News

Healthy Traditions is looking to partner to with struggling restaurants that have been forced to shut down during the current COVID-19 situation to help them take their business online. Small business loans may also be available to help make the transition.

Up to 80% of the nation's restaurants are currently facing business failure according to some estimates, forcing many restaurant owners to find new ways to survive.

By offering meals online, either for pick up or delivery, a restaurant can increase their market presence.

Healthy Traditions has an 18 year history of being an online high-end food delivery ecommerce business. We sell mostly food ingredients, but we are open to partnering with like-minded restaurant businesses to expand into meal delivery services, a sector of the food industry that has seen tremendous growth in recent years, and is expected to grow even more now with changing consumer habits in eating out.

What types of restaurants are we looking for to partner together?

In the last week, the media headlines have included concerns about possible meat shortages. Livestock farmers and ranchers across the country are verging on bankruptcy – while consumers are facing increasing prices and empty shelves in the groceries.

Texas state officials are reportedly advising Texas ranchers how to depopulate and dispose of their beef, while at the same time beef is still being imported into the U.S. from other countries.

With hundreds of millions of livestock and poultry in this country, why are we having these problems?

COVID-19 is not the reason for the problems, it’s just the straw that is breaking the camel’s back in our deeply flawed food system. Four companies control processing of over 80% of the country’s beef, and four companies control processing of two-thirds of the country’s pork. The consolidation has led to most meat being processed at massive plants where as many as 400 cattle are slaughtered an hour. Workers in these facilities labor under very difficult and often unsafe conditions – and that’s before you add in the issue of a highly contagious disease.

Yet the government regulations are designed for these massive, industrial-scale facilities, making it difficult or sometimes even impossible for small-scale facilities to comply. And federal law requires that “state inspected” facilities use the exact same USDA standards, leaving no flexibility for states to develop standards better suited to small operators.

So we have a shortage of small-scale processors in this country, and small-scale livestock farmers have few places they can take their animals for processing. In some areas of the country, the nearest USDA or equivalent state facility may be several hours’ drive away or more.

There are alternatives, known as “custom slaughterhouses,” which legally operate in many states. But the meat from them can only be provided back to – and consumed by the family of – the person who owned the animal when it entered the slaughterhouse. A consumer who is not able to pay for and store hundreds of pounds of meat in one order is unable to access the meat from a custom slaughterhouse. And a farmer who wants to sell his or her beef, lamb, goat, or pork to consumers at a local farmers’ market or other local outlet cannot use a custom slaughterhouse.

The PRIME Act, H.R. 2859/ S.1620, addresses this problem and can help with both the short-term crisis and the long-term change we need in our food system. TAKE ACTION TO SUPPORT THIS IMPORTANT BILL.

Previously I reported about the shortages of meats at supermarkets, and how this reflected not a shortage of meat in the U.S., but the failures of our supply chains when a nationwide crisis hits, such as the Coronavirus scare has done.

I discussed how allowing local communities to directly access meat from farmers and ranchers in their own counties and states was the solution to food security issues in our nation's meat supplies.

The publication Civil Eats has done an excellent job of reporting on these kinds of problems that are systemic within our nation's food supply chains.

In another excellent investigative report on flour shortages that many are starting to see around the country, Amy Halloran has written an excellent article titled:

"Flour Shortage? Amber Waves of Regional Grains to the Rescue: A grain and flour expert enthusiast says the local flour revolution is tastier, healthier, and has created more robust markets."

Again, as we saw with the meat market, there is currently no shortage of flour in our nation. The issue is the frail supply chain.

In yet another excellent article published by Civil Eats, Jodi Helmer wrote a report titled:

"Restaurants Are Transforming into Grocery Stores to Survive the Pandemic: Selling sought-after eggs, flour, and toilet paper directly to consumers has provided an ‘emergency transfusion’ for restaurants."

In our article about Wyoming's Food Freedom Act and the nation's meat supply issues, we mentioned how the closing of restaurants and other venues that serve food, such as sporting and entertainment events, was what was putting a strain on the meat market supplies.

With the entire nation confined to their homes and unable to visit restaurants and other venues where food is served, this in turn created a huge demand for more food at grocery stores, while bulk food distributors were left with an excess of inventory that was not packaged properly for retail sales.

Helmer's article documents how some restaurants have dealt with this situation while solving two problems at once: providing more business for their restaurant so they could stay in business, and providing much needed items to their consumers that they could not find in their local grocery stores, such as eggs, flour, and toilet paper.

What is the answer to the food security issue facing our nation?

One of the effects of the Coronavirus lock downs is that many people who had previously eaten most of their meals outside the home now are suddenly faced with having to prepare meals every day.

We would like to explore the possibility of networking our customers who are in a position to cook meals with those in your neighborhood who would be happy to pay for your services to prepare meals for them.

Galloway cattle grass-fed in Wisconsin by small-scale farmers are sold online fully processed here. by Brian ShilhavyFounder, Healthy Traditions Last week (April, 2020), U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue, appeared at the White House Coronavirus Task Force press conference to explain why the country is facing some food shortages, such as meats, in grocery stores, even though there is plenty of food in the country. The problem is the commodity-based food distribution system, which is experiencing bottle necks right now due to restaurants and other food establishments being shut down across the country due to the coronavirus restrictions. A significant...