On behalf of the Santa Fe Alliance Farm to Restaurant Team, I want to congratulate you all on a fantastic first month of the Distribution Pilot Project. Restaurants have purchased $6,895 worth of fresh, local food and farmers have received $5,871 in additional sales. We know that there have been some bumps along the way and we are very grateful for everybody’s patience as we work out the kinks of a new system.

Important Updates for Restaurants

PRODUCT AVAILABILITY—As most of you know, it has been a challenging summer for Northern NM producers. Most everything got off to a slow start—about 2 weeks to a month behind schedule—but we are getting more and more availability. In the next few weeks we expect a wide variety of tomatoes, multi-colored potatoes, beets, carrots, apples and pears. We will have salad mix and some other stuff coming from down south during the late fall and winter months, so it won’t all end in September.

ORDER VOLUMES—As more products become available, orders through the system are increasing. However, we still have a long way to go to cover the costs of distribution. Each week it costs about $1200 for just the basics of the distribution system—trucking, staff time and cold storage. To cover those costs at the 12-20% margin we’ve set, we need around $7,000 in weekly sales. Right now, we are averaging about $2,000 per week. While we thankfully have some “risk capital” in the form of the USDA grant to make up the difference, this distribution system will only continue to exist if we can make it cost effective. And that means quadrupling orders. So if you like the system, and want it to stick around, we need your help! Restaurants, you can help by increasing volumes on products you already buy and buying new products. Also, we have the capacity to expand to another 10-15 restaurants, so if you know of other chefs that might be interested, please let us know and we will follow up with them. (Thanks to Ryan from 315 and Kim from Real Food Nation for taking that initiative already).

Marketing & Advertising

As you all must know by now, we are well underway in our advertising & marketing campaign for Farm to Restaurant project. For this season, we have spent $15,000 on print and web campaign for the Farm to Restaurant website, edible Santa Fe, Santa Fe Reporter, Local Flavor, Green Fire Times, Santa Fe One Heart, and La Montanita Coop newsletter. If you are not already listed on the Farm to Restaurant website, please fill out the questionnaire on the site under the tab “For Restaurants.”

Plus we have received tons of national attention thanks to our press releases going out through the Convention and Visitors Bureau. And the Association of Food Journalists are coming to Santa Fe for their annual conference September 1-3 and we hope to get all of our marketing material into their conference agenda and we expect 50 or so of them to show up for Cook with the Chef on September 2 to see Patrick Lambert of the Cowgirl.

2011 Local Guide deadline fast approaching!

If you appreciate what the Alliance is doing to promote local food in the Santa Food region, please support the Alliance by becoming a business member. Membership dues are $150 per year and include a business listing (contact information and 20-word description of business) in the Alliance’s annual printed Local Guide. Full-color display ads start at $125 for 1/8 page.

Like last year, 20,000 Local Guides will be printed; 13,000 of these will be included in a Friday edition of the Santa Fe New Mexican a week or two before Thanksgiving. The remaining guides are distributed around town in throughout the year. Deadline to reserve your space in the Alliance guide is August 20^th. Contact Beverly Post at Beverly@santafealliance.com.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. We hope that you feel the lines of communication are open, and welcome you to call or email any member of the Farm to Restaurant team with any concerns, questions, or suggestions.

http://www.sfreporter.com/santafe/article-5527-sfr-talk-organic-process.html

http://www.sfreporter.com/santafe/blog-2337-cook-like-a-pro.html

And I wanted to give a HUGE thank you to Kathleen for getting the Cook with the Chef some serious NATIONAL attention! This is just one of the recent articles that came I’ve come across:
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-2293-Phoenix-Day-Trips-Examiner~y2010m7d9-Cooking-with-the-chefs-in-Santa-Fe-New-Mexico

And, THANK YOU to our amazing summer intern Rachel Miller who keeps Cook with the Chef running so smoothly every Thursday evening at the Farmers Market. Rachel was thrown in feet first to sink or swim with these chefs and has been so great at following up and getting everyone ready to go.

And finally, a big THANK YOU to the SFA staff for all your patience and support of the F2R project – you gave when you didn’t have to and we all appreciate it!

Great work, TEAM F2R!!!!

Read more . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDoipQt3whU

Environmental responsibility is a burden that we all share. Government action is essential, but personal and corporate responsibility are equally important.  We are lucky to be part of a great neighborhood and community and feel an obligation to give back to those who have supported us through our 18 years. We want to do our part to conserve water and energy, reduce our waste, and provide a green dining option to our customers.

We had been working towards the goals for a number of years when we came across the Green Restaurant Association, the only organization of its kind for restaurants. They have a demanding set of standards that helped us find ways to become more efficient and environmentally responsible.  Now, when customers see the Certified Green Restaurant^® seal in the window, they’ll know that we’ve gone through a credible, transparent program.

The 2 star certification is a start.  We plan to continue to evolve and to work with the Green Restaurant Association to meet more exacting standards for higher levels of certification.  Some of what we have done includes:

Providing compostable cutlery, to-go containers, straws and cups made from potato starch and corn

Installing an energy efficient hand dryer and a waterless urinal in our restroom

Using non-toxic cleaning chemicals

Starting a full-scale recycling programs

Use of 100% recycled paper products

Using low-flow faucets in their kitchens, which are 75% more efficient than conventional options and help conserve water

Providing Reverse Osmosis water for drinking, to eliminate the need for bottled water

Growing many our own greens, herbs and lettuces in our garden and in our hydroponic greenhouse.

Improved water catchment for irrigation

Composting program for kitchen scraps

“Harry’s Roadhouse has made great strides toward becoming more environmentally sustainable, and we commend them for their commitment to these initiatives,” says Michael Oshman, Executive Director of the Green Restaurant Association. “We look forward to helping them make more changes in years to come.”

For more information about the GRA’s Certification program, visit www.dinegreen.com.

About the Green Restaurant Association

The Green Restaurant Association (GRA) is the only official certifier of Green Restaurants^® in the country. The national non-profit organization was founded in 1990 to shift the restaurant industry toward ecological sustainability. For 20 years, the GRA has pioneered the Green Restaurant^® movement and currently works with over 650 restaurants throughout the U.S. and Canada.  With a transparent and turnkey Certification system, the GRA has made it easy for thousands of restaurants to profit and become more environmentally sustainable.  As the industry standard for Greening restaurants, the GRA has the world’s largest database of environmental solutions for the foodservice industry. In 2009, the New York State Restaurant Association announced its official endorsement of the GRA, joining EPA Energy Star for Small Business, Environmental Defense Fund, and several other national environmental groups. The GRA has been featured on CNN, NBC Nightly News, NPR, and in The New York Times, and The Washington Post. For more information visit www.dinegreen.com.

For one very good reason: For all its coddling of Big Ag, the USDA has shown itself to be increasingly supportive of the growing local-food movement in recent years, while the FDA has long been very tough on small food companies, and shows no sign of wanting to encourage the move to locally-grown food. . . .

It has backed up its trumpeted “Know Your Food, Know Your Farmer” campaign with hard dollars directed toward promoters of locally-grown food. In recent months, it has begun promoting a grant program to encourage farmers markets–$5 million will be awarded this year, and $10 million each in fiscal 2011 and 2012.

“Farmers markets are an integral part of the urban/farm linkage and have continued to rise in popularity, mostly due to the growing consumer interest in obtaining fresh products directly from the farm,” USDA says on its web site.

To read more about this story, go to Grist.org.