Farm2Chef

About Farm2Chef

Farm2Chef was born of a common need: To produce great food. We started in 2004, linking over two dozen Maine and New Hampshire growers and producers with three dozen local chefs. Our success that season was part of what would become a national movement. Eat Local, 100 Mile Diet, Slow Food, all share the same basic mission. For us, farmers and chefs alike contributed time, expertise, advice, and most of all, a commitment to superior produce. We always anticipate a better year than the last, though each year since has brought challenges - not the least of which has been fuel costs, and now the current economic climate. Growing local, eating local, and keeping your money local makes as-much sense in 2009 as it did in 2004, perhaps even moreso. Once again we seek to expand the products and produce available by partnering with a greater number of farms, providing locally-grown produce and products from farms and farmers we know - and visit. Produce and products they feed their families with, and that's the best guarantee of quality.

Why we do, what we do:

Over the past 5 years, we've had a ongoing discussion between growers and restauranteurs. Micro/Macroeconomics isn't the stock-in-trade for most of us with either a horticultural or culinary background, but it bears consideration.

If you've been purchasing from any one of the main-stream "box truck" suppliers, ask youself: "Where's my money now?" Given one hundred dollars invoiced, how much of that money left the greater Northeast for good? How will it return? When will it return? Will it ever return?

Where your business is... is where your money should be. A case of lettuce, a bushel of apples, a pound of cheese purchased from a Northeast regional grower keeps 80 to 90% of that money here. Certain captured costs, fuel/insurance/grain or seed may be lost from our general region. However, that leaves eighty or more dollars out of every hundred right here, to return to your restaurant/inn/resort/hotel.

Think Global - Eat Local!