Market Garden
At Earl’s the focus was to promote the farms within the restaurant
Some farmers see selling to restaurants as the Holy Grail for their business. While it can definitely be a rewarding option for selling produce, getting in and maintaining relationships may not be easy. Famous BC chef Chuck Currie notes it was a priority for him to work with farmers when he started Earl’s at age 24.
“The idea is they [restaurants] should grow and you [farmers] should grow,” he says. “Restaurants give a very steady revenue stream with predictable movement of product.”
In 1995, Currie created his own mesclun mix at Earl’s with the farm partner who provided the restaurant’s greens.
“It was so hardy, you could stir fry it,” he says. “It was very expensive.” So, to bring costs down and increase the mouth crunch he blended it with romaine lettuce.
“I’m still doing that to this day,” he says. “And who else is doing it? Only guys who buy direct from farms.”
At Earl’s the focus was to promote the farms within the restaurant. For example, each location would have a flat of basil at the front of the kitchen – customer facing. Currie used wooden wine boxes to hold the flats and burnt Barnston Island Herbs into the flats to show customers who the supplier was.
“You want to work with the guys who are passionate about your brand,” he notes. “The partnerships we had [with farmers], these are not small concerns, but they were then. I was successful in bringing in some small concerns.”
Where did he look to find these suppliers? The BC Specialty Food Directory.
“I went through every farm on there and what they grew and I looked at their reach. I needed to know they had enough to supply me,” he says. “I didn’t want to be more than 25 per cent of their business because if I left, I’d kill them and I didn’t want that.”
While there is no formula to determine the number of restaurants a farm should target, Currie says some very successful farmers have 50 routine weekly restaurants and 200 or more as occasional buyers based on specials or fresh sheets.
“Definitely avoid all the eggs in one basket,” he says.
For those who think restaurants are already having all of their needs met, consider stats Currie relayed: there are 2.3 million vegetarians and 850,000 vegans in Canada and the province with the highest share of these is BC. Of the 6,000 restaurants in Vancouver, 70 are farm-to-table.
BC Chef Chuck Currie
BC Chef Chuck Currie.
“It’s centered in cities,” he explains. “Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. Dine at the restaurant to meet the chef. Knowing them and what they do is so much better than a cold call.”
He points to Zaklan Heritage Farm co-owners Gemma McNeill and Doug Zaklan as farmers who are doing things right.
“I guess our first restaurant account, we started in maybe 2014,” McNeill says. This led to working with a distributor in 2015, but the company folded and the couple was left scrambling to establish restaurant relationships outside the distributor. The fortunate aspect was that the distributor had sold Zaklan products by name, so chefs were familiar with the farm and their produce. In 2016 Zaklan made a conscious push into the restaurant business and now sells to 20 to 30 BC-based restaurants including Nightingale Restaurant, Savio Volpe, Ubuntu Canteen and Farmer’s Apprentice.
“We have lots come out to the farm,” McNeill says of restaurant employees and chefs. “I think usually it’s because they want to have a better understanding of where the food is coming from.”
Often it’s new chefs, kitchen staff and front-of-house staff who make the trip. This enables both those who prepare the food and those who serve the food to understand its origins and speak to customers about it.
Currie feels restaurants should be including farm brands in their on-site information and farms should include restaurants on their websites. McNeill is seeing a move away from the inclusion of farm names on menus however.
“A lot of restaurants are just really dedicated to having quality, local food,” she explains.
There is a lot of common ground here as Currie points out.
“What is it that farmers and chefs share? Passion to the point of fanaticism,” he says. “The whole farm to fork thing.”
When asked why selling to restaurants works for Zaklan Heritage Farm, McNeill says it allows them to play to their strengths.
“I really enjoy the relationship building with chefs and having them continue year after,” McNeill says. “It gives us the flexibility and creativity to grow some unusual crops which you wouldn’t be able to grow for farmers’ markets or CSA [boxes].”
She adds that selling to restaurants is very different from selling direct to customers and there are trade-offs. Chefs want things that are different from what the public wants and it’s an ongoing conversation to determine what chefs will need in the future. It’s a give and take, she says.
What chefs want simply depends upon the chef.
“The magic question and unpredictable,” answers Currie. “Generally small farmers have to focus on niche products that are not grown in vast quantities by large conglomerates and shipped from all over the world. The best example is heirloom tomatoes.”
At Zaklan they grow, among other items, “the classics” of tomatoes and carrots, but in different varieties and different sizes than would be preferred by customer-facing markets. They also took a foray into chicory last year which is proving to be of interest to restaurants.
“We were part of the chicory festival last fall, trying to bring more chicories into our diets, which is a great fit for our climate,” notes McNeill. “That’s really nice to be able to grow food that’s suited to our climate and our farm.”
Currie sums things up with his eight tips for success in working with restaurants:
- Develop good relationships
- Dine at the restaurants
- Have the ability to forecast needs
- Provide a fresh sheet
- Sharpen your organizational skills
- Have at least one specialization
- Be consistent and reliable
- Consider CanadaGAP certification