'Affordable' organic restaurants planned

ORGANIC food giant Riverford is planning town centre "neighbourhood restaurants" serving affordable meals using freshly-grown produce.

Guy Watson, founder of Riverford Organic Vegetables, the hugely successful vegetable box home-delivery business, said his "Riverford-goes-to-town" project could see a chain of small local restaurants offering a set menu of seasonal dishes all for under £10.

Mr Watson's organic empire has gone from strength to strength since it was established in 1993 and is still growing at about 10 per cent a year.

In an interview with the WMN ahead of launching the Riverford Farm Cook Book, Mr Watson said: "I've got a bit of a bee in my bonnet at the moment about doing a 'Riverford-goes-to-town' – smaller Field Kitchens mainly in residential areas in towns. The obvious place to start would be Bristol, I suppose, but try to do them as community social enterprises."

The Field Kitchen, Riverford's canteen-style restaurant at the farm's traditional family base, tucked away in South Devon's Dart Valley, has one simple rule – the food goes from the field to the plate within 24 hours.

Now Mr Watson says he wants to bring that seasonal and fresh dining ethos to a wider audience – and etch away the myth that organic food is expensive food.

He said: "We're trying to work out a formula for doing it to make it affordable. You'd have very limited choice. I don't know if you could have a 'no choice' menu... we may do no choice – non-fussy service like we have here (at the Field Kitchen)."

He called them "neighbourhood restaurants" and the idea would be to enthuse people about fresh, seasonal, organic food. "They would be the sorts of places you would go, not when you are looking for a really fancy night out, but when for whatever reason you can't be bothered to cook," he said.

"You can go and eat reasonably affordably and see the connection with the food and the kitchen."

The "no choice" menu would be similar to local cafe-style restaurants in the US. Mr Watson said that in densely populated areas, there was often a "neighbourhood restaurant" serving coffees in the morning. They advertised on a notice-board what the evening meals would be, depending on the produce.

"There is a limited or set menu – which makes it much easier to produce top-quality food from top-quality ingredients," he said.

Mr Watson said he wanted Riverford restaurants to focus on the community, run by local people and supporting those in the area. They could be run by parents whose careers had been halted through having children. He envisaged the restaurants being fairly small and set among rows of local shops.