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  • From: Richard Moyer <ramoyer AT gmail.com>
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Pricing and chefs
  • Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2011 10:42:57 -0400

Richard,
Amen and amen to what you write below, especially:
"Part of our jobs is to find good chefs we can work with that run good businesses."
We've been selling to chefs five years now, more of them each year.  It's a new mindset for me, and I'm still learning.  Most helpful to me have been ag conferences (local and regional) with sessions about growing for and working with chefs, and books by Joel Salatin that discuss this.  The latter pointed out that rejection is the norm for many in sales, something I'm still adjusting to because my vegetables are the best :)
Returning home from the Asheville Organic Growers School last spring, saw a beat up work truck with a welder and other equipment, that helped put all my new info in context.  "Nobody owes you anything"  I try to keep reminding myself that, when chefs and other customers don't buy everything I produce.

So here's what I've been learning on selling to chefs, others please join in:
---As from Richard below, find out what is different (also beautiful in color, flavor, texture) and grow it.  Since most chefs pick up at our farmers market, I grow and display a variety of unusuals, then grow more if they see and like an item.  I usually get retail price for small amounts of unusual/favorite items, especially those chefs asked me to grow.  While they are at the booth, they buy more mundane items, such as beans and cherry tomatoes.  (Salatin says aim to 'fill up their basket').  I try to give them full attention and speed when at my booth, letting my kids know when chefs come to buy, they are responsible for helping all other customers.
---Since I was in town Friday, did a delivery for a chef who called, requesting an item he'd bought before.  While there, was gratifying to see our products going into their meals. Informative, too, to see him separating egg whites as we talked--he's busy!, then a tour of his walk-in cooler, where he showed me the fresh vegetable competition.  I now know the quality and variety standards I am up against, and said I'd like to be the one supplying those (from my hoophouse and caterpillar tunnels) late this fall.  He showed me a mushroom I'm not growing that he'd like to source closer.  So I have my work cut out, but I know more of what's expected.
---A group of growers met with a group of local chefs late last Dec, to help us place seed orders.  The chefs told us what they'd like more, less or the same of.  Once they left, us growers divided up who would produce what (often shared to spread risk), and we also combined some of our seed and transplant orders there, to get early and/or volume discounts.  Was a long meeting, but worth it.  Of course, same can be done with individual chefs, but the group meeting of local chefs and producers, I think, helps chefs push back against their own bean counters who put pressure on what they pay.  ---When I asked a chef why he bought my $15 shiitakes over the $7 ones from a distance vendor, he said "you haven't seen the $7 ones."  He's no longer in the area, primarily due to lack of customers at that restaurant set in a small town with sparse surrounding population, but he let me know quality, at times, is worth paying for, in terms of more usable product.
---When new chefs come to our market, I try to greet them, show them what unusuals I have, who else at market does, and ask them what they are looking for.  They don't automatically trust vendors nor should they, so I let them know who is selling to restaurants, and which growers could be but lack the experience or skills to do so, but have great product.  I try to greet chefs by name every time they come, and ask about the major events where my product was recently served.  I want to make it worthwhile for chefs to be at our market everytime we are open, both in terms of time well spent and to source more and more local food.
---Due to poor communication and decisions on my part, we no longer sell to one place.  I did not followup thinking they didn't want the product, but just learned their barrier is not the product but the producer---me!  The owner did contact me recently, to his credit, and we need to meet soon and talk.
---One club recently hired a chef whose bent is sourcing local  foods; customer/member demand for local food is the reason for his hiring.  He knows what he wants, and is willing to pay for it.  But I need to really mean it, and listen and act accordingly, when I ask how my produce items work for him and what I can do better.

This all puts me out of my comfort zones, but it's also a rewarding challenge.  As Joel Salatin writes, if such challenges are not your cup of tea, find/train someone who is up to them and let them represent your foods.

Enough frost last night to kill some annual weeds in my mustards.  Good news!

Richard Moyer
SW VA

 
From: Richard Stewart <rstewart AT zoomtown.com>
Subject: [Market-farming] Pricing and Chefs (was: sweet potato wholesale pricing)
To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Message-ID: <463ECC94-A980-460E-83A6-D7D2686C9E24 AT zoomtown.com">463ECC94-A980-460E-83A6-D7D2686C9E24 AT zoomtown.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I disagree with this.  I have found restaurants and chefs to vary as much as the varieties of produce we all sell.  Their purchasing varies as much within the business as well.  Sometimes the prices they are willing to pay vary purely on whether they have a liquor license or can only sell wine and beer.  Other times its based on the rarity of the item.  If they cannot get it from the local big guy then it has more value.  Often times the larger restaurants get good deals on bulk items but pay good money for in season or specialty items.  Some chefs have a varied menu that changes from week to week with pricing changing as a result as well.  Often time these are very small scale businesses with at most 50 settings, usually less.   They purchase less product but are often times willing to pay higher prices for something different (regardless of what that different is).

Part of our jobs is to find good chefs we can work with that run good businesses.  Sometimes that is not even enough...the economy sucks.

What I have seen locally, here in Cincinnati, is that restaurants fail for any number of reasons little of which show a direct correlation to what they pay in terms of food costs.  The current economic realities of our country vary from region to region but I can say that the biggest influence on buying is whether they have customers coming the door.  That has little to do with prices.  If they can afford to eat there they will, be it once a year or twice a week.

Richard Stewart
Carriage House Farm
North Bend, Ohio

An Ohio Century Farm Est. 1855

(513) 967-1106
http://www.carriagehousefarmllc.com
rstewart AT zoomtown.com


On Oct 15, 2011, at 10:06 AM, <sunnfarm AT netscape.com> <sunnfarm AT netscape.com> wrote:

> The trouble I have had with restarurants is that despite all the talk of paying extra for local grown quality the bottom line always wins in the end and they buy on the cheap whenever they can. The only restaruants to pay better prices usually last only a year or two before going under... Bob.
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End of Market-farming Digest, Vol 105, Issue 19
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  • Re: [Market-farming] Pricing and chefs, Richard Moyer, 10/16/2011

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