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Organic Vegan Nutjobs?
Posted by Utah Stories in Business, Food, Local Spotlight
Are these people crazed foodies or are they spearheading a food revolution?
by Richard Markosian
You see them lurking around at the Farmer’s Market. Most of them have facial hair and smell of cumin. These are the types who pledge their allegiance of fighting the cause of “man made” global warming, beginning with removing cows from the food chain.
These are the vegans — BEWARE!
Ian Brandt is well aware of the popular perceptions of vegans in Utah. Brandt’s vegetarian restaurant, Sages, has been completely dismissed by Salt Lake City’s most popular food critic — whose name he did not want to mention. However, Brandt feels that this bad rap is undeserved. He says, “What critics and most people don’t realize is that we aren’t weird. We are part of the so called ‘slow food’ movement, and the ‘local first’ movement, and we are mostly foodies who are more conscious of where our food comes from and how it is produced.”
Inside Cali’s Natural Foods Warehouse
Ian Brandt is the owner of both Sages Cafe and the Vertical Diner. Considered by many to be a leader of Utah’s growing vegan community, Brandt is a local icon. During the summer, he is fixtures of Salt Lake City’s Farmer’s Market where he tells me he spends over $1,000 a week on local produce.
Today, Brandt is looking to take the concept of veganism to uncharted territory, and he has recently launched Utah’s first completely organic warehouse. Cali’s Natural Foods, is a wholesale manufacturer, distributor, and grocer that adopts an uncommon business model where profit is not the bottom line.
“It is our hope that you will feel as good as we do about supporting high quality, healthy products and healthy communities world-wide.”
But feeling good about your purchases does comes at a price. Unlike Wal-Mart, where globalization and subsidies ensure that most produce is available year round and at a relatively fixed price, Cali’s Natural Foods opts for freshness and locally grown commodities. This means that produce in once again seasonal, and the cost can be significantly greater.
But that’s where the warehouse idea comes in. “If you are paying $20 a square food for a prime downtown location for your restaurant, it’s hard to stay competitive. But if you only $1 a square foot in a warehouse, it helps defer the cost.” Brandt says he is now able to do about 15% of the food preparation for his two restaurants at the warehouse site.
Brand takes me on a tour: “This oven I bought from the restaurant supply company for 600 bucks; this costs around 6,000 bucks brand new! My oven I bought at half off, same with my sink.” Brandt’s kitchen is filled with enough equipment to produce mass quantities of heirloom tomato brushetta, pickled cucumbers in balsamic vinegar and enough flavored oils to make your head spin. Close to 100 products now bear the Cali’s brand name.
Though it may seem strange to some, Cali’s Natural Foods is part of a growing movement of ecologically conscious consumers trying to find a balance between cost and conscious. Even in Utah, which was last year officially dubbed “The Reddest State in the Union,” Brandt’s notion of cheaper, greener products is catching on.
Catching on in Unlikely Places
To find further evidence of this, one need not look farther than your local grocer, where titans of industry like Kellogg’s, Pepsi, and even Wal-Mart are now hawking their own mainstream lines of USDA certified organic products — something which might have seemed unbelievable even 20 years ago.
Films such as Robert Kenner’s recent Emmy-winning Food, Inc., are serving to put a new face on the so-called green movement and take away some of the stigma. The film, which begins with American journalist Eric Schlosser chomping hungrily on a hamburger, questions the common perception that the green food community can’t make it in a mainstream market. Instead of pushing an ideal, Kenner, like Brandt tries to show that a “greener” perspective on food is a practical, logical decision.
While the idea of an organic warehouse or organic cafe in Utah might initially seem strange, Brandt is one of many who are making this more than a passing fad. For Brandt, eating local, organic foods is not about any radical ideology: it’s a practical decision about quality.
“If I lived in the country, I probably wouldn’t be a vegetarian. Living in the city means that you are much more likely to get poor animal meat,” Brandt says.
From a tactical perspective, quality and health are things that almost everyone can agree on, and they sell much better than an ethereal notion of saving the earth. It is this change of rhetoric that has helped breath new life into the world of vegetarians and vegans.
Oddly enough, one of Utah’s most vocal proponents of vegetarianism is also one of its most beloved: the Hare Krishnas. The Sri Sri Radha Temple in Spanish Fork hosts on of the most popular annual tourist attractions in the state each year as it celebrates its Festival of Colors. Inside the temple, among other things, you will find a large series of posters advocating a vegetarian lifestyle. The posters point to chapter 89 of the LDS Doctrine and Covenants, which expressly discourages the consumption of meat “except in times of winter or famine.” The poster serves as a subtle reminder that vegetarianism, at least seasonally, is something that is directly tied to Utah culture in a way few people would normally admit.Even though it might not be about money for Ian Brandt, his new warehouse is putting organic and vegan food back on the menu for many Utahns who otherwise might not be able to afford it. In a sense, by adopting a big business of production and distribution and better serve the financial needs of his clients, Brandt is better able to serve his own dreams of promoting a healthier, more responsible method of feeding Salt Lake City.
And on a planet where 1.02 billion people go to bed hungry each night, it’s hard to argue with the logic.
Learn more about Cali’s Natural Foods at their website:
If you liked this story, you might also like our articles about the Utah Food Coop, Why Eat Raw?, and our coverage of the Bubble and Bee Organic boutique.
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