Russo’s goal: A central distribution center
for small-farm products

Unless you’ve just emerged from a Rip Van Winkle-like state, you’ve noticed natural and organic products from farmers practicing sustainable agricultural techniques have appeared in grocery stores and on restaurant menus. There are many local organizations and associations pushing the virtues of these quality foods, but still, it’s not always easy to find specific products without a lengthy search. It’s not that there isn’t enough product, said Lenny Russo, owner of Heartland restaurant in St. Paul. It’s getting the product from the small farm to the restaurant or consumer.

The solution for these organizations appears simple: “If they all pulled their resources in and focused on one thing, I think we could get (distribution issues) solved,” said Russo, about three weeks after he resigned from his executive chef post at Cue, the Guthrie Theater’s fine-dining restaurant acclaimed for its use of natural products from local farms. “But I don’t know that that’s going to happen. And I’m tired of going to meetings. …The last one I went to was the Minnesota Food Association. And there wasn’t any farmers present at the meeting, so what the hell do you do then?”

Russo, as is well documented, is no stranger to the practice of using seasonal products from small, area farmers using natural, sustainable agricultural techniques to raise their crops and livestock. His restaurant Heartland is based on the principle of Midwest ingredients only—there isn’t a drop of olive oil in the joint. The times I called Russo at Heartland prior to his tenure at Cue, he was often in the middle of a discussion with a farmer who was dropping off product. Russo is dedicated to finding the freshest local ingredients, but it’s a time consuming effort. Not that he minds, though. His philosophy extends beyond product and into local economics—he’s willing to pay a fair price to support someone’s livelihood. Now he’s back at his restaurant, still talking to farmers, but with a broader goal in mind.

Part of what attracted Russo to Cue was to bring the message of local agriculture and economies to a wider audience, and to hopefully spread a bit of wealth to those same small farmers. The problems he had were getting product volume he needed and in a usable condition. Those problems weren’t caused by the farmer, Russo said, they were caused by a fragmented distribution network.

When Russo announced his departure from Cue, he stated he had a few goals, one of them being to start a central distribution center for these farmers he and others—notably Lucia Watson, Brenda Langton and Alex Roberts—have built their reputations on. That vision includes a year-round retail farmer’s market to compete with the big-box stores. “I just felt that someone needs to take the bull by the horns, and if no one else is going to do it, I’m going to do it,” Russo said. “I originally conceived of the whole project as a non-profit. On the other hand, I’m willing to do it for-profit—however we can get it done…we might be able to do it as a hybrid of the two.”

In the short time since he vacated Cue (“On great terms,” Russo said. “I gave them a two month notice, and they were very gracious.”) Russo’s idea is developing into a boiler-plate business plan. He’s already met with Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, who was the former director for the Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy. “I knew that he was connected, he’s really smart and he’s somebody who looks at things like I do. I look at corporate America and I try and see what kind of model they have, because they’re really good at some of this stuff. And maybe I don’t like some of the things that they do, but they know how to get stuff from point A to point B, they know how to do it efficiently, and they know how to not screw it up.”

Ritchie put Russo in touch with Gene Kahn, vice president for sustainable development at General Mills. Kahn founded the organic food company Cascadian Farms, which, through a series of mergers, became a division of General Mills. “We had a good breakfast meeting, and he really likes the idea, and he’s setting up a second meeting with another individual so that we can keep pushing things forward,” Russo said. “Really, what it’s going to come down to is someone like a General Mills or a Kellogg Foundation getting behind it. If we’re going to do it correctly, we’re going to need a lot of money.”

A distribution center requires a central location, near major transportation arteries. “Preferably a supermarket or grocery store that’s gone out of business,” Russo said. “What it’s going to have is the dock space, cooler space, freezer space, and it’s going to have the retail component that we need.” The building will have already had a HACCP program in place, and it will be easier to reinstitute it than starting from scratch, he added.

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak has already called expressing interest in the idea, Russo said. He’d also like to hear from St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, be it a collaboration with the St. Paul Farmer’s Market and its search for a year-round facility, or something else. “Obviously, I’m a St. Paul boy, and Chris is my mayor, and I’m anxious to talk to him,” he said.

What follows the facility is finding a distributor who understands the products—for example, H. Brooks. “I don’t need a driver who treats an heirloom pear variety the same way he treats a box of potato chips,” Russo said. “I need people who know what they’re doing.”

The next step is finding the right person—or people—to run the distribution center and all its components, who understands the restaurant, retail, wholesale, distribution, and the farmer. Oh, and the most important trait?

“Understanding the post-harvest physiology of he crop,” Russo said emphatically. “You can’t pick your corn in the morning, and then leave it in a barn for three days, and then ship it up here, because all of the sugar converts to starch and it loses all of its shelf life and it’s junk. That stuff has to be chilled right away. If the person who’s putting the distribution network together doesn’t understand that this particular fruit can’t be dumped in a bucket or you’re going to bruise it, or you can’t leave it out or it’s going to over-ripen, then the farmer is never going to get paid.”

Which is, of course, very bad and unfair for the farmer. “That happened to me a lot last year (at Cue)—a lot,” Russo continued. “This is really what got me completely aggravated—product that would show up at my back door and be either incorrect, not properly sized, not what they sampled me, or just garbage. And then the farmer never gets paid.” It’s not the farmer’s fault, he added, when they harvest the product, it’s fine. In the process of transport to storage to restaurant, a delicate product is often mishandled or an order is bungled.

Russo believes having a central location for these farmers to drop their product will be cheaper and more efficient for them in the long run, because they won’t need to drive into the Twin Cities numerous times a week to visit dozens of restaurants, or risk their product with unknowledgeable distributors. “Imagine the fuel and time savings the farmer could have if they only came up once or twice a week and dropped at one spot and went back to the farm,” he said. Farmers can then increase production and increase their profit. Restaurateurs using local product win because supply will be more constant, and less time spent calling farmers for delivery. Need a few more chickens than you thought? Now there’s a spot that will have them from your farmer of choice. Russo’s vision allows restaurateurs to maintain their relationship with their favorite farmers, and includes an online ordering system.

Making the idea work with all the various natural, organic and sustainable farming entities out there won’t be without challenge, of course. “They’re all doing admirable work—I belong to all these groups, they’re my friends, I give them dough, I volunteer my time and give them recipes,” Russo said. “But I think that the problem is that sometimes it’s difficult for them to abandon a certain way of looking at things. I talked to Co-op Partners, The Wedge folks and the Minnesota Food Association, they’re all working together to get something done from their end, but if I come up with a facility and a model that is going to work, and they want to get on board, I’ll take help from any quarter where it can be provided. I don’t care if it’s the hippie tree-hugger food group, or the evil corporate group, because I want to make sure we get this thing done.

“I think once we’re able to do that, we make a huge leap in terms of how we get our local farmer’s product to market and how everybody becomes a lot more successful, and how everybody gets better food.”