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National Recognition for Local Producers
| Meet the Blogger | More Posts by Jenny Brown The local producers we work with sometimes get national recognition! We wanted to share with you the press that a few of our Local Producer Loan recipients have received lately.
Revolution Foods founders Kristin Richmond and Kirsten Tobey have set the bar for healthy school lunches really high - and this article in the New York Times explains how and why. We are proud to have provided them with Local Producer Loan Program funds to help their expansion! The Revolution Foods products you buy in our stores help support this valuable work. (Now available in 160 of our stores.)
Favorite coffee shops don't just serve terrific joe; they also act as a modern-day meeting place. This Eastside spot with Owl Tree coffee and fresh biscuits is the best hangout in town.
Check out the rest of the piece here, as well as a great video on Progress Coffee. And if you live in Austin, go visit the shop itself or pick up some of their coffee at our Austin or San Antonio stores!
We love being able to offer Will Harris's grass-fed beef to our customers in our South Region stores. And we also love listening to him talk about his family's fifth-generation Georgia ranch, White Oak Pastures! Edible Radio just did an interview with him about the history of the ranch, his transition from industrial beef to artisanal grass-fed beef, and the state of sustainable agriculture. He also talks about his on-farm processing plant, financed in part by Whole Foods Market's Local Producer Loan Program. Will is knowledgeable and engaging; if you eat White Oak Pastures beef and want to know more about where your food comes from, you should definitely check out the interview here. We've featured Will in our own slide show interview too.
It's great to work with such special local producers and it's great to see others noticing them too.
Revolution Foods Featured in the New York Times
Revolution Foods founders Kristin Richmond and Kirsten Tobey have set the bar for healthy school lunches really high - and this article in the New York Times explains how and why. We are proud to have provided them with Local Producer Loan Program funds to help their expansion! The Revolution Foods products you buy in our stores help support this valuable work. (Now available in 160 of our stores.)
Progress Coffee: One of America's Ten Best Boutique Coffee Shops!
Congratulations to Local Producer Loan recipient Progress Coffee! In its January issue, Bon Appétit magazine named them one of the ten best boutique coffee shops in the U.S. Here's what the magazine had to say:Favorite coffee shops don't just serve terrific joe; they also act as a modern-day meeting place. This Eastside spot with Owl Tree coffee and fresh biscuits is the best hangout in town.
Check out the rest of the piece here, as well as a great video on Progress Coffee. And if you live in Austin, go visit the shop itself or pick up some of their coffee at our Austin or San Antonio stores!
Edible Radio Interviews Will Harris of White Oak Pastures
We love being able to offer Will Harris's grass-fed beef to our customers in our South Region stores. And we also love listening to him talk about his family's fifth-generation Georgia ranch, White Oak Pastures! Edible Radio just did an interview with him about the history of the ranch, his transition from industrial beef to artisanal grass-fed beef, and the state of sustainable agriculture. He also talks about his on-farm processing plant, financed in part by Whole Foods Market's Local Producer Loan Program. Will is knowledgeable and engaging; if you eat White Oak Pastures beef and want to know more about where your food comes from, you should definitely check out the interview here. We've featured Will in our own slide show interview too.
It's great to work with such special local producers and it's great to see others noticing them too.
5 Comments
Comments
I have always thought of Whole Foods as a beacon of sanity within the poisoned food industries of the world. It is one of my favorite stores. However, I just saw the Youtube video on Whole Foods Organic products being an export of China. There is no way that food from half way around the world could possibly meet any of our organic standards. I had no idea that they have sold out the very essence of why health conscious consumers passionately flock to them for corporate greed. This is in utter conflict with the core values listed on their website. You would think that a company built on solid values like Whole Foods would support the home-grown economy in addition to healthy foods. It seems that they are now cutting corners on both. Kevin Thomas
02/20/2010 9:50:53 PM CST
The local program is a disingenuous. I have talked to many local producers whose lines are being discontinued because they don't meet "corporate sales metrics." Duh. Local brands are a fraction of the Whole Foods regional area sales and cannot rack up the sales figures that deep-pocketed major consumer packaged goods companies that cut a cross-regional sales deal with corporate in Austin. So Austin, looks at the overall sales figures of a local line that may be in 7 of the 15 eligible stores in the region and are then deemed by Austin management as too low sales and are de-listed from the region, even though a local line may be selling fine in its local WFM stores. I implore WHF to get its criteria transparent and quite spending so much advertising dollars on branding that WFM is a local supporter of suppliers when, in pratice, they operate as a Safeway would.
02/21/2010 5:19:02 PM CST
Everyone knows- or at least they should, that locally grown produce is better, and fresher. It is raised for taste, not long distance shipping.
03/18/2011 8:48:52 AM CDT
Everyone knows- or at least they should, that locally grown produce is better, and fresher. It is raised for taste, not long distance shipping.
March 18th, 2011 at 8:48 am
03/18/2011 8:50:14 AM CDT
if we eat local, organic food, we feed our bodies with food grown in our area by people who care about what we eat; food that has been planted with local hands and nourished with local soil,water and sun. food tastes better when it comes from where we live. food is better for us when it is grown from where we live.
03/18/2011 9:22:15 PM CDT