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Mountain Food Products: Serving the Local CommunityBy Ginger Kowal
Western North Carolina has always been a place that produces creative entrepreneurs. When Ron Ainspan moved to the area in the late 1970s to begin growing vegetables in Swannanoa, he became part of a small community of Asheville residents who were interested in marketing locally produced food to local retailers. “Some of us were baking bread, some of us were making tofu, some of us were doing sprouts. And I was farming.” Each of these small businesses were attempting to distribute their own products, and they soon found that distribution was more difficult than they had expected. “Distribution is hard,” Ron explains. “We found that it was expensive and time consuming. And too, we were all distributing our products to pretty much the same retailers, mostly restaurants and some grocery stores.” At the end of the growing season, Ron needed work to do; so he thought, “Why don’t I do the distribution for all of us?” So, in 1985, Mountain Food Products was born. From the very beginning, the driving force for Ron’s distribution business was to deliver locally produced foods to local businesses. After several of his customers asked him to make a trip to the Dekalb Farmers’ Market in Atlanta to pick up exotic fruits and vegetables, he began to expand from the few baked and processed goods he was distributing to work more and more with produce. He found that it paired well with his own vegetable growing and that there was an open market for a local distributor in Asheville. Because of his ties to the local farming community and the regional genesis of Mountain Food Products, Ron strives to make the business as locally-focused as possible. As Ron explains, “It took a while for the farming community to get to a size and state where I could make local purchasing a priority. Around 1995, the local idea really took off. And since then, the appeal of local food has really grown.” Due to a combination of factors, which Ron identifies as increased awareness of local food and the influence of ASAP’s Local Food Campaign, he found that there were more and more buyers looking for locally grown food and more producers growing for local markets. The expanding markets for local products and the increasing numbers of local producers are encouraging trends to Ron, but he finds that he is caught in a difficult position as both a buyer and a provider. In order to be a seller of integrity he has to supply his customers with a year-round supply of produce of consistent quality and appearance. As Ron explains, he knows his customers well. “I know what each one requires for ripeness, size, firmness, everything. And I have to be able to deliver that to them every month of the year.” When local products are in season and available for Ron to purchase, they must fit seamlessly with the standards that are established by other, year-round suppliers. “What I would really like to do is to be able to buy from individual farmers directly,” Ron says. “I’d like to know that I’m buying directly from the farmer that grew that crop. But it’s all a balance between following values that are acceptable to me, buying local when I can, and not being too rigid.” For instance, some of the farmers that Ron buys from are produce brokers as well. They work with a network of growers and know the standards that he requires like ripeness, fullness of each case, usability, and color. They are able to supply him with consistency in grading and packaging though some of their products are not grown locally. On the other hand, Ron makes exceptions where he can to work directly with growers. “I’ll develop a relationship with an individual farmer and buy what he has to sell me, but it’s much more practical to work with a broker.” The kind of individualized service that Ron is able to provide to his buyers is a strength of his company’s small size and local focus. Choosing to remain small in scale and to supply mostly other independently-run small restaurant businesses means that Ron’s relationships with his customers are close and longstanding. Many of his customers are loyal to Ron and maintain close communication with his staff about their produce needs. Ron and ASAP have recently begun to take advantage of this close communication and its implications for local growers. Because Ron maintains careful records of where each load of produce coming onto his loading dock has come from, he is able to pass that information on to his customers and let them know exactly where their purchases were grown. The Appalachian Grown TM program initiated by ASAP, where locally grown products are certified and marked with a recognizable logo, maintains the recognizable identification of locally-grown produce all the way from the farm, through Ron’s distribution, to the restaurant and consumer. Mountain Food Products provides a separate availability sheet to each buyer during the local growing season to highlight local offerings that are available that week. This simple exchange of information, built on relationships that Ron has already cultivated with his customers over the 22 years that he’s been in business, provides a powerful link in the expansion of demand for local products. With secure knowledge of what products are local, Ron’s restaurant customers and their diners can make a choice to support local farmers. Ron passes on confidence to his customers by checking on every load that arrives at Mountain Food Products. This gives him a credibility in making local offerings that is appreciated, he says. “Some of my customers appreciate the fact that it’s local more than others,” says Ron. “Especially those independent restaurants that are in a position to promote their local buying. More than that, though, knowing where the load came from lets me be honest to myself and my own values.” Although he runs his business as much in line with his own values as possible, Ron sees Mountain Food Products as very much a part, rather than an alternative to, the larger food system. “I focus my business differently and give emphasis to local products because I care about that personally, but I wouldn’t say that my business is an alternative method of distribution at all.” Despite repeated opportunities to expand to wider production and receiving networks, Ron has chosen to keep his radius of distribution close to home. “I started this business to serve this community,” he says. “I’m not interested in expanding.” It is this small-scale, local focus that makes it possible for Mountain Food Products to capitalize on local offerings when they are available. Ron is receiving help with some of the other challenges in obtaining and distributing local produce by a larger movement in western North Carolina. Through the years, Ron has seen the local community become more and more enthusiastic about supporting local growers and producers, a value that has motivated him from the beginning. Although he is committed to supporting local growers on a personal level, as he puts it, “You must be in a time and place where what you’re doing is of importance to your customers.” Because local food is of importance to many of his customers, he is supported in buying locally. And although he doesn’t imagine that most people in the Asheville area will change their eating habits to completely reflect the local growing season anytime soon, he is optimistic about the strength of the local food movement in western North Carolina. “It’s been very satisfying to be a part of the movement,” he says. “I think it’ll only keep growing stronger.”
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