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Parker Farms in Westmoreland County is seeing an increase in demand from retailers that want to sell its produce.
Zucchini is among the vegetables grown at Parker Farms, Rod Parker checks corn growing at Parker Farms in Westmoreland County. It will be sold at such stores as Wal-Mart, Wegmans and Giant. |
BY EMILY BATTLE
The "eat local" movement usually evokes images of shoppers traipsing through neighborhood farmers markets, but as the trend has taken on staying power, local food is getting access to a larger stage.
Local restaurants, regional supermarkets and even some national chains are making efforts that could get local food onto people's plates without requiring a trip to the farmers market.
This year, Chipotle Mexican Grill announced that it would increase its efforts to use local produce when possible. The chain has committed to getting 35 percent of at least one produce item from local farmers. In the Fredericksburg area, the local item is peppers, grown by Parker Farms in Westmoreland County.
Chipotle first started trying to set up a network of local suppliers three years ago, and spokeswoman Katherine Newell Smith said the process is labor-intensive.
The chain has to first find growers near its more than 860 stores, then determine whether they produce enough volume to serve the restaurants, what their quality standards are like, how delivery will work and a number of other issues.
But the longer Chipotle works on these issues, the easier it gets, and the shorter the distance gets between producers and stores, Newell Smith said.
"As we expand our network of farmers, local becomes even more local," she said. "There's some times when we're going as much as 200 miles, and sometimes a little over that, but it's just a matter of supply."
Jimmy Carter, sales manager at Parker Farms, said he's hearing from more retailers that want to market local products this season.
It's not exactly a new trend for this farm, which grew from a pick-your-own operation in Maryland in 1974. The difference now is that it's seeing more businesses want to market the local angle.
"Everybody is looking to promote local," Carter said.
That includes supermarkets.
Ukrop's has bought from Virginia farmers for years, but last year it stepped up its promotion of those ties, putting up signs telling folks to "Take the Local Route."
Wegmans also has made an effort for years to buy from farms near its stores.
In its Fredericksburg store, which will open later this month, it will sell berries from Westmoreland Berry Farm and, in the fall, Asian pears from Tony Cheng's Mountain View Orchard and Flying T Farms in Stafford County.
Wegmans also works with growers in the Richmond area, and will continue to talk to farmers around Fredericksburg to try to get more local produce into the store, said Steve Thiergart, who oversees produce operations for new stores in Virginia and Maryland.
"Our goal is to find as much local produce as we can," he said.
A large grocery store can't just bring in every farmers-market vendor, though. Thiergart said he is constantly talking to growers to see if they can provide the volume the store needs. At the same time, Wegmans is working to make sure all of its growers are certified in good agricultural practices, or GAPS, a program that sprang up in response to recent food scares.
Even smaller, independent businesses have to make adjustments sometimes to bring on local suppliers.
Like several other downtown Fredericksburg restaurants, the Sunken Well Tavern serves seasonal produce from Emmitt Snead's Caroline County farm, known for its asparagus and tomatoes.
Owner Paul Stoddard said it's typically a little harder to work with individual local farms than to source from a larger food-service company, but he said Snead has made it easy by delivering and offering a reasonable price.
Stoddard has served produce from Snead's farm for the past two years. He said he knows he could get tomatoes cheaper from a larger national company, but they wouldn't be of high enough quality to get a starring role in a menu item.
"Even if it costs a little more, it's a better quality and a better draw," Stoddard said. "You can tell the difference."
Local produce can also provide an added marketing benefit. Stoddard makes sure to point out on his menu that dishes are made with Snead's asparagus.
The demand driving the local-food movement comes from various sources.
Some consumers look to local food as a way to reduce their impact on the environment, since it takes less gas to ship food from nearby.
Recent food scares over salmonella and other bacteria also drive a general desire among people to be able to trace the source of what they're eating.
That's a trend Tom Weaver sees at the farmers markets where he sells his Papa Weaver pork products.
Weaver said his sales volume at farmers markets is up 20 percent in the past year, "because people want to know where their food's coming from."
Weaver sells his product at the Spotsylvania County market, two near Charlottesville and one in Madison County.
He no longer sells at the Fredericksburg market, he said, because unlike Spotsylvania, Fredericksburg does not regulate whether vendors are selling food that they grew or produced on their own farms.
He said his business with restaurants has doubled in the past year, and he's working on two deals right now that could double it again.
Weaver said the only restaurants he has gotten into are small, white-tablecloth operations that are not chains, and where the chef controls what comes into the kitchen.
So far, that has meant mostly D.C.-area eateries, but Weaver continues to try to talk with restaurants in Fredericksburg.
He said the biggest barrier for a small producer is price. If he can't beat the price that a restaurant is getting from a large food-service company, that often ends the conversation.
"For 80 percent of restaurants, it still comes down to cost per serving," he said, adding that he also understands that it's much easier for a restaurant to deal with one big provider rather than 30 smaller vendors.
"On the flip side, though, there is a real demand from people to know where their food is coming from," Weaver said.
Emily Battle: 540/374-5413
Email: ebattle@freelancestar.com
