Specialty Food Magazine is the leading publication for retailers, manufacturers and foodservice professionals in the specialty food trade. It provides news, trends and business-building insights that help readers keep their businesses competitive.
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/567722
Farming for Healing and Health In the aftermath of losing her young daughter to a brain aneurysm, "I found that the only place where I didn't feel totally shattered was in the farmers market or in farm fields," Neumark recalls. A few months later, she decided to purchase a farm and establish The Sylvia Center. A year and a half passed before she and her husband found 60 acres in Columbia County to launch the farm and education center. Today, Katchkie supplies Great Performances with fresh produce for special events, as well as farmers markets throughout New York and the company's cafes. The business created the 100 Mile Menu, for which all primary ingredients are sourced from within a 100-mile radius of New York City. The farm's pro- duce is also used for a line of artisanal products, which includes sofi Award finalist Katchkie Tomato Jam, as well as ketchup, salsa, tomato sauce, and more. All profits go toward supporting The Sylvia Center's programs, such as the Teen Chefs: Skills for Life Culinary Program that teaches teens in New York City how to cook fresh, plant-based meals, and the Seed to Plate Program upstate, a series of six 90-minute classes taking place weekly in a school or youth center. Ultimately, the farm is sustained by its successful CSA, which serves 600 members each year. Neumark finds ways in each area of her business to give back. Katchkie Farm commits 5 percent of its annual harvest to area anti-hunger organizations like Yorkville Common Pantry and City Harvest. The farm strives for environmental sustainability, with such practices as using leftover cooking oil from catering events to heat the greenhouse. In 2014, Neumark implemented a kitchen compost program, and compostable bags are used to deliver the CSA produce. Neumark 's success has earned her recognition on Crain's New York Business 100 Most Inf luential Women list and the 2009 Ernst & Young New York Entrepreneur of the Year Award. But it's the creation of Katchkie Farm and The Sylvia Center in 2006 that remains closest to her heart. Both were her lifeline while grieving the loss of her 6-year-old daughter, Sylvia, who inspired The Sylvia Center, a nonprofit organization that addresses issues in children's health by providing hands-on experiences with growing and cooking food for children who live in food deserts. Along the way, Neumark has changed the landscape of catering by sourcing much of her ingredients from her own farm. By nurturing others, she found a way to bring joy back into her own life. Early Entrepreneurial Activism When Neumark started her catering company, it was a time of activism. A stint as a placement officer at a temp agency gave her the chops she needed to jump in and make her own kind of impact. "It was the age of feminism but there wasn't a lot of opportunity for women back then," Neumark says. With the founding of Great Performances, she strove to give women opportunities in tradition- ally male roles. Some early clients worried their guests would be offended if the bartender was a woman, she recalls. Times have changed: today, she's proud that one of the company's core values is diversity, seen in its ethnicity, gender, and age breakdown on a staff of 248 fulltime and 784 part-time employees. Great Performances quickly became known for creating locally sourced, beautiful menus that taste as good as they look. The business serves a wide range of corporate, social, and nonprofit clients, and in 2007 Neumark secured a 25-year contract to cater all events at The Plaza Hotel. Keeping true to her artistic roots, the company holds exclusive contracts at leading cultural institutions in New York City. SYLVIA'S TABLE I n 2013, Liz Neumark debuted Sylvia's Table, a cookbook dedicated to her daughter and filled with lessons and recipes from the farm and The Sylvia Center. Aimed at families who want to cook together, the 200 recipes range from Sylvia's Stars and Moon Soup to Moroccan tuna skewers with cucumber lemon raita. "The cookbook is trying to amplify the message of The Sylvia Center," Neumark explains. Overwhelmingly, it's a celebration of fresh food and families cooking together, but it's also a story of grieving. "At the heart of it, I wanted to write something that dealt with bereavement and tells that story. When it comes to a child's death, it's a very touchy subject. I didn't want to make people sad. But people struggle so much with grief—not just the loss of a child but individual loss and illness. I wanted to put it out there." Neumark wanted to do something positive for her other three children as well, "to remind us all that there is joy in this world," she adds. "What I didn't know was this journey to renewal would occur." FALL 2015 91