City Fresh Foods

Even as I get older I remain optimistic of the human condition and our potential. More recently- I would call it cautiously optimistic. With all of the problems facing us as local, national and global citizens – you may be wondering where the optimism comes from.

It comes from possibilities that are right in front of us- exemplified by people like Hakim Cunningham who fourteen years ago worked for City Fresh Foods, bright, energetic and extremely talkative- Hakim was one of our first office employee’s when City Fresh Foods office was in my apartment- he then went to manage a push cart operation that we set up at Rox Comp Health Center. Last week Hakim and I reconnected because I heard he was involved in urban food growing. It turns out last year he and group of young folks under the auspice of Boston Workers Alliance has been working some of the unused garden plots on three different community gardens. Last year, when harvest time came around they had more produce than they new what do with- thats when he realized that growing food on small plots had business potential- but more importantly he realized the human growth opportunity of growing food – the folks from his team where all volunteers and eager for the next season.

Not too far from these plots- City Growers toiled away at producing lettuce and herb products for market on 1/4 acre lot. City Fresh Foods ended up buying a good amount of this product this first year- in essence taking local, chemical free high quality lettuce products processing them into salads at our locally owned and managed commissary kitchen and feeding hundreds of kids a healthier menu item. Simultaneously this same plot serviced some of Boston’s top restaurants helping to establish economic viability for the local farming team.

Boston is blessed with active and able non profit organizations doing amazing things resulting in impressive track records that include youth development, urban gardening, job training. I am optimistic that these organizations will continue to find innovative ways to work with each other as we tackle the local food issue together. Boston is also blessed with new and creative capital institutions coupled with a host of foundations looking to slow down money and move it into urban local food development in an effective and meaningful way. Intensively produced local protein sources, honey, and value added products are quickly becoming viable opportunities as the greater food system continues to show its fragility in price fluctuation and basic food safety.

Over the weekend I continued a conversation with the Chief Executive Officer of the Sustainability Guild, a Dorchester Native who understands the importance of getting investment resources to flow to the research and development of these urban agricultural concepts and active experiments. We both agreed urban Boston is uniquely positioned to show the world that a mid size industrial city can create a more effective local food system- but this will only come about if the different members of each our communities come together to raise this new system together.

-Glynn

After 6 truckloads of compost/soil blend and the recent perfect blend of rain and heat, the  Sportsmen’s Tennis Club 1/4 acre farm is off to a good start.  Our sister organization City Growers has assembled a talented team and has asked the question:  can a talented grower earn a decent wage on a small piece of land practicing urban intensive farming?  Absolutely-  as long as land access and the high cost of land preparation including the necessary soil for raised beds is subsidized.  City Growers works with the willing landowners – accesses the land, helps raise the funds, establishes the markets, sets up the transportation and the back of the house transactional infrastructure – all this so the grower can focus on growing.  In addition to the 1/4 acre in Dorchester, CG has 2 acres in Milton under cultivation.  We’ll see what kind of gross revenue an acre can bring in when the focus is on maximizing your top line.  This hopefully will  motivate local residents so say- I could do this.

There are thousands of acres of vacant land in urban Boston that have been sitting for decades and look like they will be sitting for decades to come.  The lettuce, salad mix, beets and basil in the ground at Sportsmen’s will be sold to local restaurants and other markets including City Fresh Foods who are eager for fresh, local product and willing to pay its worth.  The exciting part is once you get past the one time steep start up costs- urban farms can be economically self sustaining, green job creators and a huge improvement to the environment.

-Glynn

Just about a year ago, we started having problems with our then pizza supplier.  After the third strike – it was time to find someone new.   We told our schools that we wanted the students to help us choose the new pizza supplier.    Word got out and we had a number of businesses vying for the slot.  My logistics manager who happened to be a baker in his native land Cape Verde, told me” I’d like to supply the pizza, but I need to use the City Fresh kitchen.”  After a cross eyed look, I  saw he was serious.

There were 5 companies vying for the business, our logistics manager who would eventually name his company One Nation was one of them.  Each Friday for five consecutive weeks we sent a new pizza for the students to try.  At the end of the test period, they were to vote on which they considered the best.  One Nation beat out the competition, among the students and among our staff it was hands down the best pizza made.

Now every weekend, at the City Fresh kitchen our Logistics Manager leads his team in creating some really good pizza.  The dough is made from scratch, baked, sauced and cheesed. The finished product is blast chilled and then frozen.  Later that week, on pizza day City Fresh bakes the pizza and delivers it to the students fresh from our ovens.  In so doing, $85,000 in annualized expenditures that would have left our neighborhood, now stays and our eaters are blessed with an amazing meal.   This is one of the unintentional consequences of operating a pioneering community business.  One I wouldn’t trade off for anything.

-Glynn

Everything has a story including the food we eat and the places where we live and work.  Although we miss Dorchester, City Fresh Foods is glad to be back in Roxbury.  Last night at the Haley House I had the privilege of hearing Representative and Historian Byron Rushing lecture on the History of Roxbury.  By the way – if you get a chance GO check out the Haley House Cafe- which is a great meeting place in Roxbury – with healthy and tasty food and numerous interesting and artful venues.  There I was reacquainted  with the fact that 1/2 of Roxbury’s history was primarily the Puritan experience from 1630 all the way to the  early 1800’s.  The Puritans left England and came to our shores with the objective to set up a “New” England, 17 ships in tow including cattle.   They were not the first European, to come visiting our shores, in fact decades earlier Europeans fished our northern Atlantic coast,  mostly for cod,  and they had set up camps along the shore, intermingled with the Natives unintentionally exposing the locals to their infectious diseases.  In this wake,  the Puritans came, set up shop, worked hard building ships, practicing trade and working the land.  They prospered.   Two of the Puritans most profitable crops were pears and apples, the apples being processed into cider.  Try not to smile.

