Food Ingredient Supplier

Chipotle strengthens buy-local stance in Pacific Northwest

Chipotle Mexican Grill’s growing commitment to locally grown ingredients has ramped up purchasing from food suppliers in Oregon and Washington, with benefits for Salem-based Don Pancho Authentic Mexican Foods Inc.

The growing focus on locally supplied food ingredients at Chipotle stems from its “Food with Integrity” initiative, which founder Steve Ells has used to press the chain’s ingredient quality toward increasingly sustainably grown and naturally raised products since 2001.

The expanded purchasing in the Northwest follows a commitment to serve 10 million pounds of locally grown produce in its restaurants in 2011, doubling the amount of locally grown produce served in Chipotle restaurants in 2010. Other food ingredients are also being sourced locally, including tortilla chips and wraps from Don Pancho.

Chipotle Mexican Grill has 1,100 restaurants nationally, including 13 in Washington and 12 in Oregon. It employs roughly 26,500 people. The food chain has focused its purchasing within 350 miles or nearer of restaurants served.

In Oregon and Washington, Chipotle is purchasing red onion from Curry & Company in Brooks, jalapenos and green pepper from Fewel Farms in Prosser, Wash., oregano from HerbCo International in Duvall, Wash. and tortilla chips and 13-inch round tortillas from Don Pancho in Salem.

Tom Hoffert , national food service account manager with Don Pancho, said the growing relationship with Chipotle has been healthy for the business, which employs 300 people manufacturing tortilla chips and wraps.

“It’s a significant amount of business. We really appreciate their doing business with us and hopefully they appreciate the great quality as well,” he said.

Hoffert said he could not provide details on the exact quantity of chips and tortillas purchased by Chipotle, or where the future of the partnership between the two companies might lead. But he indicated he expected the partnership to grow and that the business would enable Don Pancho to continue to bolster its workforce and extend the company’s five-year hiring trend.

The Pet Food Ingredient Game | The Best Restaurant

About 25 years ago I began formulating pet foods at a time when the entire pet food industry seemed quagmire and focused on such things as protein and fat percentages without any real regard for ingredients. Since boot leather and soap could make a pet food with the “ideal” percentages, it was clear that analytical percentages do not end the story about pet food value. I was convinced then, as I am now, that a food can be no better than the ingredients of which it is composed. Since this ingredient idea has caught on in the pet food industry, it has taken on a commercial life that distorts and perverts the meaning of the underlying philosophy of food quality and proper feeding practices. Is health reducible to which ingredients a commercial product does or does not have? As contradictory as it may seem to what I have just said, no it is not. Here’s why.

AAFCO Approval

(*Association of American Feed Control Officials, 1998 Official Publication)

Simultaneously, this same regulatory agency prohibits the use of many proven beneficial natural ingredients that one can find readily available for human consumption such as bee pollen, glucosamine, L-carnitine, spirulina and many other nutraceuticals. It would be easy to conclude that reason does not rule when it comes to what officially can or cannot be used in pet foods.

From the regulators’ standpoint, they operate from the simplistic nutritional idea that the value of food has to do with percentages and that there is no special merit to any particular ingredient. They deny the tens of thousands of scientific research articles proving that the kind of ingredient and its quality can make all the difference in terms of health. They also are silent about the damaging effect of food processing and the impact of time, light, heat, oxygen and packaging on nutritional and health value.

So regulators are certainly not the place to go to determine how to feed pets for health. For their way of thinking, as long as a packaged food achieves certain percentages, regardless of ingredients, the manufacturer can claim the food is 100% complete. Pet owners then proceed to confidently feed such guaranteed foods at every meal thinking all the while they are doing the right thing for their pet. This old school nutritional view is standard practice in human hospitals as well where official dieticians feed diseased and metabolically starved patients a fare of jello, instant potatoes, powdered eggs, white flour rolls and oleomargarine because their charts say such diets contain the correct percentages of certain nutrients. Hospitals are a good place to go if you want to get sick!

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