I have to add that the vendor I am referring to grows pretty much the same crops I do, plus a few of the favourite standbys such as tomatoes and peppers. I realize he is doing something right from the marketinng standpoint that I am doing horribly wrong, and I'd love to know what it is.

Most restaurants that I've dealt with wanted to be sure that they will be able to get what they want and in the quantities that they want, so size could be your problem. I don't know your size of operation, but I do know that restaurants need to be sure of your quantities grown. A smaller operation has a better chance of not being able to supply. Keep trying, if that's what you want to do. Maybe try smaller restaurants???

Keep in mind, things take time. The other vendor might have more 'face value' (more well-known) than you with the restaurants.

Marla

Don't expect the restaurants to come to your stand, go to them. They get deliveries all of the time, and that how most of them supplies come to them. I found that they only come to the market IF they are looking for something special.

Outside of farmers' market--check with neighbors, put up flyers, pennysaver ads, craiglist. I used craiglists this last year, did have alot of response, but 2 of my former regular customers found me. They came back to me, because what they found at the farmers market this year, wasn't up to my standards, which they were used to.

Only 2 years in the business is a rather short time. Be patient, and work the restaurants this winter. Ask them, what they would like to have that they can't find fresh enough, then grow for them. You may need to give away some just to get in the door. Sorta like samples.

If you have alot of produce left this year, and can't find buyers, take it to the smaller food pantries. It's a donation that you can take off your taxes. They will give you a receipt for what you would have sold the produce for. That's better than feeding the critters the best produce. I feed my DIL's pigs, cows and chickens anything that is not perfect.

Marla

E-mails are fine as an introduction but always, always, always follow-up with a face-to-face meeting and hopefully some samples of your wares. Phone calls and e-mails are useless unless you use them as introductory forays. Then be prepared to tell your potential customer what you have and how much of it you plan to have. Ask the customer if there is anything s/he would like for you to grow. For instance, maybe you're the only one in town growing Asian vegetables for Chinese, Thai or Vietnamese restaurants or special chiles for Latino restaurants (Latino doesn't mean just Mexican either...). You might want to offer ideas for how YOU prepare certain veggies. You may have a recipe they may want to use in their restaurant and then you can supply the vegetable.s Just some ideas. But, you have to show up face-to-face. I hope this helps.

I am just starting to explore the possibility of this. Actually I was selling to a restaurant, but I didn't know it. For about two months, I always had this gentleman come and buy a bunch of produce. He always came when there was a bunch of others around. I never had a chance to talk to him. Finally, my wife spoke to him and at his restaurant in town, he has a locally grown special on Saturday nights. He would buy it at the market and prepare everything that night. He paid full price and usually filled two big reusable shopping bags.

I felt pretty special after I found this out.

Jay

I used to not only sell to restuare=ants but before i got into market farming I manage kitchens and bought my fair share of local foods Ilong before this was the hip thing to do).

To sell to restaurants you have to go in person and you have to bug the chefs. It helps if you have samples of what you grow with you so the chef can taste and see the quality of what you grow

Make an appointment to speak with the head chef (if that is the owner great but if the owner is not the chef but will not let you talk with the chef find another shop).

Never ever come by the restaurant during service-for lunch that is 11 am to 2pm and for dinner that is 5 pm until 8 pm. If you do you will lose the account ASAP.

Charge full price if they get anything under a case amount (usually 12 bunches/pieces of something). If they get case amounts than drop your price by 1/3 generally. Do not go down on price for things like anything heirloom that they cannot get through their purveyors.

I have dealt with restaurants that would pre-order what they want and also with places that loved to shop right off the truck-we would show up after farmers market and they would see what we had left and buy what tickled their fancy. I far prefer the pre-orders.

Chefs can be Prima donnas and hard to work with. They are busy people with short memories and often will go back on something you thought they promised (but they have no memory of). this sucks if it is an order that they refuse.

Know that most chefs have no understanding of farming and will treat you like they do their other purveyors and get mad if weather or whatnot means you have to short them on an order or the quality goes down. they simply cannot wrap their heads around the fact you are growing the food and not buying and reselling so you will have to do a lot of education.

