The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - e.32: Best practices for farmers selling to restaurants and chefs part 2 of 2

Episode Date: January 15, 2015

Selling your farm goods to chefs can be lucrative, but there are idiosyncrasies to this type of marketing that a farmer should understand if she wants to keep and increase the business she gets from restaurants. This episode features part two of my conversation with two chef-owners of a high end catering business that has built its reputation for great cuisine on a devotion to sourcing and serving local farm goods.   Cam Smith and Dana Ewart of Joy Road Catering in BC's Okanagan Valley really want to support your farm, but they but they also insist that you take the customer service you provide them seriously. Herein, they provide some no-nonsense advice for how to approach and maintain restaurant customers. This episode: what chefs expect in terms of quality, how they like to be billed and when you should start to worry about unpaid accounts, and Cam and Dana's thoughts on the relationship between high-end cuisine and food security. Learn more about Joy Road Catering here.

This is the Ruminant Podcast. I'm Jordan Marr. The Ruminant is a website dedicated to sharing good ideas for farmers and gardeners. On the website, you'll find my podcast, the odd essay, book reviews, tool reviews, and user-submitted photos of their own farming and gardening practices. It's all at ruminantpod.com. I hope you'll check it out. All right, let's do a podcast. All right, let in just a minute. Other than that, I'll remind you that The Ruminant is also a blog. And recently on the blog, I've posted an essay about why the term rock star, as applied to farmers of renown, concerns me a bit. Even makes me a bit grumpy. There's also a post in which I share my rudimentary but very effective system for keeping track of CSA orders on distribution day. And going back a bit

further, you'll find a somewhat true account of my 2014 farm season that features a video of the farm's pet black widow set to kneel diamonds done too soon. And some really beautiful photography taken by our good friend and photojournalist Ian Stewart. The ruminant.ca is where you'll find all of this and a lot more. All right and now here's part two with Cam and Dana. I hope you enjoy it. Cam and Dana, can we talk a little bit about quality in general and I just want to kind of like get into what types of quality are almost crucial in terms of what you expect from your suppliers versus types of, let's just call them blemishes or other substandard quality that you tend to be able to work with. And just in the context of trying to

explain to someone who hasn't supplied restaurants, where their quality needs needs to be right there and where where there's some flexibility does that make sense like i mean yeah it makes total sense but it's a very difficult question to answer i think chefs are notoriously hard to nail down um for that i mean for for myself personally, I would much rather there be really great flavor there and a couple bug holes or a couple specks or something like that on the product. But other guys are going to tell you that it has to, you know, a lot of other guys are going to be much more concerned with the way it looks than the way it actually tastes. I think for chefs, a lot of the time it's a precision thing about cooking times. I think for chefs, a lot of the time it's a precision thing about cooking times. So, for example, if you say to a farmer, I need 75 carrots that are going to be the thickness of my thumb and five inches long. And I want them all to be standard, like a standard size. If you can give me 150 pieces and we're happy to pick through them.

And as long as we get 75 pieces that are exactly what we need, they're going to cook at the same rate. Then we're happy with that. But, um, if there's going to be a lot of bug holes in them, or if there's going to be a lot of inconsistency and knobbiness and, you know, just let us know we can still buy your carrots. We'll use them for another purpose but um as long it's a it comes down to communication thing again once again yes yes you could yes i can provide you with 150 carrots you can pick through yes i can guarantee that you'll get 75 nice perfect size ones um it's it's just a matter of being honest about yes i can fulfill your needs or no i can't

so can you think of a couple examples of like something that shows up where you're where you're just like fuck like oh no I mean I you you talk common ones are like fennel and leeks they're bolting yeah you know the center of it's like totally woody and hard completely unusable just tuck it in stock and we paid a premium for it yeah greens are a really funny one because i mean one farmer will bring me the most beautiful looking pristine flavorless greens and the next guy i'll bring me something that's full of flavor and is full of dirt and full of bug holes and yeah yeah it's it's that's what i mean it's kind of you gotta you gotta talk

to your to your customer and figure out exactly what they want these things for and what they're doing with them and you mentioned, I mean, in our last conversation you mentioned arugula and stemminess I mean, so I imagine sometimes stuff shows up that's beautiful stuff, the flavor or ultimately the aesthetic but there's a little bit extra, more processing

