Madison farmers supply direct to restaurants

If you’ve eaten beef at the Equinox restaurant in Washington, D.C., tasted the asparagus in the risotto at the Palladio Restaurant in Barboursville or munched on a variety of vegetables at Fardowners Restaurant in Crozet - you may well have been enjoying Madison County-grown food.

With restaurants becoming more interested in serving fresh, local items, many Madison County farmers are taking advantage. Locally grown produce and meats are becoming a common serving on pricey plates at some of the areas award-winning restaurants.

“There is a tremendous amount of interest in local food now and for very good reasons,“ said Brightwood Vineyard and Farm Owner Susan Vidal, who started growing some of her Madison County produce specifically for Fardowners restaurant in Crozet last year. “Since it can be picked and delivered within a day, local food is much fresher, tastier and more nutritious than food that must travel hundreds or thousands of miles from farm to restaurant. This is important to discriminating chefs.“

Vidal also says she enjoys working with chefs who “appreciate how superior our produce is compared to the produce delivered through the industrial food system,“ and receiving pointers about what works and what doesn’t from Fardowners chef, Mark Cosgrove.

“We can try unusual vegetables or cultivars in small amounts and get direct feedback from Mark at Fardowners. This allows us to gradually expand our vegetable offerings and be a little more adventurous than we otherwise might be,“ Vidal said.

For more than five years, Spring Lake Farm Owners Jan Richter and Barry Siegel have been selling a variety of items - from asparagus to blueberries to honey - to the Palladio Restaurant at Barboursville Vineyard.

Although they say they don’t make too much money off the venture - “it’s our vacation money,“ according to Richter - the Pratts residents “hate” throwing away food and often finds themselves with an abundance of produce in the spring, summer and fall months.

But maintaining a relationship with a restaurant can be tough for several reasons, according to Richter, as well as other local farmers who work with area restaurants.

For produce growers, the time-span of when a garden explodes with vegetables is relatively short, providing minimal time to make contact with a potential customer. But finding the time to market and sell the produce beyond the hours spent in the garden is “a real stumbling block,“ she said.

In addition, the quantity and quality of items vary - “you never know what you’re gonna have,“ according to Richter.
Fortunately for both Richter and Vidal, the chefs they work with have been sympathetic to that issue.

“We were able to deliver on most of our planned crops [this past summer], in the volumes Mark needed, and he was very understanding when some things did not produce as well as we had expected,“ Vidal said.

Palladio Restaurant Executive Chef Melissa Close says she plans her menus based on what is available from her local producers, who will often call her and let her know what they expect to be harvesting in the next two to three weeks.

“I’m more driven with what’s coming out of the garden,“ Close said, as she accepted some asparagus, radishes, sorrel and garlic chives dropped off in person by Richter and Siegel last week.

Robin Rider of Rider’s Backfield Farm in Etlan - which sells beef locally to Madison County’s The Little Country Store as well as the Equinox restaurant in Washington, D.C., Joshua Wilton House Inn and Restaurant in Harrisonburg, and Weddings and Events at Khimaira Farm near Luray - has found selling directly to restaurants rewarding and challenging for different reasons.

“The pros of working with restaurants is that this can be a year round avenue to sell our beef and not just the six months that the farmers market is open,“ Rider said.

However, most restaurants want only the prime cuts and in small quantities frequently, “which makes it hard to keep up if you have obligations elsewhere,“ she said.

Many restaurants want fresh beef, which makes “distributing logistically much harder and inventory hard to manage and control,“ according to Rider.

Both Rider and Vidal recently started working with a new Madison County-based company - called The Fresh Link - that aims to provide a “link” between family farms and city restaurants.

The company’s owners, Mollie Visosky of Locust Dale and Abby Harper of Orange County, first started the business about two months ago. The women, who both own family farms, came up with the idea while they were contemplating starting their own farm businesses.

“We realized one of the big obstacles to the ultimate success of small farms doing direct marketing is distribution,“ Harper said.

Finding the time to connect with restaurants, market the items available and then drive hours away to deliver the food once it’s ready can be a full-time job on top of farmers’ already seven-day-a-week commitment to their land and animals.

“It’s not that farmers can’t do it, it’s just…the time involved doesn’t make it possible,“ she said.
So Harper - who has a background in sales - and Visosky - who has a background in finance and business development - decided to start a different kind of company assisting this process.

Since they started, The Fresh Link has been visiting and speaking with representatives from area restaurants - some as far as Washington, D.C. - to gather information about the type and quantity of produce, meats and other food items the establishments are looking to purchase. The business then connects with local farmers - they work with about 15 at the moment, four of which are located in Madison County - to develop a plan, which includes a set amount of food The Fresh Link guarantees it will purchase from the farmers for an agreed upon “wholesale” price.

The company then sells the food - sometimes combining items from multiple farms - to its restaurant customers at a higher, retail price.

What Harper has found is that restaurants want local products and want to be familiar with the farms producing their food, sometimes including the names of the establishments on their menus, she said.
At the same time, they also want consistent deliveries and often need large quantities - something smaller farms can’t always provide on their own.

“They want to be able to order large quantities and they absolutely want to know where their products come from,“ Harper said of many restaurants’ two main desires, which are not always easily met when purchasing directly from a small, local farm supplier or a large commercial supplier.

This setup also ensures farmers receive “predictable revenues” because the company guarantees it will purchase a set amount of food - ensuring a certain level of income and avoiding a sometimes typical scenario of farmers ending up with “lots of leftover stuff,“ according to Harper.
For information about The Fresh Link, visit its Web site at http://www.thefreshlink.com or call its toll-free number at