Best Practices of Financially Sustainable Incentive Programs for Sourcing and Verifying Local Food in Restaurants

Restaurants are often key supporters of local producers and a cornerstone for creating diversified and vibrant local food systems. At the same time, restaurants that claim local sourcing as a business priority can make these claims with just a few (or zero) menu items that have local farmgate impact. Consumer trust in . and subsequent willingness to pay more for . local items can be undermined by the absence of systems for verifying and legitimizing local food sourcing claims. In this proposal, we address two related issues to improve economic opportunities for farmers, and by extension rural economies. First, to improve local sourcing in restaurants, we will identify best practices for facilitating relationships between local producers and restaurants. We will conduct interviews with personnel in four states with well]regarded farm to]estaurant programs as well as Kentucky restaurants who are involved in the Buy Local program. Kentucky farmers will be surveyed on similar issues. Our second main issue is to develop strategies for verifying local purchasing. We will evaluate different systems for verifying businesses level of local sourcing. We will conduct a conjoint analysis survey to determine consumer willingness to pay for locallydesignated items and interview restaurateurs about source level identification schema. By understanding strategies of consumer engagement and local product incentivization and verification, we will develop best practices that state departments of agriculture can use to improve local sourcing programs. We will also collaborate with the Kentucky Department of Agriculture to assist the Buy Local programfs evolution from its current role of subsidizing local restaurant purchases.