A locally-grown take on "restaurant weeks"

A new type of food festival is helping restaurants break into local sourcing, usually with an immediate payback in sales.

A riff on restaurant weeks, the events pull local establishments into a limited-time joint promotion. But instead of trumpeting restaurant weeks’ prix fixe deals, the festivals spotlight places that feature local foods.

“Some of the restaurants were totally new to offering local foods, and some were old hands,” said Natalie Woodroofe, who handled communications for the 30 Mile Meal Restaurant Week in Athens, Ohio.
For a week in July, consumers were invited to visit the 20 participating restaurants and sample foods produced within 30 miles of the college town. The backyard options extended beyond produce, to beef, pork, chicken, cheeses, honey, even locally produced whole-wheat hot dog buns. A purveyor of a tea made from locally grown herbs convinced all 20 of the restaurants to feature her hot and iced drinks.

“We helped restaurants identify sources for their ingredients,” said Woodroofe. “Twenty-two growers told us they either picked up new accounts, or, from restaurants that were already buying local, they picked up extra sales.”

Woodroofe is surveying the participating restaurants to peg how much traffic rose during what’s normally a slow time for the hometown of Ohio University. “All the places seemed busy,” she said, estimating that hundreds of the 6,000 people in the town seized the opportunity to try locally grown meals.

Local sourcing arrangements similarly stayed in place after Washington, D.C.’s inaugural Eat Local First promotion this summer. The initiative had a number of components for encouraging consumption of local foods, including a farm-to-table dinner co-hosted by 15 restaurants, and a street party where eight restaurants joined other local businesses in feeding 3,000 consumers.

“Farmers and small food companies don’t have the time and resources” to find restaurant customers, said Stacey Price, executive director of Think Local First, the non-profit organization that ran Eat Local First. “We helped them do it.”
A repeat will definitely be held next year.

Ditto for 30 Mile Meal Restaurant Week. "I’d like to double the number of restaurants,” said Woodroofe.