This post is for the restauranteurs out there, whether you’re a seasoned or aspirational owner of a dining establishment. I’ve set up several mini farms for restaurants throughout the years so today I’m going to dispense some of the lessons I’ve learned along the way with regards to growing food in a large capacity. This is a great way to cut the middleman and eliminate the need for a veggies supplier when it comes to small greens such as sprouts and herbs.
I’m no going to mince words. While growing your own food for your eatery is a great initiative that benefits the planet and your customers’ health, and offers an interesting selling point, it is another responsibility you have to shoulder. Be sure to evaluate your restaurant’s needs as well as menu and customer’s preferences before investing time and resources into a farming project.
Overall, farming in a living fridge is your best bet, able to grow enough food to feed your diners and more. What is nice about this is concept is that you provide the plants an ideal environment to stay alive right on location. The living fridge keeps the taste and nutrients alive right up to the moment it is prepared, cooked, and served on the customer’s plane.
What should I grow for my restaurant?
In an ideal world, you’d cultivate all the produce you’d need for your restaurant but the fact of the matter is that restauranteurs do not have the luxury of time to do that on top of managing their businesses. With that in mind, I advise restaurant owners to grow low-maintenance vegetables: sprouts and microgreens.
🌱 Sprouts
I often recommend sprouting for beginners because the process is simple to pick up and yields a quick harvest. Within two days, you will have fresh, living greens you can add to so many dishes for a healthy upgrade. The taste they add is priceless!
You can actually grow enough sprouts to feed a lot of people. What is amazing about this is that they continue to grow with little attention and elbow grease. Take a look at my blog post on growing sprouts to see just how easy it is.
🌱 Microgreens
This one can go either way. For me, I still think it would be worthwhile to grow pea shoots and sunflower microgreens as they have the quickest turnaround time. The main consideration with all of this is ensuring you use a lot of these in your cooking, enough to warrant the efford needed to grow the microgreens.
🌱 Get your complete guide to growing pea shoots here.
🌱 Herbs
This was a good solution for many of the living fridges I installed. Since these are garnishes and seasonings for various dishes and soups, having herbs around is a great way to ensure strong, fresh flavours all the time.
I installed the fridge in the restaurant and it was a great view when a chef would walk to the plant and harvest the herb in front of the customers. The system had 30 different grow areas so growing mint, basil, and thyme, which not only gave the place a greener look but also added such a nice fragrance to the area.
What are the costs of growing my own produce?
One thing to keep in mind is that there are daily needs you must provide for these plants: you will be investing not only resources but also time, care, and effort. So unless you set up a self-watering system or have a machine that can do all the plant care for you, it will add more stress to the kitchen. Unless you have a day that your establishment is closed, a restaurant urban farm can really make or break the operations. And the veggies and greens you grow don’t even fit on a menu item, you won’t be able to serve it.
💰 Cost per tray
Since you can order microgreens by the tray, the cost is around $5 per tray to grow on your own. Since most trays cost around $20 for delivery, there is a great savings to growing these type of microgreens in your restaurant.
⏰ How long will it take to grow?
Sprouts take around three to five days until they are ready to harvest, so they are an ideal option if you want fast results. For microgreens, the turnaround time is from 10 to 14 days depending on what seeds you grow, and what time in the year it is. Herbs can take anywhere from two to 15 days from when they have sprouted.
What not to do when setting up a restaurant farm
Chefs are cooks, not farmers. So I had to make sure there was passion in growing food with one of the staff members. I found this strategy made it so much easier for the overall team. If I started training the staff on additional tasks they had to do but didn’t want to learn, I would become the enemy.
Even something as simple as sprouting that took minutes a day was frowned upon. I found that educating the staff on added nutrients, taste, and the costs that are saved by sprouting incentivized the process.
I would also advise against growing anything bigger than microgreens — namely, leafy greens — because the output was not enough to fulfill the restaurant’s needs nor justify the resources and labour to go into growing them.