Economic Development

The Impact of Terroir in the Genesee Valley

For the past fourteen years, the Terroir Symposium has brought together the top hospitality and tourism industry professionals from around the world to connect, learn, and collaborate. This year’s symposium featured talks on trends in the current food landscape, regenerative farming, community collaborations, and more. While the Culinary Tourism Alliance usually hosts Terroir in Toronto, this year due to the coronavirus pandemic the symposium went entirely virtual. With funding from the municipalities of Geneseo, Mount Morris, and Perry, and a grant from the USDA, Letchworth Gateway Villages (LGV) was able to provide tickets to the symposium for twenty people involved in the local food scene, from chefs to farmers to economic development agencies.

Terroir is, very literally, a sense of place: the characteristics inherent to a place that give its agricultural products a unique flavor, such as climate, soil, and ways of farming.
Jacquie Billings of the Hole in the Wall Restaurant & Lounge and Ration Wine Bar, Gabrielle Vogel of the Hole in the Wall, Jill Gould of Butter Meat Co., Jeremy Clark of Hopp’d and Brew’d Sauce Co., and Nicole Manapol of Letchworth Gateway Villa…

Jacquie Billings of the Hole in the Wall Restaurant & Lounge and Ration Wine Bar, Gabrielle Vogel of the Hole in the Wall, Jill Gould of Butter Meat Co., Jeremy Clark of Hopp’d and Brew’d Sauce Co., and Nicole Manapol of Letchworth Gateway Villages at the 2019 Terroir Symposium.

The inspiration for this symposium comes from the French concept of terroir, the environmental, geographically-specific factors that give a crop its distinct taste, an idea that winemakers originally developed to describe wine from different areas. Terroir is, very literally, a sense of place: the characteristics inherent to a place that give its agricultural products a unique flavor, such as climate, soil, and ways of farming. Because each location has its own terroir, some savvy business owners have started promoting terroir tourism, appealing to food and beverage lovers who want a tourism experience they can’t get anywhere else. As the Culinary Tourism Alliance determined in their white paper for LGV (“The Role of Food Tourism in the Development of Rural Destinations”), tourists in this day and age are looking for authenticity when they travel, and terroir is as authentic as it gets. Importantly, too, terroir tourism is a sustainable and lasting source of income for rural areas: “From an economic development standpoint focusing on our assets that can't be found anywhere else... means that we are future-proofing our economy. Terroir cannot be outsourced to another community or country,” says Nicole Manapol, director of LGV.

Tourists in this day and age are looking for authenticity when they travel, and terroir is as authentic as it gets.
Display of fresh tomatoes and maple syrup products at the Perry Farmers’ Market.

Display of fresh tomatoes and maple syrup products at the Perry Farmers’ Market.

The coronavirus pandemic has only strengthened the urgency to focus on the local. Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, Director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in Canada, spoke at the Terroir Symposium about how his office has given 65-70 interviews a week due to people’s anxiety about what food supply chains will look like post-COVID. Dr. Charlebois was clear: the distribution and economics of food will change and food producers should create their own rules in order to succeed. For example, the lab expects online food sales to triple this year. While meat plants around the country have become coronavirus hot spots, the Genesee Valley has seen a surge of interest in eating locally. Two Facebook groups, Livingston County Menus and Find Your Farmer Western NY, emerged at the beginning of the pandemic and now have a combined 14,000 members. “The pandemic, I think, has brought us closer as a community and has highlighted the importance of our local agriculture and food industry and why it is so important for us to invest in local businesses and supply chains,” Manapol explains. “Instead of braving crowded supermarkets or purchasing meat from large-scale processing plants that put workers' lives at risk, consumers in the Genesee Valley were lucky to be able to turn to small businesses and local producers to secure food during the pandemic. This gave us all a new appreciation for our agriculturally rich region and the ability to know our farmers and the origins of our food.”

The distribution and economics of food will change and food producers should create their own rules in order to succeed.
Salad of local lettuce, pears, candied squash, and pumpkin seeds made by Chef Sean Wolf for Letchworth Gateway Villages’ Food Tourism Forum in October of 2019.

Salad of local lettuce, pears, candied squash, and pumpkin seeds made by Chef Sean Wolf for Letchworth Gateway Villages’ Food Tourism Forum in October of 2019.

Over and over, the Terroir Symposium showed how building a local and sustainable food movement, while expensive upfront, is possible in rural communities and worthwhile, both economically and socially, in the long run. Chefs can play an important role in advocating for these values and bringing about change. The Chefs’ Manifesto, for example, brought together 100+ chefs from around the world to create a framework for addressing the food issues that matter the most to them, from investment in livelihoods to protection of biodiversity. Sean Wolf, former head chef at Farmer’s Creekside Tavern & Inn in LeRoy and the Big Tree Inn in Geneseo, said the Terroir discussion of the Chefs’ Manifesto “really made me feel excited to get back to work on waste initiatives and ways we can work towards these sustainability goals on a nano-level in our community.” Likewise, Melanie Alvarez of the Borikén Restaurant in Mount Morris, came away from Terroir feeling more inspired to “support local businesses as much as possible and create healthy partnerships” while interpreting Puerto Rican cuisine for her upstate New York clientbase. When chefs buy from local farmers, not only are they helping to support the farmers financially, but they are also telling the story of their heritage and region, strengthening the ties within their community and making their area more attractive to tourists as a place where they can have authentic food-based experiences. This approach, Manapol argues, “can bring real wealth, equity and overall wellbeing to communities like ours.”

Building a local and sustainable food movement, while expensive upfront, is possible in rural communities and worthwhile, both economically and socially, in the long run.

