Connecting Farmers’ Markets to Foodservice Businesses: A Qualitative Exploration of Restaurants’ Perceived Benefits and Challenges of Purchasing Food Locally

ABSTRACT

This paper examines restaurant managements’ (owners, managers, or the chefs) perceptions, motivations, and constraints in buying local food ingredients from local farmers’ market vendors (farmer vendors) in a study conducted in Vancouver, Canada and Christchurch, New Zealand. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with restaurants (31 in Vancouver and 28 in Christchurch). Results revealed that purchasing local food from farmers’ market vendors was perceived as beneficial by restaurants, but they experienced challenges with purchasing. This study further presented evidence that restaurants satisfaction with wholesale distributors is an important purchasing factor in local food purchasing decisions while sustainable production products were not the main motivation among restaurants in both the samples. In the light of empirical findings, theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Local food
• purchasing
• restaurants
• farmers’ market vendors
• supply chain

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This paper was not funded.