than you anticipated, is that right? Yeah, and I mean that's again, I think that's something that's really important to work out in the relationship with whoever the farmer would be selling to because, you know, I think that some kitchens would be very happy to take something that needs a little extra processing as long as they're not paying that super premium price for it, right? You know, if I'm paying a super premium price i expect things to come in in a condition that's pretty much ready to go yeah um sometimes things hold a lot better when they're still covered in their dirt than they do if they come in beautiful and washed and clean right so i mean

that's that's another question your pricing should reflect the quality of your or the amount of the amount of work that's left to do to get that product to the plate. Right. So, I mean, it just seems like the running theme is growers and other farmers should try as hard as possible not to surprise you on delivery day. To just, to have you knowing ahead of time how things are showing up or figuring out what your expectations are around a certain product. Yeah, just ask.

That's the only, you know, it's easy to do. Don't assume it's a text message saying you know i have all these carrots that you need um some of them but my irrigation system is shut down for the winter and so you should know you're gonna have to spray them because yeah because i can't because it's late in the season at that point we'll make an educated decision so educating us about your needs and your requirements is important and we're happy to listen and judge and and make calls based on that we're not not necessarily going to say no right right definitely for us anyway we're pretty much always going to say yes yes we can work with that but we need to know we need to know we need an extra cook in the kitchen to wash those carrots and scrub around the tops and you know it's going to take some extra time and we're happy

we just need to know and and danny you just mentioned a little a minute ago price and i wanted to talk about the topic the subject of prices so i'm just going to start off by asking you how often do either of you end up on some level discussing price, like with your growers? Because as your supplier, it doesn't come up very often. You don't often challenge me on prices. The odd time you do, and I've encouraged you to do that, but I mean, does it come up very often and I guess also... I guess we've been at this long enough that I've, you know, I work with people for the most part who are reasonable and educated about their prices.

I'm not going to tell anybody what they should charge for anything, but there's certainly thresholds of willing to pay and not to pay, right? We're an anomaly in that we're at the farmer's market every week as well. So we can kind of see how the season we've, and we've been at it for, you know, eight years. So we kind of, we've seen the cycle of the seasons happen and we know sort of what all like 40 different growers at the farmer's market are charging for products. And we realized that the market requires extra work. You've got to bundle things in tiny little amounts and they have to be super clean and presentable and it takes extra work you've got to bring things to market whereas we're buying things

in large quantities and bins and just weigh them and that's it you don't have to package them you don't have to spend the time yeah bundling them bunching them packaging them them. Like it's, it's different for us. We'll buy wholesale from a lot of the growers at the market. And they're, a lot of them are happy to do that. They're like, great, I don't need to spend that extra time, put that extra love and effort and work into something. So again, the price should reflect that amount of work. But yeah, I think we've seen, we're pretty educated about what things should cost. And as long as we know, if a farmer comes to us and says, oh, look, this is what happened, and I had to put a whole bunch of extra work into this to bring it to you or to market, we're totally happy to pay as long as we know.

Right. But on the subject of not knowing, like sometimes, Cam, as an example, you're in a hurry and you order something for me that you haven't ordered before. And so applying that to any one of a number of growers who supply you, do you ever end up getting surprised when you see the invoice? Yep. Does that happen very regularly? Yeah.

I mean, it happens when you deal with new growers. It happens when you deal with growers who are growing something new. Growing new product. Yeah, it happens. And would you encourage a new grower to just simply, like I've found, I mean, I trust you guys. So often if it's a new product that I'm not used to selling, I'll just ask you often it's cam because I'm on the phone with cam usually, but I'll just say like, what, what's the going rate? I mean, we'll look through all our, our invoices from our other

farmers and, and look online and look at past years. We have all of it documented. So we're easily able to look through back emails and, um, fresh sheets that people have sent us over the years and figure out what a fair market value is for those ingredients. And again, if something goes wrong and you need to put extra work into things, we're happy to pay it. But be able to justify it, I guess, right? Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So I have one, just one off quick question,

which is, um, whether it matters much to you, how you get invoiced and how payments are done, whether that's a factor that, uh, uh, uh, someone who wants to start supplying restaurants need to consider, does it, is there a system or a way that is you prefer? Yeah, that's an interesting question. Cause I question because I mean I think a lot of farmers, especially people who come from a farmer's market background, are used to operating in cash and I think that operating in cash

is obviously nice and I understand the appeal to that but it doesn't work very well for somebody who's running a business who's trying to write things off I understand that some but it doesn't work very well for somebody who's running a business who's trying to write things off. I understand that some restaurants are notoriously slow at paying, and that can be something that you have to really guard against as a supplier. So a lot of bigger supply companies will do credit cards and just build that into their costs so that they make sure that they get paid immediately.

