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/623506
BY DENISE SHOUKAS Corby Kummer: Everyday Sustainability C orby Kummer—considered one of America's most influential food writers—has been covering the food world since 1981 when he began working at The Atlantic, where he remains a senior editor today. His newest gig is as a contributing editor at The New Republic, where he writes a monthly column on food, food culture, and policy. The celebrated food writer talks about authenticity, a new definition for local sourcing, and where he hopes the food world will be in 20 years. Kummer has won multiple James Beard Journalism awards, including the MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award, and has written on an array of thought-provoking topics including whether Walmart can really save small farms and make Americans healthier. He's also the author of two award-winning books: The Pleasures of Slow Food, which celebrates local artisans and regional products, and The Joy of Coffee, the definitive guide to coffee. Calling both Boston and Atlanta home, he resides in two areas of the country where farm-to-table cuisine and local sourcing are authentically and aggressively pursued. Here, he discusses how to market farm to table successfully, expanding the definition of local sourcing, and his hopes for the future of food. You encourage chefs to make local and sustainable sourcing part of their everyday practices rather than over- marketing their food this way. Do you feel specialty food manufacturers can do the same and still get their message across? No. They need to have some of the bucolic farm, cute animal imagery to convey that they're doing farm to table because once you've made the transition to a jar or a package, you're not on the con- sumer's radar for intuitively thinking you're worrying about where your ingredients come from. But there are probably other ways to signal that you care. Think of milk cartons with their cute picket fences and smiling cows, and the countrified imagery that the big food industry PHOTO: JOEL BENJAMIN q&a 74 ❘ SPECIALTY FOOD MAGAZINE specialtyfood.com