I do not like dealing with restuarants personally because of the flakiness of chefs but I know people who make a lot of money doing nothing but restaurants and I have had great relationships with chefs but they always end-the restaurant goes under, the chef moves on, etc..

Thanks for the advice, everyone. I really appreciate it. I guess I was taking the wrong method of approach, and probably too early as well.

My produce and fruit go to a farm stand. My seconds go to work with me in the back of my truck. Other employes check out the truck daily and snag what they want for free. A owner chef of the restaurant next door saw this and asked me what was going on. I happened to have northern spy's with scab spots in the truck that day. She picked one up, cut the scab off and bit into it. She then said to stop at her place before work and she would buy some of my seconds. That was 2 years ago. Now she calls Sunday night and asks what I have ready to plan next weeks menu. Her specials board does not read "apple pie" but "ravens honeycrisp apple pie". Her patrons know that the cherry tomatos are picked that morning and never go into a fridge at night. She still buys blemished for cooking like squash and potato salad and sliced tomato but I have #1's going there for visual dishes.

Also, if you can find restaurants that have a lot of daily specials (as opposed to only a print menu), I think they will be more likely to take random specialty items or try new things. If someone is working with a regular menu, it has to be the same every day. If they are creative and already working with local produce, then your items may interest them more.

If you can afford it, go eat at the restaurant you're targeting. Then you will be able to talk with them about things on their menu you might provide, maybe even get a word in with the server during your meal, about what you do and whether they think the chef might be interested...you never know.
Carrie

Another thing to keep in mind is food service chefs as well. Not sure of your size, but they are MUCH more forgiving, at least for me, than retail chefs.

You can't EVER send them crap (unless they ask for it, and some do for soup, sauce, etc.), but I have had them take excess when I had it and they were not mad when I had lulls due to weather or my learning crop succession planting.

This was my first year selling to ONE large institution. It was a retirement home that served 300 people, three times per day. I sold them a little over $10K of produce this year. The bulk was tomatoes, muskmelon, watermelon, green and yellow beans and onions. I also sold around $1K of raspberries to them. They paid retail or a little under for everything and LOVED it.

I did ONE in person interview the rest was all via e-mail. I did a once weekly status update of what I thought was coming NEXT week. This way he could adjust his order for the big suppliers.

I plan on having a meeting with him this winter when he has free time to better plan for next year. I know I need to increase the amount of broccoli 10X over what I did this year (230 feet this year or around 500 plants). He also said he would take 150lbs or onions PER WEEK for as long as I could supply them. I only had 500lbs this year. I will be increasing that 10X or more as onions always sell well here.

Melons, tomatoes and berries are where the good money is for me. All of the chefs paid by the pound for melons. I did not grade anything, but put minimum weight limits I would send to them. I just put the seconds in the donation pile or take them to market. Many people will take seconds at half the price.

My retail chefs are much more picky. They usually don't have a larger staff to process bulk so they want #1's only. The food service guys once took 1000lbs of muskmelon in one delivery (at $.75/lb). I asked how they would process that many (around 200 melons). He said he has his five junior cooks cutting them up for a few hours in the AM. They refrigerate it and put it on a fruit bar during the week.

I did this on about 1 acre. Next year I plan in increasing to 2.5acres. I will need to drill a new well if I convert more grain land to veggies.

Also ask WHAT they would want. I had no idea that the food service guys wanted shallots and garlic too. When asked how much garlic he wanted he said he uses 5-10lbs of it per week. Holy smokes that is a lot of fresh garlic. I ordered around $500 worth of seed and put in this fall. I never would have thought to plant garlic until he said something.

I also grow winter squash, but EVERYONE around here does that. I grew a new acron this year (for me) called celebration. It has a 50% higher sugar content. It was a trial only with 50 plants. The chef loved it. It is very pretty and tastes good too. I wish I had more.

I also learned I need a LARGE number of plantings of cucumbers. Every 10 days I need around 200 feet to supply this customer. He said big supplier cukes are pretty tasteless.

