The 2010
newsmakers
in food

As technology propels us toward faster, more efficient lifestyles, our most essential act is leading us in the polar opposite direction. Eating can be viewed at equal turns as indulgent and practical. Regardless, it’s becoming increasingly clear that how we do it needs to change. Sure, eating avocados year-round is great. But consider how unnatural that is, what’s on them – and soon to be in us – that enabled them to grow to the size of softballs and how they even found their way to our produce aisles in the middle of January. The closer we scrutinize our food, the easier it becomes to appreciate the individual acts that are beginning to set us straight again. What we’re seeing now, as a result, is a more accurate picture of eating in Bucks County. It’s one where porterhouses are savored, and rightfully so, but it’s also a place where the land is beginning to again be valued for more than the scenery and where the next meal isn’t a given for everyone. By Scott Edwards

The Corporate Poster Boy

Tom Frank

Owner, The Knight House and 86 West;

Franchisee, McDonald’s
I arrive 20 minutes late for my interview with Frank and find him not perched over a grand desk in an out-of-the-way office but tucked into a small, four-person table in the middle of the Chalfont McDonald’s that he owns. I apologize profusely, but Frank won’t hear it. He’s exceedingly polite, which only seems to deepen my guilt for wasting his time, which I imagine to be quite precious considering he spreads it among 10 McDonald’s, all located in Bucks and Montgomery counties, as well as the Doylestown restaurant, The Knight House, and its sister lounge, 86 West, which opened next door just before Thanksgiving. Frank’s story is the kind that gives those with MBAs fits of rage. As one of 10 kids in a family with not much of an academic or a professional track record, Frank started working at a McDonald’s in Hampton, VA, his hometown – which explains the hospitality — when he was 17. When his peers wandered off to college, he stayed. At McDonald’s. And began a steady rise through the ranks over the next 20 years until he hit corporate. He left in 1984, sensing there was more to life. It turned out there wasn’t. He worked in dream jobs with Jiffy Lube and Sbarro, but something was always missing. So, four years later, he returned to McDonald’s and, after some smoothing over of hurt feelings, bought his first restaurant, the first of 30 or so (he lost count) he would own over the next 22 years. Five years ago, looking for another challenge he could “grow with,” the Doylestown resident bought The Knight House. To remedy the lack of room, especially at the 12-seat bar, Frank expanded into the only available space, a courtyard in back of the restaurant, and it promptly became the place to be in the summer for Doylestown socialites. But when the warmth disappeared, so, too, did the crowds. This time Frank bought the building next door and went about molding an urban chic bar, an altogether different vibe from the one the formal Knight House emits. But the contrast — not to mention the 140 additional seats — Frank says, only heightens the “synergy,” a term he likes to use a lot. Make no mistake, though, 86 West may be a powerful, new seductress, but McDonald’s is Frank’s first love and, thus, owns his heart. He’s already learned once what it means to tempt fate.

The Caretaker

Dennis Micai

Executive Director, The Trenton Area Soup Kitchen

Micai’s modest office – there are no windows – sits just off the dining hall. During the course of our brief time together, the door never closes, and I get the impression that that’s how it remains during all other hours of every other day because passersby stop and say hello or just wave at frequent, regular intervals. Micai acknowledges them all, never once expressing anything near frustration over the constant distractions. This is Micai’s life, exactly as he wants it to be, “on the frontlines,” as he likes to describe it. After 34 years as the director of the Mercer County (NJ) Board of Social Services, a position through which he oversaw some 650 employees, 30 programs and a $60 million budget, this is Micai returning to his roots as a social worker. He’s willingly – actively – removed himself from discussions of the big picture and policy and placed himself squarely among the starving and the poor who so desperately depend upon people like him and his staff to survive another week. TASK, the only five-day-a-week kitchen in Trenton, NJ, served 190,000 meals last year, including its three satellite sites around the state capital. That figure, Micai says, is actually even with 2008’s total, which was a 10 percent spike over 2007’s. TASK was among the first to witness the dramatic ramifications of the recession. The population it serves comprises the bottom rung of the economic ladder, so they were the first wave of casualties. But the duration of the extreme demand is only half of the story. The response is the other. TASK fed every mouth on a $1.8 million annual budget, less than three percent of which comes from government funding. (Less strings attached.) All the while, Micai, who was appointed director in February 2007 after sitting for three years on the TASK board, visited churches, nonprofit and community group meetings, anywhere he could find an ear, a handful of nights a week every week to ensure there was no drop-off in individual donations, which, at 65 percent, comprise the biggest chunk of the budget. The stories he told were not of dire straits but of salvation – a graduate of the TASK adult education program enrolling at Mercer County Community College, a mother feeding her child – that he helped foster every day.