“You can’t build community alone.” Aman Dosanj of the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia reiterated this point multiple times in her talk “Collaboration in Culinary Tourism,” but this statement indisputably describes the message of the Terroir Symposium as a whole. Every business, every farm, every municipality is important to conserve and showcase the terroir of the Genesee Valley. “I wasn’t expecting the Terroir Symposium & Terroir Talks to weave together food, interpretation, preservation, and sustainability as they did,” says Sandy Schneible, president of littleHive and member of the LGV advisory committee. “Beyond the inspiration and information offered by the presenters, I found the multi-faceted nature of the symposium to be a compelling expression of why cross-sector collaboration matters and why there’s never been a more important time to invest in local businesses and supply chains.” 

Food Pioneers of the Genesee Valley

The landscape of food in upstate New York is changing. While the Finger Lakes region is responsible for a quarter of the state’s agricultural output, local residents in Western New York have traditionally felt the need to leave the area to experience new food and beverage trends. However, thanks to the state’s policy initiatives and innovative farmers, chefs, and business owners, there are more opportunities than ever before to enjoy what New York has to offer.

Although the wine industry currently brings tourists to the area, the food scene has lagged behind. The Finger Lakes Regional Economic Development Council has recognized that consumers want more organic and locally-sourced food. The council has identified $1.3 billion in private investments to improve the entire food value chain, ranging from research to equipment to infrastructure. At the same time, local schools like Monroe Community College, Finger Lakes Community College, and Genesee Community College provide programs in food studies, viticulture, and food processing technology so that a workforce will be available to fill the jobs these investments create. The New York State Division of Agricultural Development, meanwhile, helps support the over 700 farmers’ markets in the state.

Two new local food incubators, FreshLAB in Batavia and the Commissary in Rochester, aim to help new restaurants, beverage companies, and small-batch food producers get started in the area. Created to help keep residents’ dining and entertaining money local, FreshLAB provides to entrepreneurs everything from a commercial kitchen to WiFi to mentorship. In Sibley Square in Rochester, the Commissary, opening later in 2019, will offer hourly kitchen space to aspiring grocery suppliers as well as food-focused workshops and cooking classes to the general public.

The Hole in the Wall Restaurant in Perry lists many local suppliers on their menu.

The Hole in the Wall Restaurant in Perry lists many local suppliers on their menu.

The relationship between food and agricultural businesses in the region is also evolving. When Jacquie Billings and Travis Barlow joined forces at the Hole in the Wall Restaurant in Perry in 2005, they had to grow their own produce. Now, after years of building relationships with local farmers, creameries, apiaries, and the like, they joke their garden is overgrown with weeds and instead tend to the growing list of producers they promote on their menu. 

Chef Brian Simmons who runs the historic Yard of Ale in Piffard has also been a pioneer in transforming the region’s food scene, making sustainability a key focus of his cuisine and partnering with local food and beverage producers like the Abbey of the Genesee, Deer Run Winery and Pleasant View Farm. 

Executive Chef Sean Wolf, formerly at Farmer’s Creekside Tavern in Leroy, says the choice to focus on farm-to-table dining was obvious to him: “The fewer miles the food has to travel, (the) better for the quality of the food and (the) better for the environment… It also gives us (an opportunity) to create a personal connection with the people growing our food, and opens a dialogue in which we can each understand the other's needs better with the result hopefully being a better product and better supply stream for everyone involved.” Likewise, Jill Marshall Gould, after marrying Steve Gould, a third generation dairy farmer at Har-Go Farms in Pavilion, saw a way to utilize something the region has in abundance: culled dairy cows. Instead of sending these cows to auction, Marshall Gould has started processing them and dry aging the steaks, selling them alongside burgers and dog bones at pop-ups under her Butter Meat Co. label. While still a small operation, she hopes to ultimately have the capacity to expand beyond her own farm’s cows and open a retail space nearby. 

The food scene in Western New York has come a long way, but there is still work to be done, both by policymakers and customers.  Although Marshall Gould understands the intent of regulatory laws, she finds it very expensive and arduous to keep up with all of them, saying, “I have a constant fear I may have missed something…(that) will impact me in 6 months or a couple of years.” Margaret Zdzieszynski and Krystyna Skrzypek of Euro Café, a Polish restaurant in Geneseo, agree, adding that they wish business taxes were lower. Additionally the increasing minimum wage will make restaurants’ already narrow profits even narrower. 

While the market demand for local food and beverage is there - the supply is not. There are a number of issues that contribute to this but two of the main ones are the ability of rural restaurants to attract and retain talent and the highly seasonal nature of the business. According to Nicole Manapol, Letchworth Gateway Villages Director, “it’s a risk that many entrepreneurs in rural areas just can’t take.” 

On the flip side, local customers, not used to the rising quality of restaurants in the area, also face a steep learning curve. Sean Wolf often faces questions from customers about why his homemade bread or local produce from small farms costs more than they are used to spending on inferior products. He wishes people would step outside their comfort zones and trust chefs to make them something new and delicious.

The potential for the food and beverage industry in the Genesee Valley is huge - especially as Buffalo and Rochester up their culinary games and the Finger Lakes wine region continues to attract and grow local talent to fuel their wine industry. The food pioneers featured in this article have gone a long way in defining the Genesee Valley’s culinary identity. To support these efforts, Letchworth Gateway Villages has partnered with the Culinary Tourism Alliance, one of the world's leading experts in food tourism development, to understand how the region can combine its strengths in agriculture with travel and hospitality to drive new market opportunities in the region. The Genesee Valley shares many of the agricultural assets that put New York’s Finger Lakes wine region on the map, but the unique agricultural and culinary heritage of the Genesee Valley means that assets will be leveraged differently. By celebrating these stories and incorporating them into diverse visitor experiences, communities have the potential to attract more visitors, expand the market for local goods and services, and foster business innovation.