Restaurants, retailers jump on ‘local’ bandwagon

Growing up in Bangladesh, 8-year-old Suman Hoque and his dad would venture out around 8 o’clock each morning to the local market, loading their baskets with fresh fish, spinach, tomatoes and other groceries the family would eat later that day.

Hoque, now 32, is the owner of the trendy HoQ Restaurant in Des Moines’ East Village, where he has embraced freshness as the central ingredient at his establishment, which features a menu showcasing local products from 40 nearby farms.

The demand from restaurants such as HoQ, grocery stores, schools and everyday consumers nationwide to buy and serve locally grown and raised foods has made it “one of the fastest growing segments of agriculture,” according to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.

Still, amid the torrid growth of the buying-local phenomenon, it has had to deal with growing pains — in many cases making it a victim of its own success. As more big chains increase the amount of nearby products they carry, some have questioned if the way a retailer defines local really means local.

“When some of these larger institutions are selling local food products that say this is a local tomato, I think a lot of consumers are going to be wary. Is this really local? How do they define local,” said Craig Chase, who leads the Leopold Center’s Marketing and Food Systems Initiative at Iowa State University.

For now, Chase said defining local isn’t necessary. Instead, he said it should be left up to consumers to judge whether the way a retailer defines local is consistent with their own definition. “As long as (the retailers) are transparent about what local means, I think the consumer can go through and say ‘OK, either I accept it or I don’t accept that definition,’ ” he said. If the distance is too far, they can “choose to go somewhere else where (they) can find something more local.”

Vilsack said putting a definition in place too soon could “discourage this momentum that we’ve seen.”

Big retailers, including Wal-Mart, Target and Whole Foods, make buying local a major part of their operations, prominently displaying fruits and vegetables purchased nearby and highlighting them in advertisements.

The country’s largest grocer, Wal-Mart, which is looking to have locally grown produce make up 9 percent of its total produce sales, defines local as being grown and sold in the same state.

Whole Foods — where local items typically make up a quarter of produce sold at its stores — allows each region to put in place its own definition. For some, local could be within a certain mile radius or a specific region. In the Midwest, it’s defined as produce from the state or any state that shares a border.

Hy-Vee defines local as within any of the eight states where the 234-store grocery chain operates, said Ruth Comer, assistant vice president of media relations. Individual stores are free to purchase produce, meats, baked foods, packaged goods such as barbecue sauces and dressings, and other items from nearby suppliers.

During the last decade, the West Des Moines-based chain has put more emphasis on buying local foods and has communicated that to its customers through better signage at stores and on its website showing the farmers who produced the food and where they are located.

For years, Hy-Vee struggled to find enough farmers who could provide a consistent product over a long period of time, leaving the chain unable to expand its selection of local items as quickly as it would have liked. But as more farmers took advantage of the burgeoning market opportunity to supply nearby stores and restaurants, the company was able to enter into more deals and for bigger quantities of food with local growers.

“Over the last few years we’ve seen more and more growers get into providing for the local market and understanding what retailers need in terms of quantity and delivery dates,” said Comer. “It becomes easier and easier to sell local produce when you have local growers that are in the business in a big way.”

Vilsack said as more businesses offer locally grown foods to their customers, a failure by an establishment to include them on their menu or store shelves could leave them at a competitive disadvantage with other nearby firms.

“You risk somebody assuming something about your product that may or may not be correct,” Vilsack said. “You risk someone assuming that this thing is not fresh, it’s been frozen, it’s been transported over thousands of miles, its carbon footprint is larger. There are a growing number of consumers who make decisions like that, and this is a market responding to consumer demand.”

David Reinecker, an eighth-generation Pennsylvania livestock farmer 130 miles west of Philadelphia, said the buy-local phenomenon has been a major driver of growth for his family farm, with increasing demand from mom-and-pop markets helping to double production for his hogs to 3,000 annually from 1,500 eight years ago. Whole Foods, the primary buyer of his beef, has gone from purchasing 100 animals a year in 2008 to 300 today, “and they can’t get enough,” he said.

To help customers purchasing his meat, he has a website where people can learn more about his operation and view the finishing farm where the animals are raised.

“It’s a trend, this buy-local thing,” said Reinecker, 58, who said there is very little difference between theitem produced by a smaller farmer such as himself and a major meat supplier such as Smithfield Foods. “It’s a story. It’s the perception that we give and I think the openness. (The customer) just wants to put a face with the beef or with the pork.”

That story gets told at HoQ in Des Moines. A recent menu was chock full of ingredients from around Iowa, including flan with Reichert’s Dairy Air goat cheese and local vegetables, a salad with Sunstead Farm greens, and a grass-fed steak dish featuring Hickory Hills Farm organic beef with Maxwell Farm confit fingerling potatoes, Iowa sweet corn, organic peppers and local onions. About 95 percent of the ingredients used at the restaurant comes from within a 200-mile radius of Des Moines.

“When people come in on a weekend, I can tell them my whole menu, what is all in there and where it comes from,” said Hoque. Sometimes the food really hits close to home: When he’s in a pinch and needs hot peppers, Hoque will pick his own at home and bring them to the restaurant.