The Chef’s Garden: Prioritizing Relationships and Sustainable Growing
June 14, 2024 For more than 40 years, The Chef’s Garden in Huron, Ohio has cultivated peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes and leafy greens in greenhouses. With clients in all 50 states and 17 countries, co-owners and brothers Bob and Lee Jones needed to produce vegetables all year-round. Considering Ohio receives merely 1900-2400 hours of sunlight per year, using indoor farming techniques that enable them to increase this number is critical for maintaining a consistent supply of fresh produce and keeping their customers happy.
The Chef’s Garden in Huron, Ohio
Serving the Restaurant Business 365 Days a Year
The Chef’s Garden’s consumer base probably isn’t what you’d typically expect for an Ohio-based farm. Roughly 90% of Bob and Lee’s clients are five-star restaurants who need top-quality ingredients for their high-end cuisine. Growing outdoors is nearly impossible during Northeast Ohio winters, which made it difficult for restaurants to get product from Bob and Lee during their busiest season.
“As the restaurant business grew in the ‘90s, those restaurants were requesting that we continue the availability of some of those products,” says Bob. “They would get really excited about the quality of the product that we could provide them, but then when the season ended [it] was about the time they started getting busy in December.”
Bob went on to say how the busy season for restaurants typically lasts from the start of winter until May. This is largely because families go out to eat during the Christmas holiday season, on Valentine’s Day and on Mother’s Day. “Having a good supply of product during this time of year can only happen with technology,” says Bob. “Whether that be high tunnels or traditional greenhouses, CEA provides the ability to be able to extend growing seasons for the benefit of your customer.”
Overcoming Transportation Obstacles
One of the biggest challenges Bob and Lee face is transporting their fresh produce and herbs in a cost-effective way to restaurants around the world. Considering they ship perishable goods across state and country lines by next-day air, transportation costs add up quickly. The two brothers are always looking for ways to improve their current transportation system while keeping product quality high.
“Transportation is something we’ve been working on for 30 years. And we continue to work on it,” says Bob. “It’s a continual project looking at temperatures, humidity and packaging materials to get product to our consumers fast. The majority of our product goes next–day air, so it’s a very short turnaround and expensive.”
Bob Jones Walking Through a Greenhouse at The Chef’s Garden
Defining Their Company Values
Grocery store customers tend to self-select into one of the following three categories: price, value and service. Bob is the first one to admit that no grocery store prioritizes all three. “You can’t have the best quality, the best service and the lowest price,” he says.
Of those three values, the Chef’s Garden mainly focuses on quality and service – quality comes first, and service trails closely behind. “If customers call and the first conversation is about price, we tell them very quickly we probably can’t help them,” says Bob. “We never intended to be all things to all people, but we want to develop relationships with consumers who desire a high level of quality and a high level of service.”
Building Relationships at Every Level
While producer-customer relationships are important for every business, Bob prides himself on building relationships in all parts of The Chef’s Garden. This goes beyond customers and employees.
“In our operation, I think it really goes back to an understanding amongst the family and amongst the team that in order for us to be sustainable and successful, we have to develop win–win relationships at every level of the organization, and we look at that as a marketing effort,” he says.
To Bob, retaining skilled, well-trained employees is critical to staying successful. This also applies to vendors, as using quality equipment to be able to grow consistently high-quality product is an important part of agriculture. “It’s critically important to have a good relationship with your neighbors in agriculture today,” he says. “They need to understand what we’re working on, why we’re doing what we do and how what we do impacts them.”
Looking to the Future
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), only approximately one in 10 Americans eat the daily recommended dose of fruits and vegetables – Bob and Lee view this as an important business opportunity. “Kids don’t eat vegetables because vegetables don’t taste good today,” says Bob. “I think that’s a real opportunity for us. We’ve focused on yield, consistency and disease resistance so much that we’ve left flavor out of the equation.”
By prioritizing relationships as well as growing efforts, Bob and Lee Jones have been able to successfully reach fine-dining restaurants and provide them with quality produce. When looking at the bigger picture in agriculture, Bob believes growers, including himself, need to better understand how supply and demand looks in the CEA industry.
“In the end, growers just haven’t really understood that whole supply–demand quality paradigm,” he says. “We need to better understand it if we’re all going to stay in business, do well and become profitable.”