The Big Trend: Local Sourcing in Restaurant Menus

The top trend in the restaurant industry today is the use of locally sourced ingredients. You need to know the ins and outs of this production process and its effect on business and menus if you want to enter a culinary or restaurant career.

Food that is locally sourced integrates production, processing, distribution and consumption on a small scale. These sourcing factors are divided by short location distance and ecology.

Where corporate production involves a series of far-away producers and shippers, local food cuts the middlemen in favor of local producers no more than 100 miles away.

Local food measured as an ecological unit, on the other hand, is grouped based on common climate, soil, watershed, and agro systems called “ecoregions.” But distance still matters -- most food isn’t locally sourced if it travels across a giant state with similar weather like Texas.

Local food is popular because consumers are interested in knowing where food comes from and how its production affects the economy, the nutritional value and taste of food, and the environment. Because farmer's markets and agro co-ops tend to be more personable (and sometimes more accessible) than big brand producers, people get more access to truthful food information.

Chefs are taking this info and using it wisely: the National Restaurant Association recently said more eateries are using locally sourced goods on menus to entice customers.

A Small History of Sourcing

Local sourcing used to be the way most people found ingredients. Until refrigeration and dependable transportation came along, families stored fruits and vegetables in cans to use during the harsh winters crops couldn’t bear them.

But market conditions and the evolution of food processing technology made local sourcing less desirable. Foods became cheaper made at bulk, and food production that slowed microbial growth became common. Big corporations flattened the process, improved packaging, and marketed the benefits of ingredients made thousands of miles away. It became easier to buy food at the store than from your own backyard. But industrial processing went too far.

Maintaining foods for a long time at a cheap price in an increasingly competitive market forced companies to use inorganic, unsafe methods.

They added chemicals to fruit and raised animals in barbaric conditions. They enforced low wages on workers in poor countries. And they ended many local small business economies in the process. It was a matter of time before local operations gained the technology needed to compete (in a small scale) and before customers started demanding goods from them.

Local Sourcing is Not Organic Sourcing

Local isn’t the same as organic but many don’t know the difference.

This confusion is bad for local sourcing because it mixes its positive features into a vague amalgam of “green” buzzwords when dishonest producers mislabel food as “sustainable” to charge more.

Unlike local food, organic is priced higher, often isn’t local (thus has a big energy footprint), and follows USDA regulations on “bio and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity.”

The latter are good rules to grow by and local producers follow them but aren’t bound by them -- they tend to offer better prices at a less restrictive sustainability level. Organic food, then, is a better option than local for a small number of people that can afford it.

The Pros and Cons of Sourcing

Local sourcing forces chefs to face tough decisions on supply chains, value and consumer preferences. Below are some of the pros and cons of the trend.

It’s Economically Viable: People support restaurants that sustain farmers markets and some will pay higher prices to subsidize local jobs. Local food can be less expensive than industrial or organic due to a lack of middlemen markups.

It Tastes Good: Local food tastes better because it’s fresh. Plastic-wrapped vegetables don’t taste as good as produce picked within 24 hours of purchase.

It Encourages Collaboration: Chefs and producers that collaborate rely less on big industries. They create menus based on year-round crop planting and harvesting, like a chef reserving an animal before it’s grown.

It’s Good for the Environment. Local food reduces economic and environmental costs of transportation (fewer pollutants), processing (fewer fertilizers), and packaging (refrigeration burns energy).

It’s a Lot of Work: The effort and time it takes to source locally raises the difficulty level. Chefs buy items from multiple producers in different places (rather than a few big ones) and seasonal produce forces them to invent new menus.

Finding Ingredients Is Hard: Many chefs make a living off favorite dishes that require consistent use of specific ingredients. Since not every area can produce all ingredients (think of the weather), local foods might not work.

The Competition Is Brutal: Locally sourced menus may lose out to lower priced offerings. Many customers won’t pay premiums for meals that are cheaper elsewhere.

Consumers Lack Patience: Eaters are used to every food type being available year-round. They may not wait out seasonal produce and rescind their loyalty.

What Sourcing Looks Like In a Restaurant

If a chef wants to go local, he must embrace his position as a teacher of tastes and ingredient combinations and explain them in his menu to customers.

He must market the flexibility of seasonal produce.

And he must realize people will continue to pick based on taste, economic value, or aesthetic preferences. Then he can start making local food that people will love and want to come back to.