2-21 IAT Locavore

 More and more restaurants are broadcasting the fact that the food they are serving comes from local sources. White tablecloths, fancy silverware and wine glasses are taking on the locavore look.

 There are a couple of restaurants in Boise that spend a lot of effort letting potential clientele know that they use as much locally produced food as possible. Think about it. It makes sense. 1st, the perception would certainly be that the food is fresher. 2nd, people are endeared to the fact that a business tries to patronize others from their community. But there are other reasons as Lacey Menasco, trade specialist at the Idaho State Department of Agriculture, explains: “ There’s a lot of interest in local food, people are  looking for a little more trust in the food system I had a friend tell me that she heard at a conference recently one of the trends nationally is that people trust no one. I don’t think it is necessarily that they don’t trust the food system, local food is just trendy right now even at the national scale and national restaurant associations and those big national surveys of chefs who here local is always one of the tops, even in the specialty foods industry with food processing, local is one of the top trends and is going to continue to be one of the top trends. The larger restaurants are using local food and that is definitely something restaurants promote is that when they do use local food it is a marketing tool for them because consumers are looking for local products. We see whole restaurants based on the fact that they are sourcing locally.