My preferred method of payment is checks. I can write checks every two weeks and get them to people. And I'm really conscious about making sure that everybody gets paid. But I'm not saying that every business owner is as considerate in that department. So I think that you are taking a little bit of a risk supplying some restaurants. And that's where I think a lot of what I was talking about before about this whole relationship being a two-way street is really important. It's important that as a restaurant or as a consumer, I can trust that my farmer is using good growing techniques and going to deliver on time and bring me excellent product at a reasonable price.

And they need to trust that I'm going to pay my bills and that I can be relied on for a good business deal. Okay, so I'm going to ask one or both of you to put yourself in my shoes and give me some, but as a new, say a new supplier to restaurants and just give me that new supplier some potential advice. Those suppliers are going to be understandably a little cautious at first with a new restaurant they're supplying until they build that trust. But you're recommending they just go for the invoice system because it's much better for the restaurant, which makes total sense to me. But how, when do you start getting worried? Like how, how, how long would you

recommend they be patient if they've never worked in a new restaurant they've just started supplying them they're supplying them once a week at what point do you start to tamp down on on the in you know the number of unpaid invoices is it two weeks is it four weeks i think whenever whenever you're uncomfortable whenever you feel uncomfortable you go and talk to people about that kind of thing i would say i would say three weeks a month is too, too long to go. So you're supplying a restaurant within a month. You should not feel overly demanding to have a polite conversation to say, Hey, can I get a check? No, whatever your needs are. Um, I wouldn't go the next day. I wouldn't go maybe not even within a two week period. Cause that's usually what, what the standard sort of

industry pay period is every two weeks. Um, and occasionally, like if you didn't get your invoice in at a certain point, you might need to, it might, it might be normal to wait a month. If you missed the pay period for the two week period, I wouldn't be worried up to a month, but anytime after that, I'd probably say something. Hey, you know, and, and, and a new, new supplier shouldn't feel rude or out of place. No, definitely. Most definitely not. No, that's their money. They've earned it. What we do for our invoicing system for, with our clients is we we have a contract that we have people sign at the very beginning. I know a lot of

farmers want to have a signature on every single, um, invoice that they like, they keep a copy. This is with our meat suppliers and all of our different suppliers. Um, they'll, we'll sign one invoice. They take it with them. So that's our, that's our commitment to them in writing that we're going to pay that bill. So that should make them feel pretty good. If you want to work it that way, our bigger suppliers, how they work is the same way that we do with our invoicing system. We sign a contract at the beginning of the season saying, here's our credit card number. Excuse me. Here's our credit card number. You keep it on file. If we don't pay

within a certain amount of time, you're like welcome to charge our credit card. I see. I wasn't even aware that that's a common practice. That's how it works with bigger suppliers. They keep that card on file and they just, and they just go ahead and charge that card. As long as you are upfront and you let people know that within a certain time period, if they haven't paid, that you're going to just go ahead and put it through on a credit card, say like after. For example, if they don't send you a check within a month, you just go ahead and charge their credit card. Most farmers don't have the ability to take credit cards and stuff, right? Yeah. No.

The ability to take credit cards and stuff, right? Yeah. No. I would say that if you're entering into a new relationship with somebody you don't know at all, I might ask for payment for the first couple of weeks just until you become more comfortable. Yeah, right. Or at least get a signature, which is a promise. Yeah. Which is a legal binding sort of promise.