I hope some of that helped. Don't forget the big food service places (or smaller ones). Retirement homes are great places to hit up for produce. The chef even sets extras out for the people to buy and take back to their rooms. He calls it his internal "farmers market" and the people loved it. This was where all of the berries were going. Can you believe he was marking up my raspberries from $8/qt to $10/qt and he always sold out?

moon1234, if you think Celebration is good, then you really need to taste "Sweet Lightning", 2-3x better and still pretty. I've had customers bring 10-20 at a time, some to look at and others to cook. Double duty.

Marla

Marla,

Is the Sweet Lightning like a Sweet Dumpling? Sweet Dumpling is on the left. Delectica is on the right.

Also, I checked out the Celebration, but it is yellow/orange. They would be a hard sale here. Acorn squash is Dark Green, the end. That is what I would be told by customers. I would eat well though! :)

I am looking forward to another season of growing winter squash at my "Annex" farm. I think I will add some different varieties (small plantings) but stick with the main types.

Now if I can only get the 1200 plus pounds of squash in my basement store room sold!

Jay

Sweet Lightning is an orangish acorn with very sweet insides. The seeds are rather expensive, but once people taste them, you can't hardly keep them on the table. The skin has lots of variations to the orange/yellow/greens.

People don't buy the sweet dumpling as well as the Lightning.

I like the Delicata, the oblong one, and it sold well, but then again, not as well as the Lightnings.

Alot of people would buy them for show and then eat later.

You will need to buy the seeds in the 'per seed' quantities, I haven't seen them sold 'per pound' anywhere. I don't remember where I bought the seeds a couple of years ago, but it was like $18 per hundred seeds. The mice really liked the seeds and new plants, so be aware of them. It seems like if the mice like the seeds, people like the fruit.

I found this link and it has a picture of the squash, it is a delicata type of squash.http://www.ruppseeds.com/divVegetable/sweetlightning.htm

Marla

Could not agree more with the Sweet Lightning - we went through about 5 bu of them this year. Most people who pick them up get them as ornimentals but we tell them that they are fabulous tasting and have built a good following for them over the years. Another winter squash we have had good luck with are Sweet Mama - it's an oriental type that is very sweet and tasty. Many people that tryed them prerfered them to Acorn types. Not much to look at but sell well.

Tom

I could not get rid of delicata. Most people did not like them. I think that there must be regional taste preferences. I never sell much squash at market. Too many people have it and it is priced too low.

My institutional customer likes the color of the celebration squash. He was thrilled to have something "colorful" to serve.

This is what my "celebration" squash looked like this year. I think this name is used by many different breeders.

http://catalog.seedway.com/images/products/9239.jpg

Let's get away from squash for a minute and back on focus. I started my farm, and have run it for 20 years, and am starting another one now, to sell to restaurants. Only. What does that mean?

1) Know your market. I sell to high-end restaurants. There are 17 Mobil 5-star restaurants in the entire country. 3 of them have served my vegetables. They buy their lamb from 3 farms, lobster from 2 vendors, cheese from farms whose names they know and who have been written about in the New York Times. If you don't read Food Arts or Saveur, you aren't competing in that market, but any good chef in even the smallest city is reading those magazines, and so by definition that is who you are competing with. Delicata squash was 10 years ago.

2) Good restaurants don't care about price. It all goes on the menu. If a person is spending $150 for dinner, per person, it really doesn't make that much difference if your baby green beans are 50 cents a pound more than Farmer Browns', what makes a difference is that they are tastier, smaller, better color, fresher, crisper. Chefs may not know what it takes to grow great produce (many do), but most know what great produce is. In the main, it is the growers who don't understand what makes restaurant-quality produce, and that is why they don't make those sales.

3. Chefs and farmers work on opposite ends of the clock. Good farmers are typically getting up when good chefs are going to bed. When either of them judges the other based on that timetable, both suffer. No chef worth the title is done before the last diner leaves - typically, the most sophisticated diners - those who know what good produce is - come in for dinner after 8:30 pm and leave after midnight - and spend $130 per person or more for that privilege. A good chef will not only be there to say "thank you" and "good night" to them, but will have shucked their heirloom peas and explained the importance of serving Gilfeather turnips. A grower who wants to market to restaurants has to understand this.

