When I thought about what I would want to take a position on in my dream job of running my own restaurant kitchen, I said that I would want to do it with locally-sourced foods. I had the idea that this would be ethical, environmental, and tasty, too. I just wasn’t sure if I would be able to convince whoever takes care of the books for this restaurant! I set out to do some research to find out if restaurants should buy locally-sourced foods. Rather than researching to support the thesis that restaurants should buy locally, I asked whether they should.

I found several sources that included much of the same information, mainly in the form of lists, like “10 reasons to buy local.” Some of them even included the same exact reasons, with some editing to make the explanations a little different. These fall under the genre of the listicle–a cross between a list and an article. I knew that these texts highlight a lot of information but don’t go very deep, so I wanted to find more information, and I wanted texts that specifically addressed restaurants if possible, rather than those just about the locavore movement more generally, or sources that focused on individual people in the movement.

Here are some sources I found, with early drafts of annotations (disclaimer: this is still a draft!!!):

The Benefits Of Buying Local Produce For Your Restaurant, Restaurantware: Eco-friendly supplies. May 04, 2021 https://www.restaurantware.com/blog/post/the-benefits-of-buying-local-produce-for-your-restaurant/ [fix citation!]

The information in this source endorsed the benefits of locally-sourced foods as being fresher, having greater variety, and less food waste. Specifically for restaurants, it claims that the benefits include potentially being budget-friendly since it can cut out middle-men and supppliers, fostering relationships with local farmers, and reducing the carbon footprint because local food isn’t shipped as far.

This source is a cross between a blog post and a listicle. It is focused on the restaurant industry, which is very useful. I can see that it comes from a website that is industry-oriented and very interested in getting my business because a pop-up showed up soon after arriving on the page asking if I needed help with anything. That gives me a sense like anything on the site is geared toward marketing, and that even if the author or the people who run the site didn’t think local was a good idea, if they thought they could help market it because it’s trendy, they would endorse it. Still, the information here matched much of what I read for the home-chef or food-shopper, plus a bit more specific to restaurants–which means that it wasn’t out of line with the rest of my research.

Quotations from the source:

Keywords:

Paul, K. 2011. What’s Wrong With Local Food? Local and Organic Food and Farming: The Gold Standard. Huffpost, May 6, 2011 updated July 6, 2011. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/whats-wrong-with-local-fo_b_827888

This source argues about the validity of the term local, and makes a strong case against things that are grown locally but with bad farming practices such as factory-farming or in polluting ways wither because of pesticides or greenhouse-gas emissions. Ultimately, it argues against so-called greenwashing, which makes bad practices seem environmental just because it has the word local in it, and instead makes a case for foods that are both local and organic.

This text is a blog post on an online news outlet, Huffpost. It’s like a newspaper, but not exactly. It was posted by a contributor, who has expertise as Associate Director, Organic Consumers Association. However, I can see on the site a short disclaimer that this wasn’t a commissioned story but rather one freely posted by a contributor. It has a lot of useful information and raises a concern I didn’t find in my other research. Still, the source is from 10 years ago, so I don’t know how much the issues raised are still concerns. It seems useful to be wary of any product labeled with such buzz-words as local or natural etc, so it’s not dated in that way, but I would have to do more research to know if there has been any regulation of the term local.

Quotations from the source: “There are no regulations governing “local” chemically grown or GMO-derived food. When the local chemical grower tells you that local is better than organic, tell them that they should switch to organic so that you can trust their food to be safe, clean, inspected, and environmentally friendly. Local-organic is the gold standard.”

Keywords: locavore, organic, greenwashing, chemical farming

Moore, A. 2015. Local vs. Non-Local: Who Does Food Processing Better. Buying In to Buying Local. Fix, April 21. https://www.fix.com/blog/buying-local/

I’m really interested in the infographics, specifically the one identified in the citation, included in this post/article on this industry-oriented site rather than written content of the post (though it’s great and could easily be my source instead). This infographic in particular makes it clear how local and non-local foods compare on 4 important aspects: variety, production, ripeness, and storage and transportation. Although both local and non-local seem relatively equal in the variety and production, local foods rather than non-local foods possess the benefits of ripeness and storage and transportation.

This infographic would be a great way to quickly and easily convey some of the information I would want to share with my restaurant co-workers or with the accountant, buyer, investors, etc, who might worry about the choice to go local. It presents information clearly, using less language and more pictures. The content is organized into a logical order, here in quadrants, so that the four aspects are equally represented in the visual. It’s colorful and engaging.

Quotations from the source:

Keywords:

Still to come: 4th source, more info in each, plus a conclusion, plus a revision of the introduction–remember that this is just a start, not a finished product!