It’s 4:00 a.m. a lone worker enters the Western North Carolina Farmers Market and parks beside a loading dock. She walks inside, clicks on the lights, and hits the “play” button on what must be the hardest-working answering machine in the East. It sputters to life and spills out a stream of messages—midnight voices of tired chefs calling in the produce order: “one case cherry tomatoes, one case romaine, five pounds shiitakes ...”
So begins another day at Mountain Food Products, a 22-year-old small business that delivers produce to hundreds of restaurants, institutions, and retail produce outlets in Western North Carolina.

By 6:00 a.m., seven drivers have been given their routes for the day, and go to work pulling out cases of fruits and vegetables and loading the trucks. Orders include a mix of items from close to home and around the world: heirloom tomatoes grown down the road in Henderson County, pineapples from Hawaii, sprouts from Tryon, avocadoes from Mexico, lettuce from Jackson County.

The products loaded on the truck have been carefully selected for quality, freshness, and ripeness. Company owner Ron Ainspan sticks with vendors who sell him top quality food — like the tomato grower who harvests acres of product but goes through each box to sort out undesirables. Inventories are watched closely. Mexican restaurants buy from Mountain Foods because they aren’t afraid to deliver avocadoes perfectly guacamole-ripe; larger food distributors can’t afford the attention to detail needed in handling such potentially perishable products.

Drivers hit the road around 10:00 a.m. They’ll have ten to twenty stops, most of them restaurants, and most of them fiercely loyal customers of Mountain Foods.
“They’ve taken great care of us since we opened,” says Cathy Cleary, co-owner of Asheville’s West End Bakery. “As their customer, you always have the feeling they are on your side.”

“I see customer service as not just performing well as a business, but also building relationships,” Ainspan says. “What keeps me going is making connections with people, and the good feeling you get when you come through for someone.”

This spring a customer wanted ramps, the traditional leek-like mountain food, but it was a little early in the season. Ainspan hit the phones, trying everyone from the organizers of a Ramp Festival in Cherokee to a Burnsville Chevron station rumored to have the first ramps of the season.

Ainspan spent an hour trying to track down ramps. This kind of behavior doesn’t make sense in the corporate boardroom--after all, an hour of the company owner’s time is worth more than the entire five-pound ramp order. But it’s this kind of behavior that has kept Mountain Foods thriving and growing while many small produce sellers nationwide have been gobbled up or priced out of business by industry behemoths.

Ron Ainspan farmed locally from 1978 to 1985, was founder of the North Asheville Tailgate market in 1980, and started Mountain Food Products in 1985 to promote local agriculture. The business now employs twenty people, several of whom have worked there for more than ten years.

As the 2006 growing season approaches, a unique collaboration between Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project (ASAP) and Mountain Food Products aims to fill the plates of western NC restaurant diners with even more food from local farms. Mountain Foods will initiate the “Appalachian Grown” line of vegetables and fruits-entirely sourced from WNC growers.

The new program will help chefs make educated choices to buy local in season, and in turn consumers will be educated about where their food comes from.
That’s where Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project (ASAP) plays a part. ASAP’s work, such as creating Western NC’s Local Food Guide, encourages buying choices that help make farming in these mountains economically viable. In working with Mountain Food Products, ASAP will help to maintain the local farm identity on foods all the way from field to table. Participating restaurants will be provided with the materials they need to understand (and communicate to their customers) where their food comes from.

“When people enjoy delicious prepared food from area farms and get to know the farmer, even indirectly, they think twice about sitting by idly while small farms disappear. Support for small farms is tremendous in our region,” says ASAP director Charlie Jackson, adding that recent surveys in Buncombe, Madison, and Henderson Counties showed that 80 percent of consumers say they are willing to pay more for food that is identified as local. “People favor buying choices that support our region’s economy, landscapes, and farm heritage.”

ASAP has heard from many restaurant owners that they (and their customers) want more food on the table from local farms, but have trouble identifying farmers who can supply them, and lack the time to do business with multiple small vendors. That’s why, says Jackson, Mountain Foods can play a key role as provider of many fresh fruits and vegetables from local farms. The Asheville Merchants’ Fund of the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina provided support for the logistical work needed to create this unique program.

“The Asheville area is unique in its ability to generate small businesses,” says Ainspan. “I’m very gratified that buying local has become something important to lots of people in our region. We’ve been focused on supplying local products for twenty years, and it’s exciting to see that focus bearing fruit.”

Peter Marks is Local Food and Farm Coordinator for Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project (ASAP). ASAP’s Local Food Guide is available in area retailers or online at www.appalachiangrown.org.

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