4) there are restaurants and there are restaurants. If all you do is grow one thing, you sell wholesale to a chain. If you grow lots of things, you sell, ideally, a few excellent things to a very few excellent restaurants. Otherwise, you spend 3 days a week driving around to many places trying to sell the same damn thing everyone else is trying to sell. If all of your produce is generated by hyperbole from seed catalogs, you're already a year behind - if you are reading food blogs and European gastronomical journals, you might get a jump on the competition. If you are talking to Melissa Kelly or Dan Brown, you might be actually setting trends for the growers who will be reading about you next year - which could be three years too late. This is the age of the internet, and the market for edible flowers in Iowa is only a precursor to the purple Rosemary blossom foam that is selling on Telegraph hill. If you're reading the seed catalogs to decide what to sell, your market is the people who watch the food network, not the chefs who are on it.

6) The restaurants that you want to sell to are the ones that are busy. This economy has meant a major shake-down for the restaurant industry - there are three sectors that are doing well -

1. chains - grow a lot of the same thing. it must be good, consistent, and constant. it doesn't have to be great. the money won't be either

2. good restaurants - grow excellent produce, be reliable and communicate constantly, expect excellence from yourself to not always be affordable, but have a steady income

3 excellent restaurants - arrive at 2:17 with 7.4 kilos of blanched European celery and 13.2 kilos of haricot verts, with stems attached. If you have sea-kale early in the season, or local green-house ripened raspberries in February, after cognac with the chef go directly to the bank to make your deposit... once every 5 weeks.

5) No chef wants to taste your tomatoes at 11 AM. But if you have blue radishes at midnight you might have a good conversation. Don't expect to get an exclusive arrangement if you don't have a good understanding of what they want - don't try to sell arugula when they want agretti, or Charentaise carrots when Nantes are in favor. Selling to restaurants means volume - the 10 pounds of garlic per week you read about earlier - or quality - the best tasting, hardest to find, most beautiful produce they can get. There is really no point in growing onions or carrots or potatoes or corn for restaurants unless you grow hundreds of acres or a half acre of endangered varieties - some huge conglomerate in Iowa (or Argentina or China) can do the bulk stuff cheaper and maybe even better. If you want to sell to restaurants, you have to make a choice about what you want to grow, and how, and you have to have the market to support it. I can sell my produce in Maine in July and August, but I can sell it in Philadelphia year-round, because the winter market in Philly can afford what I grow, and will gladly pay for it, but the Maine market will not - can not. every restaurant market has these same limitations.

6) Most farmers - hell, most people - don't have the budget to afford to pay me what I expect for my produce. But most restaurants have 36% of their clientele coming in for a special occasion, so on any given night it is possible that I can sell my peas (or potatoes or parsnips or persimmons) to someone who will have the chance to taste such perfect produce professionally prepared and proudly presented more than once or twice year - at best - so it better be memorable. That is why they come back, to spend $130 per person for dinner. That is the kind of produce you need to be marketing. Nobody who knows good food is going to drive a half hour to some annoying "dining room" to have a snooty hostess and a dismissive waiter sell them week-old iceberg from California, if they can drive ten minutes more for winter spinach from some teenage server who really believes in biodynamics. You have to be the guy who grows the spinach, and it has to be delicious, and fresh, and clean.
That's how you sell to restaurants.

That's how you sell to restaurants.

Well at least to the top .5% of restaurants. MOST of the people on this forum are NOT going to be able to sell to a restaurant like that.

I would take issue with the claim that restaurants will source things like potatoes from some large conglomerate over local. I find it exactly the opposite here.

Restaurants and Institutions with Chefs will buy local "common" veggies ABOVE prices they pay to outfits like sysco foods, just because it is local and fresh.

My institutional chefs can not afford to pay your prices. They are serving people with money to live in a retirement center, but these people are NOT rich. I can get $3/lb for yellow beans, $.75lb for muskmelon, $.80lb for honeydew, etc. This is good money. Many times it is MORE than retail, but they never complain.

Your customers are the cream of the crop and I am happy for you, but high quality fresh produce, locally grow will also command a price premium.

That's why I don't want to sell to those type of restaurants. I'm not snooty enough. I'm happy growing for people that appreciate the work that I do, both growing and sorting. Those snooty people can buy from someone else.