It was over a century later, when the Irish, then Jews and Blacks moved into Roxbury.  Just before the time I was born,  Jews were moving out to the Suburban enclaves while the blacks became concentrated in Roxbury, North Dorchester and Mattapan bringing our culture and foods.

One of those foods at the center of our culture is collard greens.  Although the Romans cooked many types of greens including collards, and the history of the cousin of cabbage goes back to prehistoric times,  it was the African American slaves who brought collard greens to a new art form.   Unlike slaves in the caribbean, African American Slaves were allowed to grow food for themselves.  Like our new Alabaman born Chef Lee says- soul food comes from a history of fresh food, fresh from the small garden plots of our ancestors.  What used to be ham hocks or smoked turkey neck or other left overs from the main house used to season the collards, we have slightly modernized our approach, so the vegetarians of the world can enjoy the results.  Here at City Fresh its some onion, salt and pepper and some special seasoning- and you will be singing.   At catered events throughout Boston during this special month I hope you will get a try-  as the greens melt in your mouth- you’ll have a better knowledge of their history.

-Glynn

I just got back from speaking at the ECO Farm conference.  The original organizers of the conference were celebrating 30 years of saying and creating an alternative way to the conventional, industrial farm system.  When they started in 1980 1/10th of 1% of all farms at the time were considered organic.   Today in 2010 that number is 3%.  Which is a large jump-  but then again when you think about it 97% are still putting a lot of unnecessary harmful chemicals into the soil and into our food.  Organic growing systems replenish the soil, conventional mono-crop growing systems gradually destroy the soil.  What happens when we don’t have any soil left?  Yeah that’s right – we have a big problem.

Folks like Wes Jackson of the Land Institute who opened up the conference makes me hopeful.  For the last 30 years his research center has been working to develop a perennial prairie grass that would compete with the wheat annuals.  What this means is that upon success we would be able to harvest our grains from a bio diverse system that demands no artificial chemicals or excessive watering and preserves the soil.  Now he did say initially that his research and development was a 50 to 100 year project,  and he reports some things they are ahead of schedule and some right on schedule.  All I can say is gods speed to you and your team Wes.  Meanwhile here at City Fresh Foods, we are going to focus our attentions on the vacant land closest to us and throughout our community and ask the question is there a viable business model for someone to intensively grow organic fruits and vegetables on these vacant parcels?   Stay tuned… the answer is the future of farming.

-Glynn

I’ll get straight to it.  The current food system we all are apart of is wrought with problems.  Unnatural ways of production, heavy reliance on harmful chemicals, more and more food recalls, items with less nutrition per bite then just a few decades ago, the list goes on.  One thing is clear in these modern times,  the average consumer has lost touch with where food comes from.  Many of the children we service think food comes from a supermarket.  Larger food suppliers up and down the food chain have developed operating systems and value added processes that most consumers remain completely ignorant of.  Yet we demand and we buy these products and we put them in our body.

Fortunately more and more of us are starting to question, investigate and change our consumption habits around food.  Are you ? The recent rise and expansion of Farmer’s Markets and Consumer Supported Agriculture (CSA’s) and this new energy of  supporting local is reassuring.    But things will have to move a lot faster if we are going to restructure a more stable, sustainable food system based on real, healthy, local food.  And it starts with pull.   Pull is the demand that drives the market.  Annually City Fresh Foods currently buys over $2 million in food products- a drop in the bucket- but enough pull in one concentrated arena to start pushing the conventional envelope.  If we can show that a food service institution serving thousands of meals a day can introduce more and more locally supplied raw and value added items into our commissary with our restrictive budget, regulations and operating constraints.  Then why can’t more institutions follow.  I will warn you now, we are just getting started.  Grab on and let’s all help pull our current food system in the right direction.

-Glynn

Are you packing a lunch to work, grabbing take out or skipping lunch all together? If you had an option of ordering a freshly crafted salad with options like grilled marinated chicken, cherry tomatoes, crumbled feta,  homemade dressing and a slice of pita bread delivered to your office at a reasonable price would you bite?  What if half to all of the salad ingredients were locally and organically produced would that make a difference?  How often would you order from a selection of  fantastically crafted salads- once a week maybe? Tell Me I am dying to know.  Here’s why.   City Fresh is currently offering this service including salad choices like Greek and Grilled Shrimp to the teachers and administrators that work in the buildings that we currently service.  Do think this offering would garner enough demand in the building you work in?  If so  moved, drop me a note- I’d love to know.

-Glynn

When we can pull together strong talent each with knowledge and experience in a particular business segment and have them work together in a common goal.  The result is very powerful.   We are doing this with our new special event catering service.   At the table is a select group of current employees with 100 years of event catering experience including our most recent team member; Shepard Lee or better known as the owner of Chef Lee’s the soul food retail and catering establishment with over 20 years of service to the Greater Boston community.  We have taken the best practices of our experienced team and created an operating structure of consistent outstanding quality cuisine and service that leaves the customer very satisfied.    An aligned goal binds our team and we have built in flexibility of roles and functions to help ensure longetivty.

I invite you to try our catering service and I look forward to updating you on our growth long from now.

-Glynn

In the search for perfection-  in the search for perfect vegetables.. we cook,we try, we cook again.  Seventy pounds of fresh cut zuchinni placed into 25 gallons of specially seasoned boiling water- for 10 minutes.  Now that is a good tasting zuchinni at the perfect texture.  Now the City Fresh team pulls together to ensure consistency on the process.   And it leaves us all waiting for the first local harvest of zuchinni expected in Mid August-  I can only imagine how good that will taste.

-Glynn