The growing importance of provenance

Affluent consumers want the real thing having been burned by the financial meltdown, coupled by growing concerns about product safety - from toys to mobile phones, even dry wall (note the recent scandal about Chinese made dry wall that is said to cause respiratory ailments and tarnishing of household metals). They are skeptical and want proof. Food in particular, has become increasingly suspect, as media reports regularly surface about everyday food dangers: everything from Chilean salmon (reported to have 340 times the recommended amount of antibiotic, chloramphenicol, linked to a lethal human blood disorder and is a suspected cause of cancer) to genetically engineered growth hormones in dairy, cattle and poultry products.

Enter the growing importance of provenance – we want to know the origin, the source.

More and more menu descriptions are citing the purveyor, the farm where the produce was raised and what it was fed.  Such menu dissection is not uncommon among northern Californian diners. They are choosy and, invariably, knowledgeable about where their food comes from – a result of interaction with producers at farmers’ markets and the fact that restaurants routinely highlight the provenance of food on their menus. This focus on suppliers is not entirely new. Its local pioneer was Alice Waters, owner and executive chef of the legendary Chez Panisse restaurant and café in Berkeley, along with her peers and protégés, has been interpreting farm-to-table cuisine for years, providing shout-outs on her menus to all her favored producers.

And provenance isn’t just limited to food and restaurants. According to Cindy Palusamy, founder of CP Strategy, a consultancy that specializes in retail, wellness and hospitality strategies, even spas are starting to grow their own herbs for their treatments. She also told us Connecticut’s Charym which has an alliance with a local diary farm for milk and yogurt products used in some of their treatments.