In the spirit of openness (and maybe some obsessive compulsive disorder on my part), I've updates the How Direct? How Local? spreadsheets showing Sea Rocket's purchases from January 1st to August 15th, 2009. I decided to make it easier for myself and set up Quickbooks so I could run the reports right in the accounting software instead of having to make all sorts of spreadsheets. So, here are the results...

From January to April 2009, we had purchased 62% of our food from distributors. Year-to-date, that number has fallen to 56%. That means we're getting more food directly from the people who grow, raise, or catch it and we know exactly where that food comes from. Distributors are important to maintaining a consistent supply, but they definitely make it hard for us to know on a day-to-day basis where exactly something came from and how it was grown.

34% of our food is purchased directly from farmers, ranchers, and fishermen in the San Diego and Temecula areas. Below are the people we've bought from this year.

3% is purchased directly from farmers and fishermen, but from the Santa Barbara area (olives and beans) and from off the coast of Oregon and Washington (American Tuna). Below are the purchases we've made this year.

7% is made locally, but with non-local ingredients. That's mostly the bread we buy from Cardamom Bakery next door to us and the coffee from Caffe Calabria. We've looked at getting organic flour for the bread, but so far the price has been double what normal flour is (Bay State Milling, thanks to Pizza Fusion for the lead). We're still trying to come up with a scheme to make it work, but it may take some time. Half the coffee we get from Caffe Calabria is organic, but we're testing more organic coffee to increase that percentage. Below are the purchases we've made this year.

Below are the purchases we've made through distributors. You'll see some grocery stores that we've bought from in the report below... surprising, but true... restaurants forget things and need last minute miscellaneous ingredients sometimes just to get through the night! We've purchased quite a bit of rice though United Natural Foods. They're a wholesaler that sells to natural foods stores like People's Co-op in OB, so we've been able to get Lundberg organic or ecofarmed California rice through them.

The beer report is below. I find it amazing that we can purchase ALL of our beer from San Diego breweries and come up with a damn good selection! It's harder to do that with wine and food. The amount of money spent with Stone Brewery is a bit skewed in the report since they also distribute for other local breweries.

We buy all California wine.

The vast majority of our food is regional (just things like flour, sugar, and coffee aren't), so I may stop tracking that altogether. I've been thinking about organics a bit lately, and although a lot of our food is organic, I think that would also be something interesting to track if I can figure out how to do that in Quickbooks.

So that's our report card on our food sourcing. We've also done a lot in the last few months in terms of food quality and consistency, service times, and front of house staffing levels. This is especially important on busy Friday and Saturday nights which used to be... how do you say... a little crazy- both for us and for our guests. If I could post a report on food service times here, trust me, I would. Unfortunately that data is only tracked manually when we notice a specific problem. And if the comment cards we give people after their meal are any indication of the food quality and consistency, we're doing really well in that area.

We look forward to continuing to increase the amount of money we spend with the local farmers, ranchers, and fishermen we're getting to know and love!