Infuse Infuse 10 December 2019 | Page 26

"Our goal is to get people to experience food from the farmer’s perspective" What can attendees expect on one of your culinary tours? What are some of the challenges that chefs face? L: We research each tour at great length and no two experiences are ever the same. Our goal is to get people to experience food from the farmer’s perspective. L: Every chef, whether they're fine dining or high volume or a small cafe, is dealing with food costs and staff retention. And within those sorts of daily parameters, it can get very difficult to be creative. Quality ingredients aren't cheap so keeping all those costs in line and putting great food on the plate is always tricky. That's why what we do at Straight To The Source is so important- we're making a case for buying quality produce, be it for the flavour, nutritional value or both. We’ve become very disconnected from our food sources. Supermarkets are incredibly convenient, but they don't tell the story of how that produce got there. We try to get people out of their normal environments and give them a behind the scenes look at a particular ingredient or growing region. We're very focused on collaborating with growers and allowing them to tell their story. The overall objective is to start a conversation between the people that grow the food and the people that source the food. We’ve found that those conversations lead to small changes in production that better suit the end user. Similarly, chefs gain a new perspective on seasonality and often adapt their buying patterns. We really put a focus on education and professional development as opposed to gastronomic luxury experiences. In addition, we don't have any stakeholders, so we make the decisions about who we visit and why we visit. © Dietitian Connection Images courtesy of @straight_to_the_source 26 Infuse | December 2019