Commodore Bob’s Yacht Club in Starkville’s Cotton District is an upscale restaurant, the kind you would expect to find in some ritzy urban setting. The owners describe it as a “contemporary style restaurant that focuses on elevating casual cuisine to a higher standard. Unique dishes. Innovative recipes.” In other words, it’s sophisticated dining in a university town; definitely not the meat-and-three cafe out on the highway that usually springs to mind when you think about restaurants that serve locally-grown produce. But the truth is, the fine-dining restaurants use local produce too.
“We like to use as much local produce as possible,” says Brady Hindman, owner of Commodore Bob’s, “and I guarantee you all the locally owned restaurants want to buy from local growers. We get a lot of our micro-greens locally, the kind we use for garnishes. That includes radishes, cilantro, dill, amaranth, bean sprouts, and sunflower shoots. Those are basically the ones we use, but it’s not only restaurants who buy local micro-greens and other specialty items. Big companies like U.S. Foods and Cisco actually source their herbs from withing a 150-mile radius.”
Commodore Bob’s does not limit its purchases of locally grown food to micro-greens. “One of the biggest local products we use is rice,” Brady said, “and it’s milled brown rice. That’s what we make our grits out of. And we get some vegetables, particularly tomatoes, from Mayhew Tomato Farm over in Lowndes County. We get our greens and garnishes from a local farm, Bountiful Harvest Farm run by Sam McLemore. It’s here in Starkville. I know that Harvey’s and the Grill (two Starkville restaurants) also buy from Bountiful Harvest. I like it because we can drive out there, select what we want, and cut it ourselves, assuming we have the time.”
And time is one of the challenges faced by restauranteurs who want to buy local produce. “Restaurant owners are always pressed for time,” Brady says, “so having to go get our produce, especially from several sources, can be a big problem. It’s so much easier and quicker to just order stuff and have it brought in on a truck and just wheeled in the front door. So maybe if people with local farms would deliver, it would help.”
This delivery problem is sometimes solved by jobbers such as United Produce in Starkville. They make the rounds to the local restaurants and sell by the case. “They are probably our number one supplier of fruits and vegetables,” Brady said, “and I’m usually not aware of where they get their product. It’s likely they buy from local farms.”
Brady feels that local farmers would probably benefit by finding ways to get their product to the customer rather than having the customer come to them. “There are apps we use to see who has what for sale, and in what quantities, and in real time,” he said. “Local farmers could probably benefit from some kind of local produce exchange, some type of clearing house where farmers could post what they’ve got.”
But the time factor and problems with delivery are not the only problems a restaurant encounters when buying locally. “The biggest challenge for using local food it the volume a restaurant needs versus the amount a small farm can produce,” says Brady. “Some farms may be able to meet a restaurant’s need for a single crop, but it’s hard for a small grower to meet the demand for all vegetables across the board, so the restaurant relying on local produce would have to go to several different sources.”
So if a small farmer wants to sell directly to a restaurant, he or she may want to try some specialty item, some micro-green such as cilantro or dill. Coming up with an economical way to deliver the product would also be a leg up. And marketing the product, letting a restaurant know what crop is in and in what quantity, is really important. There are challenges to be sure, but Brady Hindman has some good news for small farmers. “People want vegetables that are locally grown on good soil and not saturated with chemicals to make them prettier and bigger,” he says, “so where it’s possible, restaurants prefer to but from a local source.”
Commodore Bob’s Yacht Club is located in the Nash Historical District at 517 University Drive, Starkville, MS 39759. Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, dinner 4:30 to 9:30, and Saturday & Sunday, brunch 11:00 to 2:00 phone: 662-268-8326
