Successful Meetings (November 2005)

Food & Beverage
Meet Globally, Eat Locally:
Banquet Chefs Turn to Farmers Markets

Green is Good
Locally grown and organic ingredients are the building blocks of more and more group menus

Every weekend across the country, vending stands are set up in public parks or parking lots, filled with fresh fruits and vegetables, humanely raised meat and dairy, and grains, breads, flowers, even textiles, all of which were cultivated on nearby farms.
This is the setting for any of the 3,700 farmers’ markets that are the sole source of livelihood for some 19,000 small farmers across the country. Increasingly, mixed in with the local residents browsing among the stalls are also quite a few food and beverage directors and hotel chefs, doing what they call “marketing”-looking for the freshest locally grown seasonal ingredients to incorporate into their group menus.
Interest in locally grown and even organic foods is moving rapidly from specialty niche to the consumer mainstreaming and it’s carving a similar path through the meetings industry. Once consigned to smaller, special-interest or high-end groups, menus derived from local ingredients grown by environmentally-minded producers are in increasingly common find at meetings of all sizes, from incentives to conventions.

You Are What You Eat

Peter Edwards Group Dining Executive Chef at the Ojai Valley Inn and Spa in Ojai CA, has also noticed a greater interest in his kitchen’s locally grown ingredients. People are much more aware of what they’re eating, he says. Grass-fed beef is a good example. It’s becoming more of an interest to people who just a few years ago had no idea that there was a difference between grass-fed and corn-fed cattle. And Edwards thinks this burgeoning interest in menu origins is here to stay. This is not just a trend, but a phase we’re moving into agriculturally. Our cliental are more interested in knowing where their food comes from. The farmers’ market movement is thriving. Especially with E. coli, mad cow disease, and other strains of food born illness, people want to know where their food is coming from. And while, for obvious reasons, our environmental cliental are doing this, other clients in other industries are discovering this and starting to ask for it a lot more.