Although the meat is more costly than conventional beef, b.good’s growth has given it the purchasing power to meet the minimum poundage per week required to buy from Pineland Farms, a collective of 104 family farms in northern New England and New York. That lowers the restaurant’s cost a bit, and b.good is also willing to take a hit on their profits per burger, to drive home a point that is important to the owners.
“We always thought that real food was food that was homemade by people, not factories, so we started out grinding our own beef, still do,” said Jon Olinto, who cofounded b.good with his childhood best friend, Anthony Ackil. Then, as the partners learned more, their concept of “real food’’ extended deeper into the supply chain.
“We started thinking maybe it wasn’t real to raise cows in factories,” Olinto said. “Then, was it real to give them antibiotics and hormones?”
The answer — a deeply felt “no’’ — prompted the friends to start visiting small farms and meeting farmers.
“For us, it’s about knowing the person behind the food. If you know the farmer up in Maine, and know how he does business, that’s way more important to us than reading a label that says a meat is organic. That’s the kind of relationship we trust,” Olinto said.
Most factory farms, on the other hand, are vast, mechanized operations.
“Factory farms replace humans with technology and systems run by machines, not people. There’s no love, no transparency,” he said. “And when you buy a ground-beef burger from a mega-chain, you don’t know what you’re getting, or who made it.”
B.good also purchases as many of its vegetables as possible from local farms or farmers the owners know. Poster-sized wall boards identify the farm and farmers who raised the day’s beef, as well as the produce, and they use quite a bit: potatoes and sweet potatoes for their (delicious) baked fries ($2.19/$2.49); lettuce and tomatoes for salads and on their sandwiches; and various veggies for their stir-fried crisp veggies ($2.79) and seasonal veggies ($2.79).
