Local produce and meat are projected to be the two most popular items on restaurant menus this year, according to the National Restaurant Association.
But as more institutions like schools and hospitals look to "buy local," they're finding themselves in a bind — large food distributors may not carry items those customers are looking for. And fragmented networks of local farms don't know how to distribute the food efficiently.
Inside the cafeteria freezer at Sauk Prairie Memorial Hospital, near Madison, Wis., Amy Miller, the hospital's food service director, points at a pile of spindly thighs and breasts inside a Ziploc bag. Miller provides up to 200 meals a day, and a few months ago, she decided she'd served enough of this mass-produced poultry.
"We wanted to have a product we were comfortable with as far as not having the antibiotics — all the additives that go into chicken today," Miller says.
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