Promoting local dining

Photo: Nicholas Johansen

Chef Brock Bowes of Kelowna's Raudz Regional Table, explains the local ingredients used at the restaurant.

With yet another pre-election funding announcement, the province is looking to launch a new program to encourage B.C. restaurants to carry more local food and drinks.

Norm Letnick says Eat Drink Local is a “cousin” of the province's Buy Local program, but is geared towards those eating out.

The $225,000 for the first year of the five-year commitment by the government will go towards organizing a “massive dining event all throughout British Columbia to encourage restaurants to serve local” in the fall, according to Ian Tostenson, president of the BC Restaurant and Food Services Association.

Tostenson, with the BC Restaurant and Food Services Association, designed the Eat Drink Local campaign.

Additionally, the money will be used to organize four meetings across the province to engage with the restaurant industry, as well as to set up a website to highlight local options in restaurants.

“There'll be a reference for people to go to to get information, right now it's all kind of scattered,” said Tostenson.

He says he's spent the last three-and-a-half months working on the campaign.

The government expects this program will increase sales of local food in restaurants.

Letnick said the success of the program can be easily monitored by tracking the local products sold by Sysco and GFS, food distributors that provide 90 per cent of food to restaurants in the province, according to Tostenson.

“We can benchmark what they're selling local now and what they're going to sell local a year from now,” Tostenson said. “If we can't move the needle then we haven't done a very good job.”

Tostenson says after the first year, government investment will decrease year after year, as the initial investment will go to setting up “infrastructure” like a website.