Plus, our globetrotting chef dishes on corporate food
Eat local. We’ve been hearing that mantra shouted from every mountaintop, farmers market, and Volvo bumper in the region for years and we’ve all noticed the increase in local markets offering up the bounty of the fertile Tennessee Valley.
The “eat local” movement has managed to focus much needed attention on the benefits of buying ingredients from our local farmers and producers, and has made the term “local” a beacon for shoppers looking to make tasty, responsible decisions when buying food for themselves and their families.
But when it comes to food, it’s time for the “buy local” movement to expand its message beyond just the ingredients that are used to make our food to include the businesses and people who feed us when we aren’t cooking for ourselves. It’s time for Chattanoogans to stand up and fully support the locally owned and operated restaurants that are working hard to make our local food scene one of the best in the Southeast.
It shouldn’t be a difficult decision for any of us living in the Chattanooga area to choose a locally owned restaurant over a chain or franchise, because most chain restaurants are terrible. I should know—I worked in that industry for over a decade, toiling along as a cog in the corporate wheel that brought about a half-dozen of the big chain restaurants to the city. I’ve seen first-hand how their food is made, how their employees are treated, where their food and supplies are bought, and where the money they make goes—and none of it is good news for Chattanooga or its residents.
But rather than spend the next five hundred words explaining the obvious (how the food in chain restaurants is grossly over portioned, has enough salt to attract herds of deer, and enough sugar and fat to make your FitBit burst into flames; how the chains treat employees like capital instead of like human beings, cater to the lowest common food denominators, and take resources from the community disproportionate to what they return)—let me focus on why you should choose local restaurants over these palate-numbing invaders.
First, the food is better. You may be thinking, “But I love Olive Garden’s fettuccine alfredo and Hardees chicken biscuits!” and you have every right to like whatever you want to like. But let’s be honest, just because something has been engineered to trigger a positive response from your taste buds doesn’t mean it’s quality food. Many chain restaurants get all their food from a central source, so it’s traveled far and lost freshness before it gets to you and many chain restaurants utilize premade food that the “cooks” simply reheat and plate. (Making biscuits from a mix is not “from scratch”, and opening a packet of sauce mix is not how you make a good alfredo.)
Second, locally owned businesses recirculate a much larger share of their revenue back into the local economy, enriching the whole community. (On average, for every $100 you spend at a local restaurant, $68 will stay in the community as compared to $14 for a chain). Surely I don’t need to explain why you should spend your money at restaurants that invest it back into the community where you live, work, and take advantage of its resources.
Eating in local restaurants will, in turn, have a multiplier effect, producing more local eateries with more variety, encouraging healthy competition, creating incentives that add to the local character and prosperity of the city, and creating more jobs locally, which lead to better wages and benefits than chains are currently willing to provide. Want to keep the “American Dream” alive and truly make America great? Support local restaurants that are putting money directly back into our own community. You’ll be funding great ideas and ventures that can only exist outside of homogeneous, mainstream, corporate chains.
Finally, local restaurants offer an experience that mainstream chains can never provide, no matter what their slick commercials promise. Regardless of how hard you try to turn their defrosted salt/sugar bombs into a pleasurable dining experiences, a meal from a chain restaurant that’s been carefully designed to be ordered, cooked, served, and eaten in less than an hour has very little wiggle room for enjoyment—they want to fill you full of calories and turn that table.
To maximize your dining enjoyment, the simplest solution is to eat local. Dine where you can eat seasonal food, purchased close to where it was produced, from someone you know and can talk to. It’s the right thing you can do and the most delicious way to do it.
Mike McJunkin is a native Chattanoogan who has traveled abroad extensively, trained chefs, and owned and operated restaurants. Join him on Facebook at facebook.com/SushiAndBiscuits