in the woods, making tidy profits.
A report by the National Restaurant Association cited farm-to-table as one of the biggest trends for 2013. The group said its 2012 survey of national households found “71 percent of adults said they were more likely to visit a restaurant that offers locally produced food items.”
Georgia Restaurant Association Executive Director Karen Bremer said sourcing food locally also keeps money in the community and lessens a restaurateur’s carbon footprint by eschewing 1,000-mile shipments by truck.
Standardizing local sourcing also has opened up new foods or business opportunities that weren’t tried before. The Mandarin Buckhead, for instance, is launching a hotel package directed at taking guests to a working farm where the lodger gets its food.
And the Atlanta Grill sources its truffles not from France, but from Tennessee.
Despite its popularity, not every restaurant has jumped on the bandwagon. Independent restaurants have adopted farm-to-table because their customers are not as cost conscious as, say, the big national chains. Independent restaurants also can update their menus daily to reflect changes in the availability of products.
Because a big part of the attraction of big national restaurant chains is their consistency, most stick with the large producers that can provide products in bulk at cheaper prices.
But Marc Taft, the chef at Marietta’s Chicken and the Egg restaurant, said independents also need to have a strong relationship with farmers. Because the majority of the food offered is perishable, farmers sell on a first-come first-served basis. Chefs who don’t have those relationships can’t compete.
“If I was a brand new chef trying to do that, it would not be easy,” he said.
Dan Moore, who farms in Cobb County, said farmers also have to develop strong bonds with restaurants. When he started selling figs to the Dining Room at the Ritz Carlton Buckhead 20 years ago, he had little competition. Today, however, the growth of farm-to-table suppliers means he has to be both salesman and farmer.
“I’ve been around long enough to see this become a thriving business,” he said, “and the key to staying around is being dependable.”
For Jason Starnes, relationship building begins with getting out and visiting farms. Starnes, chef at the Sun Dial Restaurant Bar & View atop the Westin Peachtree Plaza, spent this past Monday inspecting kale, cherry tomatoes and papaya at the Veggie Patch.
Winding his way through row after row of growing vegetables, he tasted tomatoes right off the vine and listened intently as farm manager Evans explained the organic grower’s philosophy of taking some fields offline to allow nutrients to replenish in the soil.
But what pleased him most was the food.
“The flavors are so intense and powerful,” he said.
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