The Grassroots Organizer

Robin Hoy

Co-Founder and Executive Director,

The Bucks County Foodshed Alliance
What started as a self-described “selfish” pursuit evolved in less than four years into the greatest driving force behind sustainable agriculture in Bucks County. At its inception, the alliance was simply a potential avenue to help spread the fresh, organic bounty Hoy was already enjoying as a charter member of the county’s first community-supported farm, Anchor Run, in Wrightstown, where she lives. Hoy and a couple of other members decided to see if they could make the model work on a larger scale. So they – in true grassroots fashion – organized a meeting and distributed flyers. They also made a point of inviting as many local organic farmers as they could find. Not a problem. There weren’t many. What they did next was unremarkable in the context, but it would define the alliance’s scope. They asked the farmers, “What can we do to help you?” Their response was equally basic: Give us an audience. Which is what Hoy and company have done since. Six months later, they launched the Wrightstown Farmers Market with 14 vendors. This summer, there were 35, and the consumers were growing in proportion, Hoy says. The alliance took over a second market in Lower Makefield last year and nurtures five others in Bucks, three of which opened over the last four years. The other side of its mission is educating adults and children alike. The last 25 years or so have been a learning experience for Hoy herself, who earned a master’s in environmental studies in the late eighties, spurred by what she read on climate change. She experienced a similar awakening with sustainable agriculture, but it wouldn’t arrive until many years later, assuming all the while that one had nothing to do with the other. The more she grasped the situation, the greater the urgency became. The alliance’s goal now, Hoy says, is to keep step with the growth and to prepare for the next significant phase: building a sustainable food supply in Bucks that can be accessed by institutions, schools, restaurants and the region’s disadvantaged.

The Crusader

Marc BrownGold

Unemployed

How could they? I thought when I read the posting on their Web site that BrownGold and his wife, Theresa, sold the Buckingham restaurant they owned and ran together for the last seven years, JustEat By BrownGold. I stewed through the late summer only to stumble upon a posting on the local foodie blog, BucksCountyTaste.com, in the fall that said BrownGold was seeking a job through which he could change food policy on a national scale. I swallowed hard and forgave him. And then I emailed him. I had to know what he was thinking. It turned out that that was the culprit, thinking. BrownGold, removed from the constant neediness of the restaurant business for the first time since he was 14 (he’s now 48), was doing it clearly. He just plowed through five books – all detailing the atrocities of factory farming – over the previous three weeks. He’s also talking to anyone who could help him create a strategy that would put us back on a path toward sensible eating. That morning, BrownGold met with Ann Karlen, who runs the Fair Food Project in Philadelphia. It’s developing a huge distribution center that will serve sustainable food on a grand scale throughout the city. Three months after cooking his last restaurant dinner, BrownGold is starting to hone in on corporations in the food industry because they would thrust him into the eye of change, he says. “We are at the point where everyone is scrutinizing their food supply, and this stuff’s going to be found out,” BrownGold says. “And the corporations that are at the forefront of changing the way that we raise our food … are the ones that are going to flourish in the future.” But, who flees a successful business in the middle of a recession? you may ask, as I did. It became a matter of conscience for BrownGold, who fell in love with the farm-to-table way of dining years ago. Ultimately, the options became continue making a “nice statement” with the restaurant or take a shot at leaving a much larger impression. Once he realized he subconsciously made the decision a while back, BrownGold began getting his house in order. “When I was talking to Ann this morning, she said the greatest thing that would happen would be that before the end of our lifetimes, we wouldn’t need people like me,” he says. “And I said, ‘Well then, if that’s the case, maybe I could just be the secretary of agriculture.”

The Marketing Innovator

John Ordway

Co-Founder and -Owner, Jules Thin Crust
So much of Jules feels like it was created in direct response to the personal desires of its founders. As the parents of young children, Ordway and his wife, quickly grew frustrated with the lack of fast, healthy food options available to them. Environmental fanatics, too, recycling and locally-sourced ingredients are cornerstones of their operation. And, knowing the stresses the food industry can place on a parent, they try to alleviate as much of it as they can, providing full healthcare, paying above-industry-standard wages and closing by eight. As Ordway, the more active owner of the two, seems to trust his instincts, the more innovative he becomes. Jules, for example, started making gluten-free pizza in addition to its organic thincrust three years ago, long before Celiac disease was recognized as being as widespread as it is today. But Ordway is a former advertising executive, so it would be foolish to think that there wasn’t a very specific business model and brand in place well before the first slice was ever served. Case in point: Don’t call it pizza. “We don’t look at it as pizza,” Ordway says. “The idea behind Jules from day one was to create an environment that was pleasurable to the senses with a food that is enjoyed by everyone.” In this way, Ordway can – and should – be credited with bringing organic food to the masses in Bucks. He was piling Blue Moon greens on his rectangular slices when Jules launched five years ago. As much as his hand has defined so much of the operation – feedback registered on the Web site is sent directly to his BlackBerry to this day – the food is the aspect that’s closest to his heart. His mother was one of the first organic farmers in Ireland. Ordway, though, says he never really understood what she was doing through all those years until he was living in New York with kids of his own. But once he did, there would be no reverting back. The food, largely because of that commitment, is also the hardest part of the business to control. Ordway is constantly in pursuit of better ingredients closer to home, a task that should become somewhat easier when the fourth Jules opens in March in California, his first foray outside of Southeastern Pennsylvania, but it will hardly be the last. Ordway sees Northern California as his next great frontier. In all, and barring a further dip in the economy, he expects to open 20 locations within the next four years.

1. We love the whole transformation that took place at Newtown’s Goodnoe corner and Jules Pizza is the Jewel of the corner. You keep up the great innovations! Chef Nick

   Posted by Wedding Receptions | January 30, 2010, 10:35 am