By Ben Lashar

FARM-TO-TABLE GENERALLY refers to when meat or produce goes from a farm to a restaurant. Mark Vander Kooy, CEO of Trader’s Point Creamery, Zionsville, thinks this definition is too vague. 

“Under that definition, McDonald’s can be farm-to-table,” Vander Kooy said. “At some point it was at a farm.”

To Vander Kooy, farm-to-table is not just about a farmer being present somewhere in the food-making process but the relationship between the restaurant and farm. If a restaurateur knows a local farmer and partners with them to serve fresh food, then Vander Kooy believes it’s the true definition of farm-to-table. Following that definition of farm-to-table is expensive and requires more work from farmers and restaurants, but it leads to a fresher taste for restaurants and more business for smaller farms.

Lindsay Dingman Sheffield, chef at Jefferson Street BBQ in Converse, said being truly farm-to-table requires research from restaurants because “local farm” can have different meetings. She once discovered “local” pigs from a distributor actually came from Michigan. That business defined “local” as “from the Midwest.” 

To find Indiana-based farms, Sheffield suggests contacting Indiana Grown, the Indiana State Department of Agriculture’s initiative to advocate and provide opportunities for Hoosier farmers. 

“I would always recommend someone visit the farm,” Sheffield said. “That’s one of the really neat things about the farm we work with. They actually offer farm tours, so you can actually go there, see the hogs, see what is happening and ask the famer questions directly.”

The farm-to-table concept deepens the relationship between the farmer and the restaurant owner. The farmer is no longer simply a supplier, but a partner, and the restaurant owner knows exactly how produce is grown or livestock are fed. 

Amboy’s Hunt Family Farms, which sells pork to Jefferson Street BBQ, makes a special cornmeal feed mixed with an all-natural byproduct from sunflower seed oil to feed its pigs. Sheffield knows the cornmeal will give the pigs a unique flavor no one else can replicate and can prepare her dishes to complement the taste.

“By having a sunflower meal and the canola meal in their diet, plus the fact they’re being raised outdoors, it gives it a whole different taste in the meat,” Nathan Hunt, co-owner of Hunt family farms said. 

Restaurant owners who buy produce from DeAnthony Jamerson, co-owner of Legacy Taste of the Garden in Princeton, know Jamerson doesn’t use pesticide on his produce. Jamerson prefers using the less modern, but all-natural method of using cayenne peppers and cinnamon to keep pesky bugs away. It’s less effective, so it requires Jamerson to spend more time checking crops for infestation. However, the end results is a chemical-free product, which Jamerson believes is healthier.

“If the bug doesn’t want to eat the plant, then you necessarily wouldn’t want to eat it either,” Jamerson said. “It’s low harm to the human body, but that chemical is still going into your body.”

While restaurants get fresh ingredients from farm-to-table, smaller farms get business partners. Jamerson noted large distributors and companies traditionally dominate farming, but between consumers wanting to know more about the origins of their food and resources such as Indiana Grown connecting farmers to clients, there are more opportunities than ever for independent farmers to thrive. In fact, Jamerson predicts if this trend continues, smaller independent farms may take more of the market from large distributors.

“People want to know what they are eating and where their food is coming from,” Jamerson said.

 “People want to have more control of what they are eating. … The trend is a lot of people want to know who their farmer is.”

By Lisa Renze-Rhodes

IT STARTED WITH LUNCH AFTER CHURCH ONE Sunday. 

Sarah, the girl home from college, noticed the server, Alberto, at the restaurant her parents frequented often. The server noticed the girl. In time, one reached out to the other to text and chat, then go on a date and then another. 

The rest, as the saying goes, is the history of how Alberto  and Sarah Bravo fell in love, started a family and soon realized Alberto’s dream of owning his own restaurant, which the couple named after their first daughter, Luciana. Today, the couple own and operate four Luciana’s Restaurant and Cantina sites, with two locations in Indianapolis, one in Greenwood, and one in Columbus. 

“We’re coming up on our four-year anniversary in Broad Ripple,” says Debbie Bosworth, Sarah’s mom and the operations manager for the company. “People are really knowing the name Luciana’s now. They know what to expect and they know we just don’t compromise quality on anything.”

