The history of the demand for organic food starts where you would expect: at a little farm in the country, with a farmer picking his way through his field.
That’s nice and quaint but not business for the masses. Co-ops brought the food to more people.
Farmers markets caught on, even blocking traffic on busy streets in big cities such as New York and Washington.
Whole Foods transplanted the idea into corporate America, helping the growth of vast fields of organic produce throughout California.
Now there is organic fast food and the options for it are about to grow.
Organic To Go, a Seattle-based company founded in 2004, said it has purchased DC-based High Noon’s four cafés and its catering operation, and plans to turn the lunch hot spots into places where office workers can flee their cubicles and devour a meatloaf sandwich made with
organic beef.
Higher quality food
“We’re trying to get more food that is of higher quality from organic and natural producers in the path of where people work, and that will in turn help to grow our company,” said Jason Brown, Organic To Go’s founder.
The company is taking the Whole Foods prepared-food concept out of the grocery store and into places where people work and spend their days. With High Noon, Organic To Go gets locations in busy business downtown corridors.
The average lunch customer is probably different from a decade ago, when standard fast-food fare would have done just fine. People who eat meals out increasingly want more nutritious food.
In a recent poll by the US National Restaurant Association, more than 76 per cent of the people said they are trying to eat out more healthfully than they were two years ago.
Another survey by the organisation, this one of US chefs, showed the No 2 and No 3 hottest trends were locally grown and organic produce, respectively — after bite-size desserts.
Those healthy eating trends are bumping into the quick-service segment of the restaurant industry, which is expanding faster than traditional table-service restaurants, according to Hudson Riehle, senior vice-president of research for the National Restaurant Association.
Growing interest
Valerie Killifer, editor of Fast Casual, which focuses on restaurants serving quick meals, said consumer interest in eateries that serve nutritious food fast is poised to expand quickly. “Right now it’s just on the ground level,” she said, “but the opportunity is only going to grow.”
Organic To Go opened its first café three years ago in a small strip mall in Issaquah, Washington.
The four High Noon restaurants — three in DC and one in Virginia — bring its total café count to 33, including outposts in and around Seattle, San Diego and Los Angeles.
Organic To Go, though not profitable, gets about half of its revenue from its cafés and grab-and-go
stations.
High Noon was founded by Mark Ordan, who took to the business of offering good food faster after he sold his Fresh Fields grocery chain to Whole Foods in 1996 for $150 million (Dh551 million).
Raising the bar
Ordan, with the backing of Bear Stearns Merchant Banking, later purchased a gourmet grocery chain that ultimately became Balducci’s, bringing High Noon into the fold.
Burrito chain Chipotle was perhaps the first big quick-service food outlet to catch on in the mainstream by using natural foods.
The company is America’s largest restaurant buyer of naturally raised meats. The sour cream thrown onto burritos is free of synthetic growth hormones. “They are setting the bar very high,” Killifer said.
Other chains popping up include Evos, a Tampa, Florida-based company with fast-food outlets in several states offering soya burgers and air-baked fries.
Gusto Grilled Organics’ flagship restaurant is in midtown Manhattan and serves eat-in, takeout or delivery — steak sandwiches, empanadas, pizzas and more.
