I am a student at the Culinary Institute of Michigan in Muskegon, MI. I am doing a research project on restaurants that buy from farm markets and/or local purveyors. In this area, this is not a trend. Having moved from northern Michigan, this shocked me. There are several restaurants "up north" who buy locally. I am looking for feedback from around the country. Are your local restaurants supporting you? Have you seen an increase in the last couple years in the number of chefs/owners buying locally. Thanks for your help.

Local restaurants don't support me. I tried establishing relationships with over a dozen restaurants in Bellingham, WA, in the last five years and was treated quite shabbily. Here's my take on restaurants in this area. 1) They want the farmer to deliver at the restaurant's convenience. 2) They want to pay at the restaurant's convenience. 3) They want below wholesale prices.

Clearly, I have a bias against restaurants, so you can take my comments with a grain of salt if you wish. However, I worked in about 15 restaurants back when I was a ski bum and a college student, doing all phases of restaurant work - dishwasher, busboy, waiter, host, prep cook, line cook, and kitchen manager. I worked in restaurants mostly in Colorado, but also in California and Minnesota. The best working environment for me was in Vail, CO. I worked with some dynamite people there and made good money. Each area will be quite different and I am almost always appalled at the poor service we get as customers in Bellingham. I have tried letters to the managers, but nothing seems to work.

A year-and-a-half ago I went to a meeting specifically designed to bring restaurants and farmers together. It was poorly attended by the restaurants AND the farmers. One head chef made the comment, "I hate having to go to the farmers market to buy produce." My thought was that this person clearly doesn't get it and would not last in Italy or France or a lot of other places around the world. His restaurant has since gone out of business, by the way.

I have both worked and managed restaurants and sold to them but I seldom do any longer and have not for about 4 years. I do ocassionally sell to the local university and there is a chef at the farmers market who buys our food for cooking demo's at market but he is not with any restaurant at the moment.

I have noticed the chef from a newer restaurant in town is shopping the farmers market (after the place has been open over a year and they claim to be all about local foods...)

My favorite accounts with restaurants are sadly no longer around. Both places liked it when we would show up after the weekday evening market (which was almost always slow so we usually had lots to offer) and they would buy off the van. Neither place was very consistent and about 1/3 the time we would sell nothing but one place always had a drink ready for us (I cooked at that place before farming and had a great relationship with both the bar staff and the kitchen staff) and the other would feed us dinner about half the time we stopped. But both places are now gone and few places in the area will buy local.

Some are scated that Sysco will

Okay, hit send I guess. To finish my thought. Some places have been threatened by Sysco that if they buy local Sysco will not do business with them. That said, I believe it is an empty threat as all the places I have sold food to have had Sysco accounts and were not dropped by them because they also were regularily buying direct from a farm. So the Sysco story was likely just a ruse to get out of talking to us farmers about possibly buying local.

IIRC one of the Minneapolis markets was founded by a local restaurant owner. I can't say if any other restaurants follow her trend though.