Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Detours: meat and ethics in Kansas City”.
My brother, he got into cooking 14 15 years old and he would take me in here. I was this little 7. You know eight-year-old going with him to the farmers market. You get a relationship with the people, growing your food and that included in meat as well.
The butcher’s would be there with the Farley’s. My career has been in technology around business development, and I just saw from working in technology and working around startups. They had these plays around collaborative consumption, and I thought was why couldn’t collaborative consumption also be applied to food production, creating a platform where there could be collaborative consumption for the farmers white clover is a hundred percent, grass-fed beef farm with a 45 head of cattle. We also race pasture pigs on pasture. We have about 60 acres of pasture, that’s right, the rest of woods swamp about 125 total. We had some friends, they got their first free kicks and they named them a ham, sausage and bacon. The traditional beef production is is, basically, you have ranchers that have cow calf operations on large ranches and usually the calves are born there, their own grants, for you know somewhere close to a year and then they’re shipped to feedlots.
I’Ve seen these huge feed Lots where they’re felt a lot of grains, antibiotics so on and so forth. This is kind of more sort of old-fashioned or retro farming and it’s good for the soil. It’S good for the environment, it’s good for people’s health, so so the hope is that we’re making a contribution you make things a little better. My name is Kevin esco, executive chef of Park Avenue summer autumn winter and spring.
We need suppliers who are consistent, which is very difficult to do with small farmers. You can you can’t tell them pick the tomatoes if they’re not ready, you know some that’s kind of why, especially large scale operations are very difficult to round, not opposed to like a smaller 30 or 40 c restaurant, whereas this restaurant 180 seats we’re serving 500 people. Some nights for selling you know filet mignon. We need 8090 orders of that small scale.
Farmers have a tough time producing that. If I walk into a restaurant – and I said oh, this is what we’re doing or co-op. You know beef producers. What you wanted to you, can you work with us and you’re like well? We want hanger steaks.
Well, guys, there’s one hanger per animal, but you know I, how am I gon na supply you with hangers? You know I’m not a feedlot with you know. Ten thousand thousand animals to get you your hangers every week, these huge companies, I everything and you can – the farmers just have to sell out in the end. If I’m a farmer today, you know I need some qualified demand, I’m a very specific type of operator. I’M an Ag operator, you know, I’m not going to be somebody who has a lot of time to you know, set up a really sophisticated business, development or sales infrastructure.
For my farm. Add local man come in and create that qualified demand that only exists in the commodity channel and provide also some you know some light infrastructure to be able to service that they are creating the infrastructure necessary to house all the information, meaning that you know this way. There’S there’s one central spot where all the farmers can of their products listed and chefs can go on there and know exactly what’s available and have descriptions of the products it’s something we could never do. I mean we never have the budget for something like that. In addition, we’re small – I mean we really couldn’t supply a restaurant ourselves, that’s its whole new infrastructure, film, from the way things were done for the most part. You know.
Midwestern cities have been left out of this technology, startup kind of story over the last 20 years. Until recently – and I think a lot of that has to do with the access to technology – it’s cheaper to start companies now, there’s more free-flowing capital now and there’s just a better education and awareness that has been opened up for people that want to found companies. What I think is great about Kansas City is that, like it’s very, very communal in a certain way, whereas like in most big cities, now you wouldn’t know who your neighbor is in Kansas City, it’s, like you, know all your neighbors. You know everyone around you immediately when I decided to start the company I had you know like a small community of like 10 or 15 people that were just like giving me advice connecting me to funders and all that happened for me in Kansas City.
So I think it’s like it speaks to something where I think entrepreneurship is more accessible geographically, as well now, for our business model to grow, one of these things will have to catch. Everyone wants to eat local and everyone wants to eat organic or you know, flavorful foods. I think that these apps and new platforms are going to make it much easier for restaurants to order that way, things are changing for the better.
There still is a very long way to go right now – it’s probably ninety percent to ten percent and to get it to 6040. You know forty percent, small local farmers and sixty percent commercialized food. That would, I think, that’s definitely going to happen next ten years or something a lot of this house still so happening and in Washington. Our policies have to change everything from subsidies to the weight of food systems regulated. I guess what I’m trying to do is put the control of the system, put the control of the power back in the hands of the people who want control of the system to create transparency, because transparency creates democracy and if we’re successful, we will change the way That the world works in a certain way. .