Bayless's Farm to Table History Inspires Everything Local
Creator of the Frontera restaurant empire presented keynote to remember.
Frontera and Center
I was in familiar territory as I listened to Chef Rick Bayless at the January 17 opening session of the Everything Local Conference, in conversation with Rita Frazer, director of audio services at the rural-focused RFD Radio Network.
I’ve had the honor of getting to know Rick several years ago during my work with the non-profit formerly known as FamilyFarmed, and was part of the team that in 2017 produced the event — marking the anniversary of Frontera Grill opening 30 years earlier — that raised funds for that organization and Frontera Farmer Foundation. I am an admirer of his work to build today’s expansive local food ecosystem in the Chicago region, without which my second career as a Good Food advocate and publisher would never have happened.
Helping kick off the three-day conference presented by Illinois Farm Bureau, Illinois Farmers Market Association, and Illinois Specialty Growers Association, Rick shared his origin story, telling the audience that he grew up in the restaurant world, specifically his parents’ Oklahoma City barbecue place. He said from an early age he spent weekends at the restaurant, which he loved,while his brother, Skip Bayless, hated it (Skip went into sports and today is a controversial talk show host on Fox Sports).
Rick’s path to becoming a U.S. pioneer in regional Mexican cuisine began when he visited Mexico at age 14 and felt “like I just came home.” He later studied in Mexico and moved there with his wife Deann for five years, traveling widely to learn all about the country’s regional foodways. And he learned important lessons about how locally produced ingredients were essential to each region’s delicious dishes.
“Wherever I went in Mexico that had good agriculture, I found complex cuisine, restaurants doing really interesting things. And in the places that didn't have much agriculture. It was kind of a wasteland,” Rick said. When the couple pondered where to move to start their U.S. restaurant journey in the late 1980s, they chose Chicago, in part because Deann had grown up in a suburb and in part because Chicago had a large population of immigrants from Mexico.
Rick also thought a Midwest location would be a land of plenty for locally grown ingredients but was disappointed. Conventional agriculture, focused on field corn and soybeans, had swept the region and he found there were few produce growers and their products were almost impossible to obtain in the city. He related how he and Deann had to drive to the outskirts of Chicago to stock up on strawberries during their short growing season.
Rick’s resolve to change this situation prompted him to take steps that would play a major role in reviving the locally grown food ecosystem in Chicago.
First, he was wowed by the sweet winter spinach from Snug Haven Farm in Belleville and asked the farmer to grow more for him. When the farmer replied he didn’t have the resources to expand his production, Rick’s Frontera Grill loaned him $10,000, repayable in one year with product.
After maintaining and expanding this loan program for about a decade, Rick created Frontera Farmer Foundation, which over the past two decades has made outright grants, totaling $3.2 million, to hundreds of farmers for relatively small infrastructure and equipment improvements that made a big impact on their financial viability.
“In the beginning, it was all hoop houses, it was like everybody needed hoop houses because everyone needed to extend their seasons,” Rick said. “Now though, it's all different kinds of things, from delivery vehicles to watering systems to harvesters, whatever it's going to take your farm to the next leve… more productive or more profitable from this investment.”
In the meantime, he became a leader in efforts by Abby Mandel, a cooking instructor and local food advocate, and several other chefs who became farm-to-table pioneers in the 1999 launch of Green City Market, which still holds its reputation as the Chicago region’s flagship farmers market.
“We wanted it to be juried, we wanted to have a say a sustainability aspect to it, and we wanted farmers to be there to get to know the people that were coming to buy,” Rick said. “We were able to get local food in front of people, and it was a real novelty.”
In the 25 years since, dozens of farmers markets have sprouted in the Chicago region, providing greatly increased sales for existing farms and prompting interest among newer farmers in the local food market. Many of these producers also built sourcing relationships with many of the region’s top restaurants — though these partnerships were disrupted by the COVID pandemic closures in 2020-21 and, Rick said, have not been fully revived.
“I feel like we are kind of starting over,” Rick said. Addressing farmers in the audience, he said, “I say that out loud and publicly to you guys, because we need you to be our partners and to understand also the world we live in and we need to understand the world you guys live in.”
Prompted by moderator Frazer for a final takeaway for the audience, Rick provided this valedictory:
I would say first and foremost, the work you're doing is absolutely essential.
Anything to do with food, anywhere along the chain, is hard and it's unpredictable. We all share that... If you put me in a mid-level management job in a cubicle on the 31st floor of one of the highrises in Chicago, I would jump out the window. I need to be moving. I'm very active. I don't mind hard work, I don't mind long days, it makes me feel good. So don't ever feel bad about that, because the work that you're doing is essential to the survival of our culture...
You are the ones that make our lives beautiful and our guests’ lives beautiful. So keep that work going because it's very essential... We could not be more different. You guys work early mornings, we work late nights... If you ask me a plan when I'm going to be making in the restaurant next week, I couldn't do it because it's too far away... but we enhance each other's lives in a really great way. I respect you guys from the bottom of my heart and I know so many chefs that do in Chicago, so keep up the great work.”
Great article. Rick is such a tireless supporter of local food and farmers. Thanks for sharing his story!
♥️Thank you for providing this very interesting background about why and how Rick Bayless became an early advocate and crucial supporter for the good food movement in the Midwest and beyond. 🍓