Farms and restaurants would seem to be logical partners but, sometime in the mid-20th century, the two entities were pushed far apart by the lengthening chain of food distribution. In 2004, a small group of upper Hudson Valley farmers and New York City chefs launched a unique kind of service that is repairing the chasm that separates their businesses.
The service, Farm to Chef, Inc., has been functioning weekly without a break for more than three years, ferrying meats, eggs, cheeses, fruits, vegetables, and maple products from member farms in Rensselaer, Washington, and Saratoga counties—and beyond—to participating New York City restaurants. Every Tuesday, participating farmers bring their products to a central site in Washington County, about 30 miles north of Albany; there they are sorted by restaurant for Wednesday delivery.
The for-profit Farm to Chef was established to facilitate direct trade between producer and user, as well as to promote the burgeoning local-foods movement. The enterprise was conceived by two unlikely farmers, a young professional couple named Mike Yezzi and Jen Small. In September 2001, Yezzi and Small set up a vendor booth at the world-famous Union Square Greenmarket in Manhattan. This was the first time they had driven the more than 150 miles to sell pork from their Flying Pigs Farm, a nascent operation in Shushan, New York, between Saratoga Springs and the Vermont border.
A few years earlier, the couple had scraped together the funds to purchase the 150-acre hill farm, located next to Small’s family property, when it was threatened with development. They knew they would have to find a way to make the farm pay for itself—and the fixer-upper house that came along with it. In 2000, the former Manhattanites bought three piglets as an experiment in leading an agricultural life.
Chefs looking for fresh and unique foods direct from regional farms have long been regulars at Union Square, the flagship site of the New York City Greenmarkets. So it was not surprising that chef Mary Cleaver, an early proponent of sustainable cuisine and a successful restaurateur and caterer, found the Flying Pigs farmers on the day of their first appearance. Cleaver, now a Farm to Chef board member, says that then it was unusual to see meats at that market. At the same time, Small and Yezzi also became acquainted with another influential supporter of local foods, Savoy chef-owner Peter Hoffman.
Both chefs encouraged the new farmers and tutored them on the restaurant industry’s needs and customs so they could become effective marketers. Just as they were eager for Flying Pigs’ distinctive heritage breed pork, so unlike the widely available factory-farmed variety, the chefs also wanted access to other interesting foods upstate farmers could provide. The couple returned and talked up New York’s opportunities to neighboring farmers, but few could or desired to regularly make the exhausting journey south.
This was just on the eve of the explosion in consciousness about “food miles” and the “locavore” movement, which encourages consumers to “eat locally” for health and environmental reasons. Decades before, the movement had been founded by pioneers with a passion for seasonal foods from family farms. Chef Alice Waters, at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, helped put this common-sense concept on the map as far back as the 1970s.
By the late ’90s, local-food campaigns were emerging on behalf of regional farms. To benefit both agriculture and tourism throughout the Green Mountain state, the Vermont Fresh Network began to hook up chefs and farmers and promote participating restaurants. Such initiatives have spread regionally: Now there’s Berkshire Grown in western Massachusetts, and in New York, Columbia County’s Bounty of the County, Adirondack Harvest, and the Slow Food Hudson Valley Convivium.
But putting “local” into practice is all about distribution. “Because there isn’t adequate distribution for small farmers, New York City restaurants buy apples from Washington state, peaches from Georgia, and beef from Nebraska or Kansas instead of foods produced three hours up the road,” Yezzi observes.
Taking on the challenge, Yezzi and Small developed the concept of Farm to Chef, and put together a grant application with input from others. The Farm to Chef Express, as it was originally called, aimed to address Flying Pigs’ distribution issues while creating a mechanism that would enable fellow farmers to gain a better price for their products, and move greater volumes. New York restaurants were attractive as a bigger and better-paying market at first, where the allure of local foods was catching on faster. Part of the vision, according to Yezzi, is to capture some of the wealth that Manhattan restaurants attract from all over the world, “to help preserve upstate farms.”
Cornell Cooperative Extension submitted the Farm to Chef proposal and later oversaw two state grants totaling $108,000. The project started with an advisory board of farmers and chefs, a coordinator who takes orders, and a truck driver who delivers the food to each restaurant client. Farm to Chef presents an unusual twist in the world of marketing and distribution. Neither the farmers nor the chefs are in the program to make money on distribution. Instead, both sides come together with a shared goal: providing quality service dedicated to local and sustainable food. The program eliminates the need “for someone who buys low and sells high at the expense of farmers,” Yezzi explains.
