Eat Here St. Louis

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: After so many recent failures in politics, where all they do is support the food giants, it’s great to hear a success story from the people. So here’s one about my friend Andy, who runs a business called Eat Here St. Louis. He brings high-quality fresh food from family farms to chefs in St. Louis. Andy had been working to get St. Louis University into his program for months. They had begun to get interested in local food and had even started a project in 2012 with Maplewood School system that involved the SLU culinary arts program, nutrition program and the school system. Last summer, when produce was plentiful, they were freezing fresh produce and keeping it in their freezers for the schools to use. How cool is that??? But something didn’t work out. We’re used to this in the local-foods world. The start-ups are always fragile but we keep trying. The schools couldn’t buy the produce—there might have been a grant involved or else it was a budget shortfall, I don’t know. But here’s why you need fearless people like Andy. He was able to buy a walk-in freezer from a franchise store that was going out of business. Now he’s buying the frozen food from SLU and selling it to chefs. It’s obviously better than they can get from other outlets. So, now SLU can continue their program, training their students, and they’re now even more committed to the local-foods idea. OK. So that’s the whole story and I think we’ll be hearing about more successes. Maybe we can even make it happen in Callaway and Boone Counties! Happy Spring, ya’all! March is going out like a lamb and it’s March 29, 2013.