Expert Profile: Fiesta Farms

This week’s Expert Profile continues our series on other kinds of “experts”, such as stores and organizations, who help shape our eating habits.

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I was a rotten waitress. Between my natural absentmindedness and the disdain I felt for picky eaters, I was pretty much doomed to fail. So, instead, to pay my way through high school and university, I became a supermarket cashier. This was the late 1980s and early 1990s in a small town, before the big box stores had managed to encroach on our little agricultural community. The mom ‘n’ pop groceries where I slung boxes and bags while wearing various unflattering polyester uniforms were family affairs full of extended relatives and awkward teenagers stocking shelves. Some of them didn’t even have barcode scanners, so we got to learn the price of apples and cans of tuna by heart pretty quickly.

These grocery stores were community hubs. At 7:30 am on Saturdays, the old ladies would line up by the door, an act that seemed bizarre to us as nocturnal adolescents wiping the sleep from our eyes as we opened the business for the day. In summers, mom ‘n’ pop might fire up the barbecue or wheel the ice cream cooler outside. Many people were on a first-name basis with the grocery manager. If you wanted a fresh goose for your holiday table, then you made friends with Steve the butcher, and rest assured that he’d personally supervise the selection of the very best honker from the farm down the road. He might even carry it to the cash register for you. And just like every boxing gym has a guy named Sully who wears a porkpie hat, there’s always someone who’s an inveterate whistler, and who serenades the customers with a cheerful vibrato as he wheels the carts back into their nook.

Some stores catered to a white Anglo market; as late as 1998, I befuddled a grocery manager by asking him where the coriander was. He expressed great puzzlement, then pointed me towards the cinnamon. Other stores catered to the burgeoning communities of immigrants, many of whom worked on the surrounding farms and in the local factories.  Because each store expressed the spirit of the families that owned them as well as the idiosyncrasies of the neighbourhood, each store had its own unique character, although many of the sights, sounds, and smells were similar.

Fifteen years later, I am immersed in that world again, every time I step into Fiesta Farms. Large supermarket chains have come to dominate the urban horizon. Each one looks like the other. Most are full of prefabricated food and overpriced world-travelling produce. In this landscape, Fiesta Farms stands out. It refuses to bow to corporate pressures to standardize, hit the lowest common denominator, or sell Frankenfood.

Instead, it’s emerged as a strong voice in favour of local food producers, small farmers and processors, organic products, and diverse food offerings. It’s a model that can help guide us as nutritionally conscious consumers. And given that the Local Food Plus organization with which Fiesta Farms now partners helps to preserve the ecologically sensitive Green Belt that surrounds Toronto, it’s a model that can also help us nourish our environmental consciences as well.

The store caters to an unusual audience that represents the mixed bag of the local community: aged first-generation immigrant Italian and Portuguese workers; professionals from nearby Little Korea; young enviromentally conscious families; Birkenstock-wearing intelligentsia; students and hipsters; and above all, anyone with a keen interest in food. Organic yerba mate and fair trade coffee rubs shoulders with packs of Lavazza espresso.  One can pick up eco-friendly cleaning products, artisan prosciutto, tempeh, tamarind paste, and fresh seasonal chestnuts in a single visit, and still have enough money left over to hit Fiesta Farms’ garden centre next door for heirloom tomato seedlings.

Nearly one entire aisle is devoted to pasta – from brands familiar to Italian customers to whole wheat, brown rice, spelt, buckwheat, and kamut noodles. Across the aisle, customers can have their pick of organic tomatoes, many grown locally. There is a large fresh antipasto bar with organic olives, roasted eggplant, fava beans, sardines, octopus and other old country delicacies. Much of the produce is organic and local, and includes abundant greens (including three varieties of kale, three types of swiss chard, and dandelion greens) as well as heirloom varieties of tomatoes, beets, and carrots. Along with organic fare from local producers, the meat section carries cuts that appeal to international palates and Paleo eaters alike: tripe, liver, heart, and oxtail, along with homemade sausages and wild game such as rabbit, venison, duck, and bison. A tire-sized round of real Parmigiano-Reggiano serves as a signpost to a dairy section containing local artisan cheeses and dairy, including goat and sheep cheese, milks, and yogurts. Bread comes from the nearby ACE Bakery.

Yep, “spaghetti night” looks a whole lot different when it starts at this store. Eat your heart out, Chef Boyardee.

Quinoa pasta, from fairly traded source	2 kinds of organic canned tomatoes (bottom shelf are locally produced)
Local artisan cheese	Antipasto bar
Organic meats from Kerr Farms, with the green tag signifiying local food	Sheep's milk from a local dairy collective
Fresh produce, much of it organic	A freezer full of sprouted breads

Grocery manager Joe Furfaro chuckles wryly when I ask him about Fiesta Farms’ mandate to sell a broad array of high-quality organic products. “We’ve been doing this before it was popular,” he recalls. “We got started back in ’91, ’92, when nobody was doing this kind of thing. We wanted to be different. And boy did we lose a lot of money in the beginning.”

But Joe and owner Joe Virgano hail from the old-school dynasty of traditionally minded grocery store families. They believed in providing the best products to their customers, and prioritizing a short food chain and high quality over a quick buck and pushing junk out the door. At Fiesta Farms, food is good but it’s also affordable, in part because the store works closely with the producers.

Their gamble has paid off. Nearly two decades later, Fiesta Farms has become a well-known leader in the local food scene. Food lovers cruise Fiesta Farms like lounge lizards slither through bars, looking for the next sweet score. On weekends and evenings, the place is packed. (Keep your eyes peeled, as big-name Toronto chefs are often spotted browsing the aisles.)

Pomelos, baby purple bananas, and organic avocados	With about 20 kinds available, you can easily get your green tea fix here.
A sign indicates locally grown apples	There's even an entire section devoted to organic and fairly traded chocolate. Get your antioxidants, save the planet, and contribute to humanity!
A much better breakfast option than Frosted Flakes

One day in September, at the height of Ontario’s apple season, I popped into Fiesta Farms, which featured about fifteen varieties of locally produced apples, many of which were organic, and all of which had probably been picked fresh that week before enjoying a brief trip down the highway. The following day, I visited another big box grocery store close by. It was offering apples too… from Chile, South Africa, and New Zealand, for twice the price.

At Fiesta Farms, the food speaks for itself. Other grocery stores should start listening. And as nutritionally minded (and perhaps environmentally conscious) consumers, perhaps we should also start speaking, to demand better from our food providers. As the Precision Nutrition guide reminds us, eating well starts with what you buy. And eating well also connects us to our communities – whether that’s our neighbours or the food producers down the road.

By the way, look for Vito, who will greet you with a friendly hello, and help you carry your groceries to your car with a kindly wave. He’s the whistler.

Sources and further reading

Fiesta Farms, 200 Christie St., Toronto 416-537-1235

Fiesta Farms Winning Over Shoppers

Joe Virgona: Cultivating memories, laughter and food at Fiesta Farms

Local Food Plus |  Ewenity Dairy Co-operative |  Fifth Town Cheese |  Kerr Farms |  Ace Bakery |  Rowe Farms |  Hewitt’s Dairy