Especially compelling for Annette Nielsen, Farm to Chef’s new multitalented coordinator, is the “cooperative spirit” among the farmers and the participating chefs. Cooperation has led to “a real dialogue about the challenges met each day by both sides,” says Nielsen, who comes to her new job with experience as a caterer, food writer, and political campaign manager. “Chefs realize that weather conditions can have an impact on product availability, while farmers keep current on market trends in the food and restaurant industry.
Farm to Chef is, in a sense, a farmers’ market on wheels. Each farm keeps its identity on its products and sets its own prices, while at the same time participating in an assembly of many farms that is more enticing to buyers. The arrangement enhances two-way communication between farmers and the end users. While regular distributors often keep their suppliers in the dark about who is buying their products, through Farm to Chef farmers solicit sales and chefs freely contact farmers to discuss products, farming practices, or other matters.
This ability to foster greater understanding of farming especially appeals to Sheila Flanagan of Nettle Meadow Goat Dairy, a board member who believes we must minimize the layers that separate customers from the farmer. Decrying the fact that there is “at least [one] generation where people are not in touch with where their food comes from,” she warns that this ignorance could prove devastating for our future sustenance.
Her impulse to participate in Farm to Chef reflects the practical needs of running a cheese business in a rural locale far from major markets where distribution is expensive and time-consuming.
By the time Sheldon Farm got on board Farm to Chef, the sixth-generation farm in Salem, New York, was already actively seeking new ways to sell its well-known potatoes and sweet corn. Low-carb diets and the decline of home-cooked meals had conspired to reduce demand for commodity potatoes. And economic forces like NAFTA and big agri-business had dragged down prices paid by brokers. As a result, Sheldon Farm now grows only 40 or 50 acres of potatoes a year, down from 100 acres a decade ago. Luckily, this farm family has a professional marketer in Pat Sheldon, whose passion and experience complement her husband Albert’s keenness for producing crops.
Sheldon has been stunned by how many restaurants believe a potato is a potato. “They slather it in butter or drench it in sauce,” she said, so they think it doesn’t matter. Five years ago, the farm began setting up accounts with restaurants in nearby Saratoga Springs, Vermont, and Albany. To appeal to gourmet tastes, they plant some of their acreage in specialty varieties, both fingerlings and colored potatoes, like the distinctive Adirondack Blue, whose solid color doesn’t fade with cooking. Joining Farm to Chef was a natural extension of this strategy, and now Sheldon is taking the lead in reaching out to Capital District restaurants in order to set up a formal Farm to Chef route there.
Distribution was also the motivation for Glen Rowse, Farm to Chef’s current president. Rowse holds down a full-time job in Albany and raises Belted Galloway cattle in Cambridge, New York. “I’m overloaded as it is without doing all the marketing,” he says. The business he has received from Farm to Chef orders have led him to increase his herd in order to keep beef available year round.
Despite its success, Farm to Chef still has a long way to go to reach its potential. After more than three years in operation, the business is not facilitating substantial sales for all its member farms, and counts just 12 to 15 restaurants as regular buyers. With three or four pigs sold weekly through Farm to Chef, Flying Pigs Farm seems to be the highest selling farm enrolled in the service.
As Farm to Chef completes its second year as an independent corporation, growing the business to better serve both ends of the equation has become an explicit priority. Board member Kim Feeney, of Top of the World Resort in Lake George, echoes a common theme when she says she hopes to see more restaurants and more diversity of products (and therefore more farms) in the business.
Farm to Chef is considering expanding into the Capital District, where restaurants are increasingly promoting the idea of local food. The company already serves Jack’s Oyster House, Albany’s venerable State Street eatery, as well as the governor’s mansion, which, under Eliot Spitzer, strives to be a role model of green practices.
Jack’s executive chef Dale Miller became a client of Farm to Chef a couple of years ago, enticed by its offer of “one-stop shopping” for foods from more than a dozen farms. This convenience counts when provisioning a large restaurant and banquet house, and Miller says the weekly deliveries also “transport me back to my childhood” where everything was fresh, homegrown, and genuine.
In simple numerical terms, the trend is favorable for Farm to Chef’s future. Sales are up 35 percent from the last fiscal year, and growth is accelerating. Board president Rowse predicts “this is the year we will take off,” foreseeing year-end sales surpassing $300,000.
Perhaps one reason Farm to Chef holds promise is that the people who become chefs tend to love every aspect of food. How interesting can it be to buy 50 racks of lamb from some distributor and just plate them up? Part of the future of local food may lie in the stories and surprises that come from direct relationships with the farmers who produce it.
This article appears in November 2007.