But I would also say that it would be important to get to know the people who you're supplying to, right? Yeah. So that you have a trusting relationship. And ask around. Because they're not going to put up with, they're not going to want to keep having to stop their day and write checks forever. Yeah, right. So I mean, maybe they might go for it once or twice, but they're not going to keep going for it forever. Yeah. Ask around, talk to other people. I mean, most of the communities that we're in, whether it's a big city or a small town restaurant communities and farmer communities are tight-knit groups you know people people gain reputations for reasons hey I took on a new restaurant buyer this year and I received

cautions from various people a couple other growers a couple other chefs and I considered it I you know I still supplied the restaurant and ultimately I had, I had, I've had some problems and, and, uh, you know, so there's an example of where perhaps I should have just really heeded that advice and not gone there. And of course, it's always against like, Oh, I'd really love to take, have another good buyer. I mean, they were buying lots of stuff from me. Right. So anyway. Okay. So look, I want to finish on one last topic. So anyway, okay. So look, I want to finish on one last topic. I would love to talk about the role that you chefs play in the food culture, but more specifically, there is an attitude that certainly exists that, you know,

growers like me who supply chefs, we're just feeding rich people. And it's this, this super elitist thing. And what you do in a sense is elitist and that sort of thing. And I'm just wondering, I imagine you must have opinions on that. And I'm just, so I guess it's a two part question. What role do you think you play in the food culture in, in general, but, but also how do you feel about what's your reaction to that potential criticism that that in supplying you i'm just i'm just participating in an elite kind of activity and and you're you're only also i guess it's a really good question farmer jordan and uh And I'm not sure how to begin answering it, but in a way, I guess you could paint yourself as a Robin Hood. But that sounds really awful.

But in a way, it's kind of true. Like, a lot of, I feel really good, I almost sometimes feel better about this. Like, we'll feed a group of people, whether they're rich or they're not like we cater mostly, mostly weddings, big weddings. So it's guests coming in. If you want to call weddings elitist, if you, or whether you just want to call them a celebration, they're not expensive menus that we're doing. It's just the number of people that are we're providing for we're able to afford

to buy good good quality product and not have it cost a lot because the numbers make it make sense but um yeah uh there's often a lot of leftovers from events like that and where do you think they go they go to the soup materia materia or the women in need, or they go to feeding all of our cooks, feeding all of our animals. Like we scrape the plates and we're careful about keeping things cold. And that goes to our pigs and that goes to our chickens

and there's never any waste. But I feel really good about finishing a farmer's market and taking any leftover cinnamon buns that were fresh baked that morning down to the Salvation Army. And there are guys who expect us and they, and they're waiting there for us. And they're like, Joy Rhodes here. And they, they're just the look on their faces when they get those cinnamon buns, like be it me selling it to a child who saved their allowance all week or to someone who, who can afford to buy it or, or being like giving it away. I mean, I, I feel good about feeding people and they, it doesn't, it's not a class

thing. It's just, if people are getting joy out of it and they're, I don't know, do I sound ridiculous? I think you sound off topic. Off topic. Yeah. No, not totally, but let's go with you then, Cam. Like, do you, do you lose sleep at night at, at, at being a high end chef who cooks high end food often for a wealthier segment of the population? Can I start with the first question? Yep. I think that chefs are underappreciated in the, I know that sounds kind of rich for me, um, in, in the relationship between farmers and consumers. Uh, you know, if I think back to when I first started out in the, in the cooking industry, you know, we had these beautiful little salad greens that were all like cute and looked awesome on a plate and you couldn't buy those in

the grocery store yet you know now you can buy the little bags of spring mix everywhere that was a trend that started with farmers to restaurants and has expanded into a you know billion dollar year business or something like that you know things like heirloom tomatoes heirloom vegetables in general um yeah that stuff has always been available at a farmer's market. But I mean, the big consumers of that stuff and the big drivers of that stuff to get that stuff out to the public, we're chefs, we're restaurants. That's who's buying it, that's who's pushing it. I think that the chefs have always been integral in trying to dig up new ingredients

and find new markets for things that maybe didn't exist before. And I think that that has gone a long way to fuel this local movement, which a lot of small-scale farmers are now recipients of at farmer's markets and stuff like that, because consumers are going out and saying, hey, you know, I had this vegetable the other day at Restaurant W. Where can I get that from? Oh, you get it at the farmer's market. Go down and talk to... I'm not saying that the farmer's market thing or heirloom vegetables didn't exist before restaurants did,

but I think that they've really gone a long way towards bringing this stuff into the mainstream and towards maybe supplying a living for those people who are now judging the farmer who sells to a restaurant. I think that being a farmer and being a chef are not that dissimilar in that we're all activists in a way. And we're all involved with, we're the gatekeepers, man. Like we're encouraging everyday people to eat, eat well and whatever your income bracket is like, like it's, I look, I agree with you. I typically don't make any apologies for

the port, the large portion of my business that depends on these high end chefs that are thankfully willing to pay me good prices for my produce. As far as the high-end question goes, I've dealt with this a lot because, you know, when you deal with a certain segment of the population, the farmers in particular, a lot of them don't make a ton of money. And they look at a lot of, you know, maybe the dinners that I host or the restaurants that you supply as being very expensive.