I know that I'm not a bad marketer. I judge this by the number of fellow vendors using the same market talk as I did a few weeks before. Imitation is the best compliments.

Marla

That's cool information about selling to high-end restaurants. That's the fantastic thing I am noticing about market gardening. There are so many niches and ways to market that you can really tailor it your own interests.

" If you're reading the seed catalogs to decide what to sell, your market is the people who watch the food network, not the chefs who are on it. "

Well said, bi11me

Any good grower will be finally at the point where they will not, because they don't have to, compromise on the price of their produce. This needn't mean only selling to "snooty" chefs, or trophy wives, or gourmet grocers 2000 miles away from where we grow our vegetables. Good growers, who care about the land, and nutrition, and understand the importance of heirloom vegetables, and grasp the subtleties and complexities of deep ecology - farmers who understand the fundamental motivations that drove Hesiod, Cato the Elder, Xenophon, Vilmorin, Jefferson, Leopold, Salatin, and Coleman - realize their place in the continued existence of mankind - we make civilization possible - why would you discount that? As I've posted here and elsewhere, I sell to the people who can pay the most - and I was castigated for it. What my detractors don't know is that what I can't sell to those highest-end markets most often goes to food pantries, or shelters for homeless mothers, or prison release half-way houses, or Buddhist dining rooms. There should be no price on nutrition - but there should be a high price - the highest price, in fact - for providing a degree of agricultural artistry to those whose primary interest is self-indulgence. That's my market, and the profits that I derive from that feed hungry people, preserve the environment, sustain like-minded people and their offspring, support independent businesses and the political forces with whom I find some affinity. I won't apologize for finding a way to redirect the financial resources of those who have more than I do to causes I support - even if it's the wine I want to drink and the books I like to read, or the Baka tribe in the Congo whose percussion recordings I like to listen to while I'm working in my fields. We are in business, for one reason, to make money. To disregard that is, eventually, to go out of business - it is the very definition of sustainability to do something that will be self-perpetuating. To limit oneself to any market because we are willing to limit our involvement with it's representatives or their clients - to say, in other words, that a "snooty" persons' money is unworthy to accept in order to redirect it toward a more worthy recipient - is to participate in our own failure to thrive.

The root issue is to decide why we are farming. I grow vegetables because I believe it is fundamentally a moral ecological pursuit; one that suits my personal sensibilities, takes advantage of my talents, and serves as an advantage to a significant portion of the population. I want to make a lot of money doing it, because that serves my own desires, the needs and possibilities of my children, and the operations that meet the criteria that I choose to support and encourage. In the broad scope of this economy, most people can't afford to only eat organic produce, but for a certain number of people within the small orbit of what my farm produces, a measurably large number of people - many of them with very limited resources - can eat some of the best food in the world.

If I choose to grow that kind of produce - the kind that you who read this could likely grow, but won't likely eat at a restaurant in New York where the guy at the next table is wearing shoes that cost the equivalent of 3 months income for you, it is because I recognize the potential, and meet the standards, that that market entails. My business was founded with that criteria in mind - not simply to grow and sell vegetables, but to do so in a way that does a service to the land, and my family, and my community, and to that other, almost ethereal community, who are able to support people like me who believe that any effort of labor can be elevated to an art, and that the proceeds of that artistry can be redistributed in a moral and socially effective fashion. If you don't believe that, you haven't seen beautiful plumbing; and that has existed since the days of the Roman empire. So I can grow and sell sea-kale and pineapple sage blossoms and Thai basil microgreens and perfect tiny radishes that weigh .3 grams and blanched heirloom English celery and sun-ripened New England raspberries in February, and I can demand $23/ lb for my custom salad mix, and I don't feel any guilt - though I would feel guilty if I were buying it, because it would mean that I was pretending to be a part of the economy that is far beyond my means - though in fact I am fundamentally a part of that very economy.

