When you own a restaurant, it is challenging to balance quality over quantity. Offering customers delicious, inexpensive meals can be tricky. However, even though cheap, frozen ingredients exist, it doesn’t mean you should choose them over local produce and fresh food. Below are several benefits to buying fresh, local ingredients for your restaurant.

Health Benefits of Local Produce & Fresh Ingredients

Choosing fresh ingredients and local produce for your meals over frozen or processed foods is a healthier option. Processed food often contains considerable sugar, fat, salt, and preservatives. Additives are a concern, too. With fresh ingredients, your chef has more comprehensive control over seasonings and other ingredients to add to a dish. Fresh ingredients can also taste more vibrant than their frozen counterparts, too.

How Fresh Food Helps the Environment

When you support local farms, farmers’ markets, or produce stands, you’re choosing businesses in your community over those that supermarkets ship in. Buying locally means there’s less fuel required to bring food to your location, which leads to less pollution.

Additionally, fresh foods usually do not use harmful chemicals or pesticides that can leak into the groundwater of an area. This prevents contamination, unlike factory farms that are harmful to the surrounding ecosystems. By choosing local farmers over general suppliers, you also put money back into the community, as opposed to sending it elsewhere. That can be very appealing to customers who care about where their food comes from.

Now that you know how significant it is to use fresh and local ingredients look to Growing Food Growing People in St. Louis, MO. They donate farm-to-table produce to the community so that everyone can enjoy the benefits of high-quality, fresh produce. Call (314) 518-2048 to learn more about their mission. Or, learn how you can get involved with the cause by viewing their services online.