Program rewards restaurants for serving Kentucky Proud foods

By JIM TRAMMEL, Kentucky Agricultural News

The Restaurant Rewards program gives restaurants an incentive to buy and serve Kentucky Proud foods and makes customers aware of the local products on the menu.

Program manager Angela Caporelli said the program uses a scoring system ranking various promotional activities that show the restaurant buys and serves local foods.      

Restaurant Rewards, a component of the Kentucky Proud farm marketing program, reimburses restaurants up to 20 percent of what they can show they spent on purchases from local farms with direct Kentucky farm impact, she said.

The program motivates different segments of the farm-to-table supply chain to recognize, locate and do business with one another, Caporelli continued.

A beneficiary and early advocate of the program, Ouita Michel, is proprietor of three Kentucky Proud restaurants, including Holly Hill Inn, a fine-dining establishment featuring many local foods prepared and served in a gracious, historic Midway mansion.

Holly Hill Inn emphasizes varied local purchases from several area farmers. A sister restaurant in Versailles, Cleveland’s at the Woodford Inn, serves all local beef, bison and pork. Michel also owns the Wallace Station Deli and Bakery on Old Frankfort Pike, located between Midway and Versailles.

“For Restaurant Rewards, I have to show that I actually added to the gate receipts of a farmer before it counts,” she said. That qualification is important because it means the restaurant’s purchases are truly local and truly benefit the participating farms. “All the money in the Restaurant Rewards program stays in Kentucky. It’s an innovative way to stimulate local development,” she said.

Michel estimates she spends $100,000 a year for local products among her three businesses. The program’s maximum reimbursement is $12,000 per year.

More than 60 businesses, including restaurants and dining services of Kentucky colleges and universities, participate in the Restaurant Rewards program.

Distributors such as Creation Gardens of Louisville are finding it more worthwhile to make local food products available. Creation Gardens has started an online newsletter alerting their customers to what local products are available each week.

“They’ve seen the value of restaurant customers asking what else they have that is Kentucky Proud,” Caporelli said.

Chef  John Varanese, a 2009 Best of Louisville Awards nominee for Best Chef, is a strong Kentucky Proud advocate in Kentucky’s largest city. He is owner and chef of Varanese Restaurant, an upscale casual eatery in the Clifton section of the River City with a commitment to local and regional foods. Varanese co-sponsors a Clifton community garden and tills a plot there.

Varanese works with several local farmers. Carol Freeman of Hardin County supplies spring mix greens, mint leaves, spinach, lemon balm and other “high-care, low-yield” components, Varenese said. Fox Hollow Farms of Crestwood is an important source of meat cuts, beef bones, osso buco, and other products.

Varanese is always watching for more ways to incorporate local suppliers into his restaurant’s fare and said he is seeking to buy from local pork and lamb producers.

“I think it’s great the state encourages restaurants to use local foods,” he said. “I turn in my receipts regularly. The program gives me the incentive to do more.”

Varanese said he hopes Kentucky paddlefish becomes more widely recognized following his competition in the New Orleans Great American Seafood Cook-Off in July. He became Kentucky’s entrant in the national contest after he won this year’s statewide competition with a dish featuring Kentucky prawn and paddlefish.

To find out more about Restaurant Rewards, go to www.kyproud.com and click on “Restaurants” or contact Caporelli at (502) 564-4983 or angela.caporelli@ky.gov.