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Dinner on a farm for $150? Really?
I love Tour de Farm. It brings people who love food (you and me) together with great chefs (John Radle, Michelle Gayer, Mike Phillips) and plops us in the middle of a farm field. Last year I ate pork on a pig farm. Sheep's cheese on sheep farm.
JD Fratzke rocked my world at Star Thrower Farm last year. Corner Table's Scott Pampuch launched this last year. They quickly sold out at a bargain-lovers price: just $85 a person. Five courses, matching wine, all prepared on location.
I wondered: How are these guys getting paid? They weren't.
"If it wasn't for the generosity of all the labor hours on all aspects of it—farms, chefs, restaurants—those events never would have happened," said Scott Pampuch. "It basically worked on the backs of all the chefs, Lenny and JD and Mike and Scott, all those guys that ran our first season," he explained. Last year the farms got paid for providing the food, and a rental company got paid for bringing in chairs and tables, but that was about it.
This year, things are different, and Tour de Farm is charging $150 a person. So $300 a couple, to eat dinner on a farm? I tweeted out @DeRushaEats "$150/head seems steep." (You should be following me @DeRushaEats. I'm hilarious.)
Why the 76% price hike?
"We want to practice what we preach. We're talking about a sustainable message. Food having value. Experiences having value. We need to attach some kind of value to that," Scott told me.
The food cost alone is significant. Scott didn't want to get into exact numbers, but you can guess it's between $40-$60 a person. Last year, wine and beer people donated $10,000 worth of liquor. They're getting paid this year. The farmers are getting a stipend (it takes a lot of work to turn your farm into a restaurant), as are the chefs.
"Nowhere near what I would say they should be getting. But we had to start somewhere," said Pampuch.
At Corner Table, you can get a five-course tasting menu with five glasses of wine for $85. Will people pay $150 to eat on a farm?
"It's a half-day experience. We're putting them in contact with people they haven't met. We're really focusing on an education component," Pampuch explained. "If I'm making a ton of profit on these events, I would like to see somebody come in and find it for me," he said, while he acknowledged, "I'm not going to lie: I'm getting paid this year."
As he should be. I like eating great food at a steal, but I want chefs and restaurants to get paid for their work.
If you can't swing $150 for the dinners (June 27 at Tangletown Gardens Farm, Plato; July 18 at Cedar Summit Farms in New Prague; October 10 in Duluth), Tour de Farm has added family picnics (August 22 at Riverbend Farm in Delano; September 19 at Oliver Kelley Farm in Elk River).
"I still think the value of this event is pretty amazing," said Pampuch. We'll see if Minnesotans agree.
You can get tickets now at Corner Table, 4257 Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis.
Posted on Thursday, April 8, 2010 in Permalink
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Reader Comments:
I suppose I should finish the story. My wife and I bought tickets for the picnics ($50 a head per picnic) and our 2 kids get to come for free. We haven't decided if we're going to do the $150 farm dinner yet.
Education, really? So the presumably college educated folks who can drop $300 on a meal don't have a clue what goes on at a farm? Give me a break.
This is mostly a publicity stunt for Mr Pampauch. We're not going to save the world with sustainable farming if the ingredients per meal costs $50.
For example, I love Cedar Summit milk, but am not naive enough to think we will or should be serving that at our school lunch programs at whatever they get a gallon. Many of the other farms in the Tour produce artisan quality food thats so unusual in its quality its not even sold in coops but sold direct to high end restaraunts. The only reason those "farms" can make a living is by producing something rare or unusual.
This is a seriously flawed idea wrapped in a swanky, self serving wrapper.
The people who need the education also need to access real and nutritionally dense foods grown locally at an affordable price.
I believe the $150 includes tax and gratuity, which makes it a tiny bit easier to stomach in comparison to an in-house tasting menu.
It's not a publicity stunt - it's an event. The inaugural year was an experiment, hence the relative bargain price and the donated time and materials. This year, the _dinners_ cost more, because that's the reality of putting on such an event - ask a wedding planner.
If you believe the dinner price is too much, go to one of the picnics. They're a bargain. If you're not an 'event' sort of person, go to the Farmers' Market or your local co-op. If you think their prices are still too much to pay, then grow your own or go to Wal-Mart. Free country = your choice.
Should you choose to attend neither dinner nor picnic, so be it. Those of us who think this kind of thing is important will not miss you.
Yes, I get that everyone should be paid, food costs money, yadda, yadda, but am I the only person who finds irony in yuppies paying $150 to live simply? Yeesh.
LATTE4ME, you are missing the point. I don't think anyone's paying that money as an avenue to living simply. Being a member of a CSA or buying food from a farmer instead of a store isn't about living simply: it's about voting with your dollars to support something you believe in.
Now why does the government artificially lower the price of food made with sugar and corn, making crappy food cheap, and good food "expensive"? That's a different issue.
On the contrary, Jason, I completely get the point here. Why is it that we're developing a two-tier food system? It's either dinners like these or access to a CSA (which isn't cheap, I might add) or crappy, subsidized food for everyone else who isn't fortunate enough to afford it. If you're going to be balanced on covering things like this, then why not ask, why do they exist to begin with? And why is availability limited to only those that can afford it?
Jason's 'voting with your dollars' comment is spot on. Long-term success in any movement requires market support. Without that, idealistic just puts you out of business.
LATTE4ME, Modern food isn't as black-and-white as you're trying to paint it. There's the 'general consensus black' - i.e. confinement feedlots - but apart from that, it's all shades of gray. Your complaint seems to be that what you deem the highest quality food isn't inexpensive, but you've also limited the avenues to dinners that are arguably pseudo-black-tie and CSAs. Slow Food (slowfoodmn.org) puts on simpler events and dinners at a lower pricepoint than Tour de Farm. CSAs aren't for everyone. I, for one, just don't want that breadth of produce. I do spend time and money at Farmers' Markets, buying direct (bulk) from local farms, and growing specific items I feel are more worth the effort to grow than to buy.
The best thing about the local food/sustainability movement is that there are so many options and so many ways to do something. Have a yard? Plant something. Have scraps? Compost. Want to be more involved? Work in a community garden plot, talk to your local school or church about an on-site garden... the possibilities are limitless - unless you expect someone else to do the work and do it for cheap.
The most challenging thing about the local food movement is that it takes individual effort. The government isn't going to do it for you, and big agribusiness is largely against it because they can't scale it and optimize it for profit.
I couldn't agree more with what J. is saying. As a family, we struggle with these decisions every day. With two boys, we go through a ton of milk. Do I spend $5 or $6 for a gallon of Cedar Summit Farms milk? Or do I spend $2 and get the hormone-free milk from Super Target?
I think where some of the local food/organic people make a mistake - is in demanding all or nothing. Pick one thing and change it. Buy organic eggs from a local farm. Buy grass-fed beef. Buy Hope Creamery Butter.
Pick what matters to you, and make that change.