Today we’d like to introduce you to Ryan Kimura.
The story for Local Foods begins on the farm. Or, rather, on the highway between the farm and the city of Chicago.
Working from his home base in Chicago, co-founder Andrew Lutsey, was working hard to secure purchasing commitments from the city’s best chefs for the high-quality beef, pork and poultry being produced at Waseda Farm, his family’s farm. Simultaneously, Dave Rand, a long-time sustainable food veteran, would drive from Quarter Seven (Q7) ranch to make deliveries of beef quarters in his truck to many of the best chefs in Chicago.
Both Andrew and Dave had plenty of time sitting in Chicago traffic to envision a solution to the many problems with this arrangement. They realized that what was missing was a distributor catered to the local farm and the passionate chef.
Local Foods was born in 2013 as a mission-oriented organization aiming to build up the missing middle infrastructure between hard working farmers who want to focus on growing great food, and chefs who want easy access to high-quality, locally-grown food.
Two years ago, Local Foods opened the doors to its own facility in west Lincoln Park / east Bucktown featuring a warehouse, meat processing facility, and retail grocery store with café.
Local Foods grew its wholesale distribution business from that small start in 2013 to an operation serving more than 500 wholesale restaurants, retailers, and institutions in 2017.
Local Foods also was a founding partner in two other businesses filling gaps in the food supply chain, MightyVine and HandCut Foods. MightyVine is a grower of the most flavorful, hydroponically-grown tomatoes just 90 miles west of Chicago. HandCut Foods is a premium foodservice management company providing meals for schools and businesses with or without cafeterias.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Eccentric farmers, chefs with big personalities, complicated logistics, retail consumers – what could go wrong??
Local Foods built businesses in two industries not known for their innovation – wholesale distribution and retail grocery & butchery. We started with very limited expertise in the industry and thought we could carve our own path and buck all the rules and trends. In total, our combined experience in retail and wholesale distribution was less than one year.
Turns out, some trends are hard to change. Consumers buying behavior is tough to change. Grocery stores have very consistent and traditional layouts. Local Foods layout is pretty untraditional and has had to adapt to more traditional shopping norms.
As very passionate people about sustainable food, we also had very broad ambitions about what role we could serve in the food system. We scaled back our meat processing business to focus on wholesale distribution and retail first.
Local Foods – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Local Foods is a distributor and retailer of local food. Local Foods’ vibrant market showcases the best of the Midwest, including the sustainable whole-animal meat mecca Butcher & Larder, and Stock, Chicago’s most local, farm-to-table cafe. Behind the scenes, Local Foods operates a wholesale distribution center dedicated to supplying the best local products to more than 500 of the city’s most acclaimed chefs, grocers, caterers and schools. Local Foods is a mission-oriented organization, partnering with the area’s finest small-scale, family farms with the aim to revive and strengthen the Midwest’s local food system and infrastructure.
From June 2015 to June 2017, Local Foods has purchased more than $12.5 million in Midwestern food direct from farmers, keeping our food dollars in our regional economy and creating new jobs in our rural communities by paying a fair price for their goods.
Local Foods specializes in anything grown in the Midwest.
Our business is all about relationships, and that’s what we’re most proud. The relationships we have with our vendors and customers are paramount to our success.
We’ve cultivated relationships with hundreds of farmers and hundreds of chefs. Of the first ten chefs to begin using Local Foods in late spring of 2013, nearly all continue to be customers of Local Foods to this day.
Even more important than our customers is the growth and support our team. We’ve assembled a team of the 50 most passionate and talented food people in Chicagoland.
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
We define success as the impact we have on our farmers, the environment and our team.
In just the last two years (June 2015 to June 2017), we’ve been able to:
Support more than 500 farmers & artisans from the Midwest
Purchase $12.5M from Midwestern farmers
Create and support 275 rural jobs
Divert and compost 48.5k pounds of food
Contact Info:
- Address: 1427 W Willow St
Chicago, IL 60642 - Website: localfoods.com
- Phone: 312-432-6575
- Email: info@localfoods.com
- Instagram: localfoods
- Facebook: localfoodsgrocer
- Twitter: localfoodschi
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/local-foods-chicago
Image Credit:
Huge Galdones
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