TL;DR
Fast-casual restaurants are adopting farm-to-table practices due to trends and incentives like community involvement. b.good cofounder Jon Olinto launched a farm called Hannah Farm, which supplies produce to the restaurant and an urban youth program.
While serving only produce grown by yourself is not a realistic short-term goal, some fast-casual restaurants are implementing the practice due to a slew of incentives.
For one, farm-to-table is a major trend. And as fast casual restaurants become healthier and increase in quality, it makes sense to move in a more self-sufficient direction. Another major incentive is the community involvement it encourages.
Jon Olinto, cofounder of healthy fast casual b.good, launched a small farm called Hannah Farm earlier in 2016. As of now, seventy-five percent of the produce from the farm feeds kids at Camp Harbor View, an at-risk urban youth program. The other twenty-five percent of produce goes back to b.good.
“It can drive a lot of customer engagement,” Olinto told QSR. “Volunteer sign-up was sold out in less than 48 hours. People were fired up to come work with us for a day. We had two customers every weekday for two months. That’s huge.”
In this story
This story was originally published in 1851 Franchise on November 9, 2016. Burnaze summarizes and links to the original reporting.
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