In February 2006, the company opened its commissary in a 4,000-square-foot renovated warehouse attached to its fourth café on North Freemont Street in Portland. Now, producer-direct deliveries are dropped off at that central location before being prepped or made into finished product and delivered to the other Grand Central bakery cafés.
“Centralization has been key for us,” Davis says. In addition to making the supply process more efficient, the commissary has also opened up more opportunities to utilize local suppliers. Lettuce, for instance, was one ingredient Grand Central could not previously source locally, as the heads came from farms unwashed and took too much time to prep in the cafés. Now the company buys its supply from Oregon farms, and workers in the commissary wash and chop the lettuce before sending it to the cafés ready to use.
“That facility,” Davis says, “is critical.”
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It’s not hard to get a sense of where Davis’ affinity for the local-food movement began. She grew up in Seattle and rural eastern Washington with a mother who she admits was “a little on the hippie-dippie side.”
“We had a garden, and we never had meat in the freezer that we hadn’t raised ourselves or bought from someone we knew,” she says.
But when it comes to sourcing product for her restaurant, Davis is no idealogue. Grand Central isn’t on the 100-mile diet, where product outside a certain radius is off limits.
“You can’t be a fundamentalist,” she says. “It bothers me when people try to make it a tidy issue.”
For Grand Central, local is a relative term that changes depending on the ingredient in question. While some, including tomatoes, potatoes, and berries come from as close as the Willamette Valley, other “local” products are not so close at hand.
“It was a big move for us to buy California dried apricots as opposed to Turkish ones,” Davis says.
There’s a hierarchy when it comes to buying, she says. Quality is the first criterion—and the highest quality ingredients often tend to be local and sustainable—but cost is also a factor. Lunch at Grand Central runs less than $10, and Davis would like to keep it that way.
“I feel very strongly about not pricing anybody out,” she says. “I’m very proud about the diversity of our customers.”
As a result, Davis sometimes sacrifices sustainability in the name of pragmatism. While the butter used by Grand Central comes from a creamery in nearby Clackamas, Oregon, choosing the organic variety, as would be ideal, Davis says, would double the price, so she doesn’t. Olive oil is available from California, but because of its high price tag, Grand Central instead sources it from Greece and Italy.
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At those first Chefs Collaborative meetings she attended, Davis remembers listening to white-tablecloth chefs talk about the importance of buying local and thinking, “Yeah, easy for you to say.” Hearing her story, other quick-service restaurateurs could think the same, and indeed Grand Central enjoys several advantages that make its local sourcing strategy possible.
For starters, there’s its location. The Pacific Northwest has been a leader in the local food and sustainability movements, and Davis admits that Grand Central’s location there has made things more convenient.
“We have the system working for us in a lot of ways,” she says. “We have this infrastructure here.”
For instance, Pacific Coast Fruit Co., a wholesale produce distributor Grand Central works with, gets some of its inventory locally. The company’s chef, Paul Ornstein, is a foodservice veteran and former chef at New Seasons Market, a locally owned specialty grocer that focuses on sustainable options, so he understands Grand Central’s needs.
Grand Central’s customers are also understanding of the constraints a commitment to local sourcing presents—though Davis still gets complaint e-mails when seasonal items go off the menu. Overall, though, there’s an acceptance on the part of customers that this is the way it has to be. Part of that understanding, she says, probably comes from where they live. It helps, too, that Grand Central built its initial following with artisan breads, attracting customers who care about the quality of their food and are willing to pay a bit of a premium to get it.
Davis admits that Grand Central’s sourcing strategy has its costs, too. There was the investment in infrastructure for the commissary, for one, and it’s more work to forge partnerships with producer-direct suppliers than to work with a national distributor. Food costs, too, are higher than average.
“In places, we could probably use less expensive ingredients,” she says. “But just because something comes from the farm doesn’t necessarily mean it’s more expensive—sometimes it’s less.” She cites rhubarb and potatoes as examples.
But while it’s easy to calculate the cost of local sourcing, the benefits are not so easily tabulated. Though Grand Central pays more for many ingredients, Davis says waste has gone down. Sales have also gone up, and she says customers are willing to pay a higher price for the company’s products.
And, of course, there’s no line on the balance sheet to account for the loyalty of customers who share and respect Grand Central’s philosophy.