The Luciana’s team has made it past one of the first toughest hurdles of owning a restaurant — staying alive. According to experts, getting beyond the first two to three years in business is a pretty good indication a restaurant can survive.

“An independent restaurant versus a chain restaurant is always going to have a tougher time,” says Dennis Gemberling, founder and president of Perry Group International a hospitality and restaurant industry consulting and research firm based in San Francisco. “They don’t have the name awareness, they don’t have the marketing budget behind them. 

“But if you’ve really established yourself positively, it starts to feed off itself.”

Gemberling says within the past five years, the industry has grown healthier and more viable.  

Experts with the National Restaurant Association project sales to reach a record $863 billion in 2019 — a 3.6 percent increase over last year. Those sales, though, are still off the overall growth in the industry prior to the 2007-08 start of the Great Recession. 

Owning any business, and more importantly keeping it thriving, can be tough. So Joe Pellman, director of marketing and communications for Indy Chamber, says they help new business owners through their Entrepreneur Services team, which offers free one-on-one small business coaching to businesses of any kind across the Indianapolis region, as well as provides small business loans up to $50,000.

“Our team logs over 10,000 hours of free business coaching and training opportunities each year through its anchor program, the Business Ownership Initiative (or BOI for short),” Pellman says. 

The Indy Chamber partners with the Business Ownership Initiative, the Central Indiana Women’s Business Center, and the Hispanic Business Council to help local entrepreneurs not only start their business, but keep those initiatives growing and thriving. Experts say that support is critical.  

“Success is never final in the restaurant industry,” says Vanessa Sink, with the National Restaurant Association, based in Washington, D.C. “Nothing replaces a good business plan. Nine of 10 consumers say they enjoy going to restaurants, but if the experience doesn’t meet the value received, diners are quick to vote with their feet.”

Luciana’s Bosworth says customer satisfaction is at the heart of everything the family does. They work to provide the same feel and experience that the Bosworth family felt when, so many years ago, repeated visits to their favorite restaurant sparked a future they couldn’t have imagined at the time. 

“We take it personally because Luciana’s name is involved,” Bosworth says. “Our stuff is made fresh, it’s not sitting around waiting to be served. … We don’t order (in bulk) and we don’t keep inventory around.

“We want our staff to have pride in what we serve.”

The family came together to scrub, paint, decorate and plan for the original site opening in 2015, and they have no plans to stop doing what they love. She says the family is planning a new location opening for 2020, but is waiting to announce the site until a celebration can be planned. The fifth Luciana’s, she said, will be further proof of the power of hope and imagination. 

“Sometimes you need someone to believe along with you in your dream. You give it to God and stand back,” Bosworth says. “We are Luciana’s because Luciana is in our heart. It’s a family business and we are looking to grow.”

By Brittany King

IN NOVEMBER 2013, FAITH Jackson, Indianapolis, suffered a horrible loss. Five months into her pregnancy, Jackson lost her baby girl. 

At the time, Jackson weighed 345 pounds, she was discouraged by her weight and what she had experienced. But at the beginning of 2014, she decided to shift her focus and work on herself. She began by slowly changing the way she ate and getting exercise. 

The changes were difficult at first because she was embarking on a lifestyle she wasn’t used to. 

“We didn’t have a lot of money growing up. We shopped at Seven Eleven (grocery store) and ate what we could to fill our bellies,” she says.

Eventually, she saw results, and her friends and family noticed too. They began asking for meal plans and advice on how to cook healthy foods. The inquiries were so overwhelming, she decided to go into business and turned to Indy’s Kitchen. That’s how Flavor by Faith was born.

Indy’s Kitchen is a 2,300 square-foot facility that is open 24 hours a day. The space includes a commercial kitchen, dining area as well as room temperature and cold storage options. 

Indy’s Kitchen isn’t the only establishment in Indiana serving the community and small business owners looking to build their food organizations. Nana Clare’s in Valparaiso was created as an affordable option for entrepreneurs to test the waters before buying their own commercial kitchen. 