And a lot of farmers and food safety activists are concerned with feeding their people, as they absolutely should be. I think that that's a crucial part of this is to have some sort of food security where everybody can afford or where everybody has access to healthy ingredients but I don't think that the access to healthy ingredients the burden of that should be borne by the farmers I disagree with that that we need to you know make sure that we can all get tomatoes at 50 cents a pound. That we keep our prices low enough. Because that's all I can afford.

Yeah. And we just recently went on a trip to Europe. And I mean, in Italy, the economy is not doing terribly well right now. That's not breaking news for anybody. But they still put a real priority on eating well. At the expense of other... At the expense of other... Other luxuries in their life.

You look at all the things that we've piled on in our lives in the last 20 years, cell phone bills, cable bills, internet bills. That's $100 a month for most people. Europeans will average well over 30% of their disposable income spent on food. North America, last time I looked, I think it was like a 12% or something like that, right? So I think that there's a real confusion between the fact that I am charging a fair price for what I do and the most people who pay it tend to be wealthy because yes, we have a lot of wealthy clients, but we also have a lot of clients who have saved up for this important day or for this vacation in their lives or whatever, who have chosen to make this a priority over having a golden dress or, you know, whatever it is. People, people spend a lot of money

on a lot of different things. And I think it's a question of what your priorities are more than, hey, that's for rich people. I think that there's definitely a danger sometimes that some farmers are taking advantage of the local movement and being in the city at a certain farmer's market and charging a lot of money for stuff. Cherries are a good example of that. the farmer's market and charging a lot of money for stuff. Cherries are a good example of that. I can get some decent organic cherries around here for $2.50 a pound if I'm buying in bulk. Go to the farmer's market in Vancouver, it's $5 a pound. More sometimes.

Go to the farmer's market in Calgary, I hear stories of $9, $10 a pound for organic cherries. Obviously there's travel costs and everything else, but there's just a lot more competition here. I think the prices remain. Maybe $2.50 isn't enough. Maybe $5 is too much. I'm not going to judge that, but what I am going to say is that it's important that the farmer stay in business and be able to make a living. It's important that the chef be able to stay in business and make a living, because if you're not in business, you can't make the choices to support certain farmers or certain suppliers and to try to educate certain clients yeah um so i think it's important to run a sustainable business and that means you know being able to

pay your people and being able to make a living and being able to support growers and suppliers that that you want to support um i think if you want to go for that 1% segment of the population. And I have to imagine that leaving aside celebrity chefs who might do very well, one reflection of all of this is that like farmers, it's not like the average chef is not getting rich off of preparing Oh God, no, off of, no, off of preparing this wonderful food. Definitely not. Nope. But we're food professionals and it's, it's our responsibility to get, I, yeah, I'll say it again. It's, I really feel like it's our responsibility to share that with people

have people eat that's our mission anyway at joy road is to like have people eat well and um well you do well and uh so with that cam and dana of joy road catering thanks a lot for coming on the podcast no problem thanks for having us all right right. That was the episode. I hope you enjoyed it, everyone. Next week, you'll hear my interview with Nathaniel Johnson of Grist.org, who sat down with me recently to talk about his very, very thorough and very interesting series of blog posts he wrote on the GMO debate, which is called Panic-Free GMOs. So that's next week, and I guess I will talk to you then. tape and we'll run right outside of the city's reaches we'll live off chestnuts spring water

and peaches we'll own up into this world of thieves and live life like it was meant to be Because why would we live in a place that don't want us A place that is trying to bleed us dry We could be happy with life in the country with salt on our skin and the dirt on our hands i've been doing a lot of thinking some real soul searching and here's my final resolve I don't need a big old house or some fancy car

to keep my love going strong so we'll run right out into the wilds and braces we'll keep close quarters with gentle faces and live next door to the birds and the bees And live life like it was meant to be Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo,