Is Farm to Table Just a Marketing Gimmick?

​A quick internet search leads me to believe that the Farm To Table (Farm To Fork) movement began in 2000 in Berkeley California and Boulder Colorado, no surprise.  The idea of locally sourcing products certainly made sense and the message restaurants were able to share worked well as a marketing tool to compete in crowded markets. 
 
The movement caught on and literally thousands of restaurants, breweries and vineyards began boasting of locally sourcing items to assure freshness, quality and community impact.  Unfortunately, with good intention came widespread fraud; claims of locally sourced products that were not, relationships with local producers that did not exist and altering of menu descriptions that deceived customers became common. 
 
Of course we buy local as much as we possibly can.  In fact as we wrap up our year end reporting I note that we purchased 110 different menu items from 21 different growers based in St. Lawrence or Franklin County at a cost of $91,022.00 in 2016.   This is not intended to get us a pat on the back and I don’t need to share the value of a local commitment; I write this as a thank you to so many hard working producers. 
 
It is currently 16 degrees and the wind is blowing at a steady 20 miles per hour, gusting to 40 mph occasionally.  And I know that Daniel Martin, Dan and Meaghan Kent, Pat Kilcoyne, Cindy Rotman, Lee Matthews, Mark Martinchek and many others are probably wrapped in worn out layers of various “barn clothes” doing what they do best - caring for beautiful animals, duct taping greenhouses and farm tools together that should be replaced and scratching their heads trying to figure out how to make pennies get them through the long North Country winter once again.
 
A very sincere thanks to all of you from Jake’s.  Because of your commitment we get to serve our guests food that we know is raised with care - food that tastes and looks amazing.  We also get to feel good about doing what we can to help you stretch those pennies a bit futher.
 
Farm To Table is more than a marketing gimmick, it is a good thing.

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