“Food business entrepreneurs can run their business out of our kitchen, introduce their product and begin to build their brand without the financial burden,” says owner Gina Zieniewicz. “In our kitchen, they can build their business as big as they want it to be or as small as they are comfortable with. Outside of a kitchen like ours, the only option to grow your business would be to open your own brick and mortar. That’s a huge financial risk if the product has not been introduced to the public before.”

Similarly, ArtHouse in Gary is helping revitalize the city by giving entrepreneurs a place to prepare their food. Beyond the shared kitchen, the space also serves as a meeting hub for the community. With 5,000 square feet of space, the nonprofit is able to host job fairs, weddings, baby showers and even city council meetings. ArtHouse opened in 2016 as a priority of Mayor Karen Freeman Wilson. The space was made possible with the help of $1.6 million in grant funding. 

The city of Gary’s Director of Commerce Karla Henderson says the financial support was an integral part in getting the location off the ground and is why they’re still able to serve the community to this day. 

“Having this space in the community has been transformative,” Henderson says. “We’re downtown across from the RailCat’s Stadium, members who use our space have their own key fobs and can come and go whenever they need to. We even have a couple that produces tea in our facility and on their bottle, it says ‘Made in Gary, IN’ that’s really special to us.”

By Miranda Miller

IT’S NO SECRET THAT AMERICANS LOVE FOOD. We photograph it, blog about it and even travel for it, following in Anthony Bourdain and Guy Fieri’s footsteps, but we hate battling jam-packed parking lots and long lines to shop for it. Over the past several years, Blue Apron, Plated, Dinnerly and other meal-kit companies have enabled us to skip this errand and get right to the good stuff, but retailers aren’t going down without a fight. This has made the grocery industry increasingly competitive, convenient and healthy. 

To lure customers at least as far as the fire lane, many grocery stores have started allowing consumers to buy items online and pick them up from the comfort of their car. Meijer began testing this enticement at select stores in 2015. Today, curbside pickup is available at all 246 stores, including 39 in Indiana, for a $4.95 fee. 

Typically, orders are ready within three hours, says Digital Shopping director Justin Sessink. “And because most Meijer stores are open 24 hours a day, those with challenging schedules or third-shift jobs have the opportunity to [pick up] orders very early in the morning or late at night.”

Alternatively, customers can have their order delivered in an hour thanks to Shipt, which sends personal shoppers to Meijer, Costco and Target, which acquired the company in 2017, to gather, bag and transport items that members paid for via the app or online. Shipt charges $99 per year or $14 per month for this membership and tacks on a $7 delivery fee for orders under $35, but orders over $35 are free.

The beauty of this service, according to The Penny Hoarder’s editorial assistant, Jessica Gray, who tried it while she was sick, lies in Shipt’s app’s messaging system, which permits shoppers to communicate with their clients. 

“When she was done shopping, my shopper sent me a message to let me know she was on her way to my house,” Gray says. “This was great because it gave me time to get out of bed and put on decent clothes before she arrived.”

Shipt’s shoppers also touch base to suggest substitutions if an item is out of stock and to get feedback on produce options. But due to the way grocery stores do business, importing food from all over the world, they can’t provide as much information as Indiana-based Green BEAN Delivery, which lists an item’s origin and how it was produced. 

Since its inception in 2007, Green BEAN Delivery has developed a vast network of farmers and artisans across the country and metamorphosed from a farm-to-table delivery service to a full-scale grocery store that sells all-natural and organic brands. In fact, it may be the reason you see more local and organic brands in your grocery store. 

“Since I started working for Green BEAN Delivery in 2010, the grocery industry has evolved in a big way,” says James Nimmer, director of partnerships and engagement. “I wouldn’t say that Green BEAN Delivery changed the way that grocery stores do business, but we were a pioneer in offering consumers options that weren’t yet available throughout the grocery store industry.”

Like the meal-kit companies it inspired, Green BEAN Delivery packs orders with an ice pack so customers don’t need to be home when their order arrives. But unlike the grocery stores it competes with, it doesn’t require a membership, just a minimum order of $20 in groceries per delivery. The $4.99 delivery fee decreases to $2.99 for orders over $35 and $0 for orders over $65.

Even better, Green BEAN Delivery donates one meal worth of ingredients to a local food bank, such as Second Helpings in Indianapolis, every time someone places an order, helping the community stay as healthy as its customers.