No good grower ought to exclude themselves from that market - even the most mundane grocers get some of their produce from halfway around the world - if you live in New England, would you forgo rice, bananas, or coffee? So why not choose to do what your skills and climate make possible to excel at,and use the literal fruits of your labor to provide for your own livelihood, or the well-being of your family, or employees, or community? To exclude a market because of a cultural incompatibility is to condemn your business to a limited growth potential - the equivalent of refusing to sell Scotch whiskey in Africa, or sushi in L.A. It is choosing to broadcast your flawed conception of principles. I am the 99%, but it doesn't mean I won't accept the $ of the 1% and redistribute them in a way that I find more morally palatable. That, to my mind, is far more effective than pitching a tent on a tiny patch of grass in Zuccotti Park, shouting my dis-satisfactions to the wind.

Well said Bill, well said.

Here in SW Ohio we no longer have many high end restaurants, nor many chefs that desire exquisitely grown local foods. They are around but because their restaurants are not top of the line and do not charge $150 per diner they will not pay top of the line prices so I do not bother selling to them anymore. I was, until 2 months ago, selling via farmers markets and had a great market full of buyers who appreciated what I grow and were willing to pay top dollar for my food. But times change as does FM clientele and sales have been faltering at that market for the past 18 months so I have quit doing FMs. But I have found that through mu CSA I am finding clients that really appreciate the food I grow and are willing to pay the price I demand for it and that is the direction I am now going.

In my area, there are NO top of line restaurants of what you describe. It would be nice to have some. I'm not big enough to ship to big towns, so I'm happy being one of the most expensively priced growers in the area. Most expensive because I'm very very picky about my produce. And my cows, pigs and chicken eat very well on the not so perfect produce. Believe they LOVE it when we come home from market.

Marla

You've really got me thinking b1llme. I had quite a lot of internal struggle with the pricing of our produce this year (not restaurants just FM). I don't want to price my goods at a level that 'I' cannot afford. But you raise some really excellent points and I think that I can find a balance between offering high-priced specialty food and good quality Maggie-priced food. Then I won't be excluding anyone and will be able to get the $ from those that can afford 'snooty' prices. Thanks for all of your recent posts.

And those two responses both serve to support the concept of a sustainable enterprise - to match your methodology to the markets that are available to you, and to remain true to the quality standards you set for yourself. There are ways to help your customers appreciate the value of what you do, provided that the economy hasn't impacted their ability to support you. Earlier, I wrote of the three types of restaurants that are doing well. The large, inexpensive chains because that is what people of limited means can afford, and these days there are more of them (us, I should probably say). Good independent operators, who serve a local niche that, given the appropriate population density, can keep them going on the strength of special occasions, customer loyalty, and proximity, and the very expensive, ultra-high quality places, whose clientele barely feel the cyclical economic ups and downs that have so direly affected most of the population. These places lose some business during hard economic times, but the core is still there. They exist, primarily, in dense urban markets because that is where there is a high-enough concentration of wealth to allow them to survive - and believe me, they don't rank the concept of "local" too highly on the list of criteria: if the cache of a certain region or variety or producer creates an association for their educated and sophisticated patrons, they will source their ingredients from anywhere in the world, and pay accordingly. That is why restaurants in California and Paris serve lobster from Maine and Nova Scotia, famous chefs buy Jamison farm lamb and Hudson Valley foie gras in Palm Beach and Chicago and menus from Boston to Baton Rouge list the names of the farms where the beets they are serving come from - because they are catering to the self-image of a customer who believes, rightly or not, that they deserve the best there is to be had. Good restaurant operators use the high price of their offerings to create that desire, it's an artifice, often, that leverages the self-indulgence of the well-off people they are feeding, but an artifice that succeeds in selling things, and in the end, that is what good marketing strives to do.

I'm all too aware that the highest-end market is a rarified and tenuous one - nobody needs what I grow to survive (except me and my family), but should that market disappear, I can quickly adjust my strategy to compensate for that - I'll stop sourcing seed from Europe or Asia, reduce the number of trials of hard to find heirloom varieties and expensive practices, even use less compost perhaps, in an effort to reduce my costs of production to a point where my prices can compete with a less financially blessed market. I could limit the number of crops I grow and sell to institutions, or rework my business strategy to work as a CSA - all of that is what makes a savvy businessperson, and all of it, to some degree, is good marketing.