In the restaurant trade, it is considered smart marketing to feature local products on the menu. Despite that fact, Prince Edward Island producers have enjoyed limited success in selling the fruits of their labours to the food service industry.
A seminar planned for March 8 is hoping to change that. With $6,000 in financial assistance from the PEI ADAPT Council, which administers the Advancing Canadian Agriculture and Agri-Food program (ACAAF) for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, the Culinary Institute at Holland College hopes to bring together farmers and restaurant owners and managers to discuss how they can do business better.
ACAAF is a national program designed to help implement projects that will benefit the production and processing sector, bolster the industry’s capacity to address current and emerging issues and position the agriculture and agri-food industry to seize new market opportunities.
“Quite often, one of the major problems is restaurant owners simply don't know where projects are available locally,” said Dave Harding, manager of the Culinary Institute. For those in the restaurant trade, he said some of the major issues to be discussed at the forum include food safety, traceability and supply.
On the production side, he said there are concerns about such things as whether the price will be competitive with other potential markets. “Having local products in restaurants is a win-win for everybody involved,” Harding said. “We want to look at making that happen on a more frequent basis than is now the case.”
In some cases, he said producers are used to selling direct on a cash basis. However, he added most restaurants prefer to be invoiced. He said the session will not be geared to the general public but rather targeted to those who will most benefit, namely producers and restaurant managers, owners and staff.
The agenda will include presentations from both sides of the issue followed by a general discussion. “The meeting is really only a first step in what we hope will be a long-term dialogue,” he said. “There could be several things come out of the meeting— one suggestion might be to develop a directory so restaurant owners would know where to access local products.”
Harding said all too often it is easier to access products from outside the province than it is from down the street or around the corner. He said that is especially true for products that might be considered exotic or unusual. While it is not an agricultural product, he pointed to oysters as an example saying, “It is easier for us to get oysters from Toronto than it is from Prince Edward Island. Those are the types of problems we hope to address.”
While there will be little in the way of samples available, since fresh local products are understandably limited during the winter, Harding said farmers will have opportunities to pitch their products one-on-one to restaurant managers and owners.
“Hopefully this will result in an explosion of fresh Prince Edward Island products in restaurants next summer,” he said.
(This is one of a series of articles prepared by the PEI Agricultural Awareness Committee and funded by the PEI ADAPT Council and other partners to highlight new and innovative developments in the province's farming community.)