Our Recipe

The key to supplying family priced diners with tons of local and regional food is The Farmers Diner commissary. The commissary is the hub of the company, bringing in meat and produce right off the farm and preparing these fresh products for use in each restaurant. The commissary allows the restaurant cooks and managers to work just as they would in any other restaurant without having to deal with the significant logistical demands of handling fresh, local area products.

The commissary is equipped with the right sized equipment and people who are trained to process fresh products. In today's world there are not many prep cooks or line cooks who have seen, let alone worked with, yellow carrots that have grown like a fork, or had to break down a chicken into legs, wings and breasts, or know that yellow beets haven't gone bad, they are just a different variety.

By concentrating our equipment and training in a government inspected commissary, The Farmers Diner will be able to overcome the barriers of non-standardized produce, lack of processing capacity and loss of local food processing skills. Currently, the Quechee diner, with its significant prep space, is serving as its own commissary.

Our sister company, Vermont Smoke and Cure, makes and also sells The Farmers Diner branded products into high-end grocery stores, inns, and food service channels. The Farmers Diner bacon, sausages and ham currently are made with half Vermont-area raised pork, on average. We are working hard to recruit more pork producers in our local area!

Our method for creating more Farmers Diner restaurants is simple. In each new market area we attract a local group of farmers, business leaders, investors and others who care about viable communities. The Farmers Diner provides the local partners with technical and financial resources in launching and managing a pod of new diners in their area.

This model allows The Farmers Diner to leverage its core business processes, technology and management expertise across multiple locations with significant economy of scale. This allows us to increase benefits to employees, pay profitable prices to local farmers and provide a good return to our investors.

Quite simply, The Farmers Diner combines time-tested restaurant-chain basics with socially responsible economics and operations..

Doing Good By Eating Well