Agricultural News
Alltech Symposium Explores the Future of the Food Industry
Mon, 21 May 2012 18:01:22 CDT
What is the future of agriculture? Where do you see the food industry going in the future? Each year Alltech tries to answer these questions at its annual symposium. Ron Hays is at this year's symposium and sent us some audio from a presentation with Tim Gannon, the founder of Outback Steak House and John Y. Brown, the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Both companies are worldwide and feed hundreds of millions of meals to customers each year. If that weren't a massive enough undertaking, add on top of that producing a consistent product year in and year out that meets the highest safety standards.
"Our real threat is supply and how we can get a safe product to our customers," Gannon says.
With far flung networks of restaurants all over the world, that is no easy task. Gannon says his company buys over $400 million worth of beef every year. The remaining 45% of his menu items are non-red meat.
Both Gannon and Brown say that an overarching concern for safety and quality is very difficult to maintain in a corporate environment.
Gannon says corporate employees don't think like the entrepreneurs that start these restaurant chains. "They think about holding onto their jobs. For entrepreneurs like ourselves, we make decisions. We went to the farms. We saw what was going on. Corporate people are managers; they let somebody else handle everything. If anybody get's blamed, it's going to be the growers and the feeders, not the CEOs. They're going to look down there and say, 'Why didn't you tell me about this?' And you've been to a number of these meetings, they don't really know what goes on down at the farm. And yet you explain it to them, and they wake up."
And what they wake up to is that it is difficult to source high quality foods at reasonable prices. But when it's done properly Gannon says, it can result in tremendous profits. He said one of Outback's signature items, the Bloomin' Onion, provides a blueprint for what can be done.
He says the idea is not Australian at all. In fact, he had never been to Australia. The idea came from a Japanese cookbook on making vegetables into flowers. He married that concept with an onion that was sliced and dipped in a spiced batter he drew from his time in New Orleans. His customers loved it.
He said the dish has been extremely profitable in no small measure because the commodity cost of onions has stayed stable for 24 years. The resulting formula, he says, is really pretty simple: "Find a great, inexpensive raw material, add flavor to it, create with imagination something that everybody loves and is craveable, and it's a huge win."
He said the same attention to detail needs to go into every menu item, especially the beef. He said it starts at the farm level in understanding exactly what the cows eat. He said it was very simple for him to understand after he understood what makes good seafood.
"Because of all the feeding programs of the fish, the quality of the fish is in what they eat. Cold water lobster tastes better than warm water lobster. It's because of what they eat. And once you understand that, you get very concerned as an entrepreneur about what our proteins are being fed because that determines the ultimate quality of what you're going to serve."
You can hear the full conversation by clicking on the LISTEN BAR below.
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