How Food Companies Struggle to Satisfy Our Hunger for Farm-Fresh Food

When you promise customers local food, you gotta do the work.
How Food Companies Struggle to Satisfy Our Hunger for Farm-Fresh Food
The Dig Inn eatery in the Flatiron District of Manhattan on April 15, 2016. Benjamin Chasteen/Epoch Times
Andrea Hayley
Updated:

Running a company that is committed to sustainable sourcing of local food is not easy. You cannot just pick up the phone and call one of the established commodity food suppliers like everyone else does. You need to start with the farmers.

And farmers are notoriously difficult to find. Busy multitasking on a hundred different things related to soil, seeds, machinery, and plants, many small farmers do not have time for marketing.

Buyers have to do a lot of legwork to add a new farm to their supply rosters. Does the farmer grow what they need using farming practices they approve of? The crop may not be of a large enough quantity, or it may already be promised to someone else. How will they get the product from the Hudson Valley, Long Island, or from deeper in the New York regional food shed? Finally, how will buyers ensure for their customers that the lettuce is safe to eat?

These are the challenges produce buyers for meal-kit delivery service Blue Apron, New York-based farm-to-counter chain Dig Inn, and New York’s first local food hub Greenmarket Co., and many others like them, deal with on a daily basis.

A Dig Inn restaurant in Manhattan's Nomad neighborhood. (Courtesy of Dig Inn)
A Dig Inn restaurant in Manhattan's Nomad neighborhood. Courtesy of Dig Inn
Andrea Hayley
Andrea Hayley
Author
Reporting on the business of food, food tech, and Silicon Alley, I studied the Humanities as an undergraduate, and obtained a Master of Arts in business journalism from Columbia University. I love covering the people, and the passion, that animates innovation in America. Email me at andrea dot hayley at epochtimes.com
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