Local leverage
Fifty-seven percent of consumers say they either sometimes or always eat local, driving demand for those types of items on menus. However, different definitions of “local” abound, Pawlak noted, and could mean anything from items being sourced within a particular city to within a much broader region, like the Midwest.
Largely, he emphasized, it references food with a story, as meat procured from a plant two blocks away would be likely be perceived as being less local than that sourced from a small family farm several states away.